Everything About the NEA Proposing ‘Pay As You Throw’ Scheme For HDB Rubbish Chutes After the Backlash

2019-03-28 , 8:00 am

Hands up if you’ve had the phrase “talking rubbish” ever directed to you?

I know I have, and I’m proud of it because that’s what got Goody Feed interested in my writing to begin with.

But “talking rubbish” has taken on gravitas recently, with some netizens crying foul indeed.

If you don’t know what I’m referring to, it’s this “‘Pay-as-you-throw’ system to limit household waste?” ST report that came out on 15 March.

Pay-as-you-throw system

According to the report, “A National Environment Agency (NEA) official has raised the possibility that Singapore residents may in future be asked to “pay as you throw”, as part of efforts to monitor and limit rubbish dumped by households.”

This could involve bin chutes that use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to track how much waste a household produces, and a trial to track the number of times a household opens a rubbish chute hatch is reportedly in the works.

In addition, each chute opening is programmed to purportedly accept only a fixed volume of waste.

Mr Cheang Kok Chung, director of the NEA’s department for environmental protection policy and international relations added “that Singapore’s ubiquitous rubbish chutes made it very difficult to implement a “pay as you throw” system using prepaid waste bags.”

South Korea though, was used as a successful example of “pay as you throw” system where “households can buy designated bags to dispose of their trash or take it to centralised RFID food waste and rubbish bins” where “the trash will be weighed and the household billed accordingly.

Apparent cost-saving benefits have also been mooted as “each HDB household currently pays $8.25 a month for waste regardless of the amount thrown away” and it was suggested that some households might end up paying less with this new scheme.

But What About The Buts?

As revolutionary as the idea might have sound, there are obvious issues at hand.

Singapore, apart from being known as the “fine” city, is famed worldwide for having squeaky clean roads and sidewalks.

This is in no small part due to the ubiquity of our famed green rubbish chutes.

If a RFID technology is implemented in HDBs, be it for the old HDBs with chutes in-house or the new system with a main chute in the corridor, there will no doubt be a portion of Singaporeans who will choose to circumvent the RFID system by dumping their waste in the FOC green chutes.

Heck, our drivers can even circumvent the ERP in a similar ingenious fashion.

Green chutes everywhere with waste and plastic bags spilling over and out of them will no doubt be an eyesore and smellstink.

So what then? Reduce the number of chutes in Singapore?

Now, two wrongs don’t make one right and I dread to imagine what our sidewalks will be like.

ST polls: 69 out of 100 opposed the idea

If you think I’m the only one against the idea, well sorry for you, the tribe has spoken indeed.

In a follow-up article on the system, a whopping 69 respondents out of a 100 polled, opposed the idea.

According to the report, several “HDB residents told The Straits Times that they fear the plan might result in them having to pay much more for waste disposal, or in people throwing rubbish indiscriminately to avoid paying the fee (emphasis mine).”

As one Mdm Seah who lives in an HDB flat in Sengkang succinctly puts: “I think having RFID tags to track waste is okay if it’s just for monitoring. But I’m afraid people will try to avoid paying and leave their rubbish next to the communal chute”.

She added: “Our corridors will end up being smelly and attract cockroaches, rats and other pests. The waste disposal people will then have to come and pick up trash two or three times a day.”

Memes Generated

Not surprisingly, memes were generated and here’s one from Singapore’s meme-forefather, SGAG.

Here’s another.

While memes might be funny, it belies a certain amount of (healthy) skepticism and hopefully some well-thought through and logical critique behind this mooted scheme.

Education is Key

That said, Ms Lee Bee Wah, an MP for Nee Soon GRC (sans her anecdotes) shared that “the focus should first be on education and changing mindsets regarding waste management”.

And that I think should be the key to this issue.

If a system necessitates a formal change in our waste dumping habits, it’s just that, a formality for formality’s sake.

And for wallet’s sake of course.

But if we well and truly understand the destruction that waste (and in particular single-use plastic) wrought on our environment, we might have a better chance at lowering our aggregate waste disposal if we see the larger picture at hand.

Let’s not be penny wise, pound foolish.