Tools To Pick Up Litter Placed At Three Popular Parks For Public Use

Are you sick and tired of going to the park for a nice jog or maybe even a picnic at the surrounding beaches, only to find that there’s litter strewn everywhere and you can barely even find a clean spot to lay your picnic mat down on?

If this problem frustrates you, and you know that you’re definitely not the one contributing to the problem, maybe it’s time to look into contributing to solve the problem with a little bit of your own effort.

With These Litter-Picking Tools

As an initiative by the Public Hygiene Council (PHC) and the National Parks Board (NParks), four storage sheds with tools to pick up litter in them have been placed at three different parks around Singapore, the first few activations in a plan to roll out more in future.

This is to encourage Singaporeans to “conduct cleanups in a more convenient, sustainable and efficient manner”, and it’s also more convenient for them to extend their help with the tools readily available at the park itself.

Two of them are located at East Coast Park, and Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park and Pasir Ris Park each have one placed there as of now. Due to there being a demand of more cleanups in the area and more people wishing to have accessible tools there, these parks were chosen.

By the end of this year, three more are set to be placed at Changi Beach Park and East Coast Park, and there are still plans for more next year.

It Looks Cool, Too 

It’s not just a regular tool storage shed – it’s a CleanPod.

No, it’s not a variant of an AirPod.

Instead of the normal sheds with no designs on it whatsoever, these CleanPods have various graffiti artwork and anti-littering slogans painted on its walls, probably to brighten up the park and attract the attention of park visitors.

Each of the CleanPods contains tools such as tongs, weighing scales, garden carts and reusable buckets, which are more helpful in reducing waste as compared to using single-use trash bags.

Furthermore, as schools and governmental organisations tend to organise trash cleanups frequently, they are now able to use the tools inside the CleanPod and do not have to buy new equipment for one-time use and throw it away after. It’s a waste-free, positive initiative to help the environment, what’s not to love?

The CleanPods are also located near washing points, toilets and trash collection points for increased convenience.

In future, there may be plans to include gardening tools in the pods as well.

There’s A Trash Problem

It’s not a secret that Singapore’s trash problem has gradually been getting worse over the years, but with that, there’s also been a lot more initiatives and effort put into changing that.

Many volunteer groups, schools and governmental organisations alike have stepped up to organise their own trash cleanup events at Singapore’s beaches, after seeing the piles of trash that sometimes get washed up on our shores from neighbouring countries and boats.

Over 700 beach cleanups were conducted each year between 2016 and 2018, according to the National Environment Agency. That’s really not a bad amount when you consider how small Singapore actually is, so kudos to those who do play their part in maintaining ownership of our supposedly clean and green island.

It’s now going to be even more convenient and easier to do so with the CleanPods, so there might probably be even more this year, and that’s a good thing I’d like to see.

Start with cleaning up the trash around our environment, that’s when we can then easily clean the trash out of our lives as well!