Find Your Recycling Groove
We're known around the world as a garden city – so how come we're not living as green as we should?
Sustainable living – it’s no longer a strange new concept related to futuristic design. Since global warming and energy issues have become more real (hello, heatwave!), governments, businesses and designers have all incorporated green elements, from car-less days/zones and carbon credits, to solar roofs and vertical gardens. In Singapore, we even have our Sustainable Singapore Blueprint, updated just in 2015 and launched by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong then.
The unseen, unglamorous part of being green, however, remains just that: unseen. And for many Singaporeans it seems ‘out of sight, out of mind’ applies to the way we manage our rubbish.
The unseen, unglamorous part of being green, however, remains just that: unseen. And for many Singaporeans it seems ‘out of sight, out of mind’ applies to the way we manage our rubbish.
Photo courtesy of WOHA / Patrick Bingham-Hall
In fact, new HDBs are designed with sustainability in mind. Pearl Chee, Senior Associate at WOHA and part of the team that designed the award-winning HDB Skyville @ Dawson, says: “Skyville @ Dawson residential units are served by two communal chutes at each floor of the tower: one is for normal waste and one for recyclable waste”.
“HDB has implemented such double chutes in their other developments but not for every block. I am not sure what is the criteria they use to decide, but we have both, which ties in with other sustainability designs for this development”, she says.
Chee adds that private condo projects are also designed by WOHA with communal chutes for normal and recyclable wastes. “It’s common for condo developers in Singapore to adopt waste segregation for sustainability efforts”, she says.
In fact, new HDBs are designed with sustainability in mind. Pearl Chee, Senior Associate at WOHA and part of the team that designed the award-winning HDB Skyville @ Dawson, says: “Skyville @ Dawson residential units are served by two communal chutes at each floor of the tower: one is for normal waste and one for recyclable waste”.
“HDB has implemented such double chutes in their other developments but not for every block. I am not sure what is the criteria they use to decide, but we have both, which ties in with other sustainability designs for this development”, she says.
Chee adds that private condo projects are also designed by WOHA with communal chutes for normal and recyclable wastes. “It’s common for condo developers in Singapore to adopt waste segregation for sustainability efforts”, she says.
Photo courtesy of WOHA / Patrick Bingham-Hall
Waste management should be thought of in an integrated manner during the architectural concept design, says Tan Szue Hann, Chair of Sustainability committee, Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA). “Waste management in an architectural plan is guided by National Environment Agency (NEA) guidelines, which propose bin centre size requirements and also whether a trash compactor is required, depending on the building type (purpose) as well as its gross floor area. However, architects do have the latitude to propose new modes of waste processing and removal, such as pneumatic waste removal, wherein waste is removed through suction via pneumatic ducts. It is thus both a question of floor area efficiency as well as waste removal efficiency, and these discussions are typically taken up with the client for consideration of project aspirations, as well as the real-world issues of time and budget.”
“Waste management, unfortunately, typically does not feature in the curriculum of architecture students. With courses on building systems being introduced, this is set to change. However, this does not stop the initiated architect from researching and collaborating with the engineer and sustainability consultant to work out the best modes of waste management for buildings, campuses and cities”, Tan says.
Waste management should be thought of in an integrated manner during the architectural concept design, says Tan Szue Hann, Chair of Sustainability committee, Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA). “Waste management in an architectural plan is guided by National Environment Agency (NEA) guidelines, which propose bin centre size requirements and also whether a trash compactor is required, depending on the building type (purpose) as well as its gross floor area. However, architects do have the latitude to propose new modes of waste processing and removal, such as pneumatic waste removal, wherein waste is removed through suction via pneumatic ducts. It is thus both a question of floor area efficiency as well as waste removal efficiency, and these discussions are typically taken up with the client for consideration of project aspirations, as well as the real-world issues of time and budget.”
“Waste management, unfortunately, typically does not feature in the curriculum of architecture students. With courses on building systems being introduced, this is set to change. However, this does not stop the initiated architect from researching and collaborating with the engineer and sustainability consultant to work out the best modes of waste management for buildings, campuses and cities”, Tan says.
As much as the government, developers, designers and various general waste collectors are taking care of the unseen, unglamorous part of being green for us, we have to pitch in too. It can be as simple as having separate bins under the kitchen sink so it’s easy to stash and bring to the centralised bins or chutes whatever paper, plastic and non-recyclable rubbish we have.
Other countries prove every day that it can be done.
Other countries prove every day that it can be done.
Junko Kawakami, Editor, Houzz Japan says: “Japan faced the kind of issue Singapore faces now – running out of landfill space – during our high-speed economic growth era, 1960s through 1970s, especially around when the last Tokyo Olympic Games were held. Since then, we have expanded the landfills in the Tokyo Bay. The problem we face now in Tokyo is that the landfills are now used to build a new town with high-rise housing/office buildings, and some parts of these new lands are toxic, polluted by the waste that fills the land. For example, Tsukiji Fish Market, which is a very popular tourist destination too, will be relocated to the new site on the landfill area soon, but protesters say that the soil is toxic and it is too dangerous to deal fish for food”.
Rules of how to segregate waste are different by community, says Kawakami, who lives in Tokyo.
Rules of how to segregate waste are different by community, says Kawakami, who lives in Tokyo.
