Professional Communication

ES2007S

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION

PROPOSAL

GROUP MEMBERS:

CALEB RAJ MAHENDRAN U083840L

LAU JIE XIAN JACINTH U075865B

LIM CHIA YONG JOHNNY U080405J

GOH CHIA HUEY BERNADETTE U083857M

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT 3

BACKGROUND 4

DESCRIPTION OF MAIN ISSUE 4

HEARTLAND 4

SCHOOLS (EDUCATION) 5

PROBLEM STATEMENT 7

PURPOSE STATEMENT 7

METHODOLOGY 7

PLAN OF ACTION 8

BENEFITS 10

LIMITATIONS 11

FEASIBILITY 12

APPENDIX A 13

CASE STUDY ON JAPAN 13

APPENDIX B 14

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO WASTE-MINIMIZATION & RECYCLING TEAM 14

BIBLIOGRAPHY 18

ABSTRACT

(Address the request for proposal specifically in: ensuring sustainable growth)

BACKGROUND

The amount of waste generated in Singapore in the past 30 years has increased six folds. In 2009, about 6.1 million tonnes of waste was generated in Singapore, and each person generated around 1,230 kg of waste. (NEA Annual Report, 2009) Although recycling rate has increased to 57% in 2009, 43% of the 6 million tonnes of waste is still being disposed yearly. 41% is incinerated at Four Waste-to-Energy plants and 2% disposed at Semakau Landfill. The recycling rate of the 3 common types of waste disposed (i.e. plastics, food waste, paper/cardboard) is still low. Only 9% of disposed plastics are recycled even though there are a total of 3,800 recycling bins in public areas within Singapore. This shows that Singapore’s 3R (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) efforts are not effective. Thus, more efforts are required to increase recycling rates. (Eugene, 2010) This is especially important in land scarce Singapore. We foresee environmental and sustainable issues in the near future. In view of this, we propose revamping current recycling efforts which would supplement and enhance our waste management, specifically in the heartlands.

DESCRIPTION OF MAIN ISSUE

HEARTLAND

The National Environment Agency (NEA) collaborates with public waste collectors and constituencies to organize community events like ‘Clean & Green Singapore’ and ‘Recycling Week’ to educate the residents in the heartlands about minimizing waste as well as inculcating good recycling habits. Public waste collectors like Altvater Jakob often provide feedback about average household recycling rates, and together with NEA’s surveys conducted, there have been an increase in heartland recycling from 14% in 2001 to 63% in 2009 (Ong, 2010). This collaboration also made it more convenient for residents to recycle by placing 1 large communal recycling bin at every 5 block of flats in 2007 under the National Recycling Program, on top of manual door-to-door recyclables collection once every fortnight (Teng & Ong, 2008). Altvater also organized their own Recycling Exchange Initiative (Reit) in 154 Resident Committees (RC) in their serviced areas, offering prized incentives such as microwave ovens and digital cameras to the RCs as well as small rewards to individuals who recycle a weighted amount (Meng, 2006). Also, pilot programs such as the Recyclable Intermediate Chute Holding (RICH) system developed by SembEnviro, are carried out at selected blocks of flats in the heartlands to find out if the additional costs incurred in bringing greater recycling convenience to residents outweighs the benefits of recycling like lowered waste removal fees to the residents. For the RICH system, it has shown encouraging results as the household recycling participation rates has increased from 67% in 2006 to 93% in 2007 (Tan & Seow, 2008).
Within constituencies themselves, recycling initiatives and outreach programs like recyclables in exchange for food and other rewards encourage household participation. From Changi-Simei constituency itself, more than 200 tonnes of recyclables were collected from 2009 to 2010. These constituencies also compete against each other in terms of having the most number of initiatives per district (Ee, 2010). With these initiatives, recycling rates have increased in the heartlands over the years.

SCHOOLS (EDUCATION)

Currently, there are recycling programmes in schools (preschools, primary, secondary and tertiary levels) initiated by the National Environment Agency (NEA) or by school administration.

