clearly you were one of them.
90% of the rubbish goes down the west side of the causeway.
Obvious to anyone that has been on both sides after a storm
We all thank you for leaving Singapore
No I was not, Not ignorant. I have been following the development of Singapore closely and seen what goes down by myself. (Not by 3rd party rumors and Expat talk)
No, not living in HDB flats, but the large majority of Singaporeans do. Dies that make them ignorant?
What come down the rivers east of the causeway have to go east.
I do not know % between east and west, but you have obviously been there in a storn and counted plastic bottles etc. on each side?
Who are WE, the buddy network sitting around the table at the Marina, swapping horror stories about the stupid locals that know nothing because they live in HDB flats?
Not to mention the horrible people that runs the place. They would like to keep them ignorant forever. (Maybe that’s why they built more HDB flats??)
If it wasn’t for smart expats of good British stock, Singapore would fall (again)
GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN!! Singapore will manage fine without you and your buddies.
In fact the majority will be pleased to see the arrogant Kwai Loh / Ang Moh go back to where they came from. (PS> Not everybody in the Expat community think they are God’s gift to the “natives”)
thankyou for taking your own advice, they did.
Sorry for making you aware you were living out the Truman Show when you were in Singapore, probably upset you for the rest of your life.
Yes that is a problem. The dilemma for Singapore is that it is small in both area and population, thus no space to just dump and cover in landfills and not enough volume for large scale recycling in-country.
Certain waste material can be exported for recycling where the facilities exists, while problem waste, like plastic, is not “popular”, unless it is sorted by type and cleaned,
Singapore tried this with different bins for different types of recyclable waste, but it didn’t work any better there than in most other countries. They then change to one bin for all recyclable waste and sorting at the collecting point using technology as far as possible.
Incineration while using recovered heat to produce electricity and “smoke stack” filtering to remove particles has been used, but not yet with CO2 capturing.
Some of the residual ash has been used to make paving stones, but the majority goes to the landfill at Pu. Semaku.
Nothing is perfect and neither is Singapore, nor most other countries:
PS> Having garbage dumped in neighbouring countries drifting in on your beaches doesn’t help either:
There is not a single thing in that pile of garbage that could not be delivered to me without plastics. How did the planet survive without plastics for 1000’s of years?
There is a place in the world for plastics, we need them but as a mere convince, NO.
I grew up in a time as many folks did where we had returnable glass bottles, had to pay a deposit. Did not see glass bottles floating around. Of course back then we had cloth diapers not the throw away plastic lined ones. We washed diapers and reused them. It was disgusting but kids got potty trained earlier than they do now with the no stink and leak plastic diapers. Fishing nets scoured the seas without plastics for years, they could could bring back their biodegradable nets.
The point is plastic is accepted due to laziness of the consumer, the perceived longevity of the product and the lower packaging cost to the supplier who makes a bigger profit. Until that attitude changes or is forced to change the land and sea will continue to be polluted with plastic. It’s great for the oil industry but no one else.
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Agree, the diaper service truck was a welcome site. Wonder how many of those jobs are left.
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I have not heard of one in years. The thought of being a diaper truck driver spurred my education. Those guys did a valuable service. Another thing that spurred my education was picking up glass Coke, Pepsi and Dr Pepper bottles on the side of the road. The deposit on those bottles at the time was 2 cents. Then the deposit went to 5 cents and I could not find enough to allow me to buy essentials like baseball card chewing gum etc.
If they put a deposit on plastic most of the problem would be over
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I’m acquainted with someone who runs such a service. I think cloth diapers might be coming back into fashion, at least slightly and in some areas.
Not to push this further off topic but we started with cloth diapers when our daughter was born. I’m sorry but it didn’t take long for us to see the light and switch. We still have a couple of those cloth diapers we use as dust rags. Basically it was a case of enough of this shit. Thank god for Huggie and Pampers coupons.
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Yep, been there and done that but in retrospect the cloth diapers weren’t that big of a deal, just more labor, Never recycled a Huggie or Pamper into a dust or oil rag, Matter of fact I went looking for new diapers for just that purpose a few years ago, no luck. Do they even make diaper pins any more? They were handy items.
As long as we are off the far end but with a connection to plastics and recycling:
You can still get cloth diaper “rags” but they are expensive and if made with a double layer are a pain to break down into single layers, way too much labor.
Microfiber cloths made from recycled material are better than cotton for most uses and a thousand times better than those bundles of non absorbent but cheap chopped up T shirt rags.