She shares about a common issue of rubbish chutes in Japan: “I have a small apartment in a building built in 1965 in Tokyo, which is one of the first-generation high-rise housing buildings in the city. The building has garbage chutes, but the residents stopped using them since a few decades ago. In 1960s and early 1970s, many high-rise housing/office/school buildings had built-in garbage chutes, but buildings built after then have none of them. One reason is that there were several fatal accidents that a child fell into the chute and died, and another is that if you have garbage chutes in the building you live, you don’t mind about putting every waste in it, whether it’s recyclable or not. It may be true that garbage chutes make people lazier about segregating waste”.
Although London is not a city known for as many high-rise residences as Singapore and Tokyo, it’s nonetheless a high-density city. Victoria Harrison, Editor, Houzz UK and Ireland says that a Household Waste Recycling Act was created by the UK Government in 2003 to tackle their rubbish issue.
“In some London boroughs it is also compulsory to recycle, and residents can be visited by a member of the council or fined if they put items in the rubbish when they could have been recycled,” Harrison says.
“In some London boroughs it is also compulsory to recycle, and residents can be visited by a member of the council or fined if they put items in the rubbish when they could have been recycled,” Harrison says.
Segregating and recycling waste as an individual effort may be more evident in land-rich countries such as the United States, Australia and New Zealand, but even their local governments keep a watchful eye.
“San Francisco has some of the toughest recycling laws in the US”, says Sheila Schmitz, Editor, Houzz.com. “Residents are even instructed to separate compostables.”
“San Francisco has some of the toughest recycling laws in the US”, says Sheila Schmitz, Editor, Houzz.com. “Residents are even instructed to separate compostables.”
Schmitz shares that Houzz.com editorial staff Annie Thornton lives in a smaller, older building, but she says, “our apartment building has trash, recycling and compost – we even get little compost bins for each apartment.”
“We’re not the best recyclers – and we have a high production of waste – but we’ve come a long way in the last decade,” says Jenny Drew, Editor, Houzz Australia. “Currently in Sydney we use a three-bin system – red for general waste, yellow for mixed recycling and green for garden waste – designed to make it easier for homeowners to recycle correctly. We also have some great initiatives like Clean Up Australia Day, reward-based programmes like RecycleSmart that provide incentives to recycle, and SustainMe, a new app that allows users to find local recycling information for their area,” she says.
Drew adds: “Education aside, there are other big talking points at the moment on how we encourage more Australians to recycle and reuse waste. One idea is to increase levies on landfill waste with the aim that this money will then go back into recycling programmes. Another is to continue to work on recycling waste into usable commodities, for example building with recycled materials; composting and vermiculture for green waste”.
Simon Farrell-Green, Contributing Editor, Houzz New Zealand says that although New Zealand is a nation of rolling green suburbs rather than high-rise cities, “there is city-wide municipal recycling in Auckland and most cities around NZ. Downtown areas have slightly different systems but are broadly run on the same basis as the rest of the city. Most regional and rural areas also recycle. We are a bit behind other parts of the world on plastic recycling – not all plastics can be recycled – but that’s changing at the moment”.
Farrell-Green says: “Auckland is also moving towards a city-wide green waste scheme. There are already some private companies who will come and pick up your green waste but the city would like to remove the large percentage of waste going to landfill that could actually be composted. It’s a bit controversial as well – a nice idea, but many think we should be encouraging households to compost or have worm farms on their properties since in general, we have the room. For example I’ve got two compost bins and a worm farm, and almost all of our kitchen scraps and paper goes into them and eventually winds up in the garden. In theory the only thing that goes in the trash is proper waste. Before we had a baby I could go a couple of weeks without needing to put out the trash.”
Catherine Smith, Contributing Editor, Houzz New Zealand adds: “A tiny proportion – as in, so tiny they are cute stories, as opposed to the majority – of food businesses are now seriously managing their green waste programmes. Usable food goes to not-for-profits who distribute it around food banks, soup kitchens, homeless shelters etc; non-meat waste either goes to pig farmers, sustainable chickens, or community backyards, or into compost bins/worm farms”.
Smith also shares about Bokashi buckets, which are tiny composting systems you can run from your apartment balcony – “but i’m not sure you’d want to share the space when you sit out there with your cocktails.”
Smith also shares about Bokashi buckets, which are tiny composting systems you can run from your apartment balcony – “but i’m not sure you’d want to share the space when you sit out there with your cocktails.”
If waste-segregation success stories from other countries won’t spur us on, and – heaven forbid – we’d like to not be fined for not doing our 3Rs properly, maybe this lesson, taken from Gardens by the Bay’s biodomes will. When we separate our landfill-bound waste from rubbish that can be recycled to generate energy, that’s extra energy to power up the air conditioning we need to survive this heatwave.
TELL US
Are you a fastidious waste recycler, or is all rubbish the same to you? Let us know in the Comments section.
MORE
Stash Your Rubbish and Recycling in These Secret Spaces
Are you a fastidious waste recycler, or is all rubbish the same to you? Let us know in the Comments section.
MORE
Stash Your Rubbish and Recycling in These Secret Spaces
My takeaway from the article: As individual households we need to get our 3Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) sorted out. The article brought up the challenge of recycling in high-rise residences – particularly because Housing Development Board (HDB) dwellers became used to a single chute system, even with HDB incorporating centralised recycling chutes/areas since 2014.