Recycling at Pre-schools

NEA has developed a set of Preschool 3R Awareness Kit to assist the preschool teachers to reinforce the children’s 3R awareness. Children at childcare centres and kindergartens are encouraged to deposit their recyclables in centralised recycling bins or in recycling bags. Fig. 1 is an example taken from the Awareness Kit.

Recycling at Primary & Secondary Schools

There is usually a Recycling Corner in each primary and secondary school where students can use the recycling bins and learn more about recycling through the educational materials placed there, example in Fig. 2.

(Fig. 1)

(Fig. 2)

Recycling at Junior Colleges, ITEs, Polytechnics and Universities

For tertiary schools, there are usually several sets of recycling bins placed at strategic locations throughout the school or campus. For example, there are about39 sets of recycling bins placed at different locations in the National University of Singapore. (Eugene, 2008)

Public Awareness Programmes

Besides educating our young, there are also public awareness programmes and activities to reinforce the 3R messages. One such event is Recycling Day which was first held on 21 Nov 2004. (Ong) There are games and exhibitions on 3R. Shopping vouchers were given as incentives to people who brought the most recyclables. This event evolved into Recycling Week in 2010.

Besides educating children through schools, recycling messages were also conveyed through public transport, displaying on buses and inside the MRT stations. This tie in with Singapore’s commitment to encourage public to recycle, and at the same time, also encourage taking of public transport to reduce carbon footprint of individuals.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

There are various campaigns done by the relevant authority in promoting and increasing the awareness of recycling for different groups of people in the society however, their effectiveness have been mixed so far. This can be shown by the fact that in the year 2009, only 6% of household wastes were recycled (Cheam, Chua, & Yong, 2010). Furthermore, the growth in the participation rate of households has been relatively stagnant for the past few years. This proves that our current efforts in encouraging recycling among households have not achieved much success over the years.

PURPOSE STATEMENT

This proposal aims to highlight the fact that Singapore’s current approach in promoting and increasing the rate of household waste being recycled is not effective. Hence, there is a need to rethink and revamp the way which Singapore can do to improve her efforts in recycling household waste.

METHODOLOGY

We employed various methods of gathering information and assessing the viability of our proposal.

Secondary research methods were used to gather information on the current stand of recycling efforts in Singapore, particularly in the heartlands. We also investigated any plans to improve those efforts. Research was also conducted on recycling practices in Japan, as a case study for our project.

Primary methods of research employed were surveys and interviews.

A survey was conducted as a preliminary factual study on mainly 2 points – the current practices of recycling and how easy/difficult it is to do so, and, the views and suggestions on our main proposal i.e. the Pneumatic Waste System. Ultimately, we wanted to see if this proposal would see an increase in recycling amongst the residents.

An interview was conducted with Kok Shui Hong and Peh Shu Hui of the National Environment Agency, to gather their views and suggestions on the feasibility of our project proposal. This interview was conducted on 15th of March 2011, at 10am at the Environment Building.

The first part of the interview consisted of questions about the current National Recycling Programme (NRP) and its statistics, and, the response from the currently ongoing pilot project involving the use of a Pneumatic Refuse Collection System at HDB Blocks in Choa Chu Kang.

In the second part of the interview, we asked the interviewees about our project proposal, and received valuable feedback regarding cost, implementation and feasibility.

PLAN OF ACTION

Our group suggests the following:

1.  Enact laws which require households, retailers and local town councils to share the responsibility of segregating their waste and collecting them. There no laws or regulations in Singapore which mandates the recycling of household waste. This results in the lack of obligation among people to sort their rubbish and recycle them. The shared responsibility between the different parties in waste management reduces the pressure on the households if such laws are passed in the future.

2.  Reeducate the public about the importance of recycling and waste reduction as the current efforts are not paying off.

3.  Install pneumatic waste collection systems in new housing estates and revamp the existing ones so that they can also make use of such system to sort their waste into different types of recyclables. The current problem with recycling household waste lies with the lack of convenience for people to bring the recyclables to the collection point. This is further worsen by the fact that many people (from the survey) find that sorting their rubbish is quite troublesome.

