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The ubiquitous blue recycling bins seen across Singapore today were not part of the country\u2019s original household recycling system. When the NRP was launched in 2001, recyclables were collected door-to-door in recycling bags.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That was found to be too manpower intensive, and so in 2007, public waste collectors \u2013 NEA-appointed companies to collect household waste and recyclables in designated areas \u2013 began providing one blue recycling bin for every five HDB blocks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 2011, the collectors provided a blue recycling bin for each HDB block. Paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and metal recyclables could all be deposited into the blue bins without the need for residents to sort their recyclables or wait for scheduled collections.<\/span><\/p>\n In response to CNA TODAY’s queries, NEA said: “This approach lowers the barrier to participation as it makes recycling more convenient for households.”<\/span><\/p>\n Today, more than 80,000 blue recycling bins have been deployed across HDB and landed estates in Singapore.<\/span><\/p>\n While experts agreed that the blue bins do make it easier for residents to deposit their recyclables, that effortlessness has become a double-edged sword, contributing to contamination as people increasingly treat the bins as general rubbish receptacles.<\/span><\/p>\n Assistant Professor Mark Teo, from the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and the vice-chair of the sustainability education committee, said: “The design of the blue recycling bin has, in some ways, been a victim of its own success \u2013 it is highly convenient for both throwing and collection, to the extent that this convenience may have become counterproductive.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While the bins are designed to accept all recyclable items, many consumers still do not really know what is recyclable, despite efforts by the NEA in 2019 to standardise bin labels to make it easier for residents to identify what can and cannot be recycled.<\/p>\n When faced with that mental strain, human nature defaults to the path of least resistance, said Associate Professor of Urban Sustainability Terry van Gevelt from the Singapore Management University (SMU).<\/p>\n In this context, he explained, that may mean treating the recycling bin exactly like a regular rubbish bin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018A VICTIM OF ITS OWN SUCCESS\u2019 The ubiquitous blue recycling bins seen across Singapore today were not part of the country\u2019s original household recycling system….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/67773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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