The Pneumatic Refuse Conveyance System (PRCS), a modern method to the current mode of refuse collection, is under trial in some HDB blocks. Under the conventional method, cleaners manually clear out rubbish chutes and this process creates some noise and smell nuisance, especially for residents on the lower floors. The PRCS helps to mitigate such problems as it conveys refuse by air suction from individual blocks through a network of pipes to a central location for collection, where it is compacted in closed containers. PRCS uses air to transport the waste. The air flow is generated by exhausters creating a negative pressure in the pipe system. The air enters the pipes at atmospheric pressure, entraps the solid waste and conveys it to the collection station.

HDB has installed the PRCS in 11 blocks in the Choa Chu Kang Estate. The PRCS operates automatically six times a day to convey the refuse from the individual blocks to the centralised collection centre. Feedback from residents has been positive so far as there is no nuisance odour and noise when the refuse is being cleared out. (MEWR )

The PRCS can handle multiple waste types concurrently. One refuse chute is used for each separate waste stream. Therefore, it is most suitable for collecting recyclables. In order to make it more convenient for residents to recycle, we propose to install 2 separate waste hoppers per level of the HDB flat. One for general refuse and another for recyclables such as glass, paper, plastic and aluminium cans.

Typically, two to four separate waste streams are handled in a pneumatic refuse system using the same transport pipe network. In the collection station each waste stream is directed to a designated container. By collecting each waste type separately the system safeguards that waste and recyclables are not mixed in the system. Fig. 3 below is a graphic explanation of the PRCS. (Envac AB, 2009)

(Fig. 3)

However, as the public waste collectors do sort the recyclables manually, we suggest one chute for all recyclables in order to cut cost.

4. As this is a new system that is still in its pilot stages, we foresee that there would be a major problem in the fact that there are two chutes side by side, and there could be a high number of cases where the wrong items are placed into the wrong chute. As such, we propose to distinguish the chute covers using large stickers with images of common refuse (e.g. banana skin, fish bones, etc) on one and of common recyclables (e.g. aluminum cans, glass bottles, paper bag, etc) and the recycling logo (see Fig.4) on the other.

(Fig. 4)

5. As this is a relatively new system, we also propose that domestic helpers be educated with the use of this new system, so as to prevent misuse of the new chute system.

BENEFITS

1.  Less waste are being disposed and can help to reduce the strain on the capacities of our incinerators and landfills which are limited by the amount of land available in Singapore. Thus allowing more land to be use in other areas of development beside waste disposal.

2.  More materials from the recycles are recovered for further use. The materials extracted from recycling allows the Industries here to reduce their reliance on imported materials particularly in countries like Singapore which is import dominant.

3.  Help to sustain and promote the growth of recycling and related industries. The prevalence of recycling activities opens business opportunities for the treatment of recyclables and the collection of them from households.

4.  The Pneumatic Refuse Conveyance System (PRCS) has the following advantages:

a.  It is fully automated and reliable.

b.  It improves hygiene; occupational safety and health as odour, leaks and dust are eliminated.

c.  It minimises manual handling

d.  It minimises environmental impact such as energy consumption, gaseous emissions littering etc

e.  It reduces waste volume by encouraging recycling.

f.  It allows source separation to facilitate recycling.

g.  It produces little or no noise pollution.

h.  It is low in energy cost.

LIMITATIONS

1.  The initial cost for implementing and enforcement this program can be quite considerable. There might be a problem in splitting the cost of recycling between the various parties. The time for the cost of recycling to be recovered might be too long for it to become economically feasible.

2.  The demand for recyclables might not be enough to make such an initiative feasible. Furthermore, there is a problem of more valuable recyclables being taken away by scavengers and the karanguni men from the recycling bins. This will make the recycling efforts even less economical feasible as the money earned from selling the recyclables do not get to offset the cost.

3.  A stationary pneumatic refuse collection system can handle most types of waste and recyclables with the exception of: (Envac AB, 2009)

Bulky waste: Furniture’s, refrigerators etc. should be collected separately

Articles likely to cause fire or explosions

Hard articles: Stones, lumps of metal scraps such as scrap iron, etc.

Spongy articles: Sponges, cushions, etc., which tend to expand and block the chute and/or the transport pipe.