WASTE MANAGEMENT IN SINGAPORE AND ALTERNATIVE USES OF WASTE GLASS

Abstract

The construction industry produces the most waste and is the major contributor to the environmental threat. However, the demand for this industry will never cease, which means it will continue to exploit the natural resources and produce more waste in order to meet the demands. In Singapore, there has been an advanced law and statutes governing the construction industry practices for construction, however, there is an absence of a fast rule imposed on waste management matters. Specifically the recycling of certain construction waste such as glass.

Recent research showed that glass waste are disposed into landfill or incinerated with no considerations of recycling it. The reason is that unlike steel waste where it is much easier to sort out in the construction site with a sorting machine, waste glass from Construction and Demolition (C&D) requires workers to manually sort glass out. This poses danger to the workers if they are required to sort out glass waste from C&D as such waste are usually sharp shards. Other than safety issues, glass recycling are not as advanced in Singapore due to the economic and lack of policies to encourage the recycling of glass.

Objectives of this dissertation are to explore the current waste management strategies in Singapore to evaluate these policies that might encourage the recycling of glass waste and investigating the feasibility of crushed glass used to replace fine aggregates in mortar mixtures. It was discovered during the experiment that using crushed recycled glasses do not enhance the properties of mortar, in fact, the compressive and tensile strength suffered an extensive reduction as the percentage of glass contents increases. However, it was noted that the flexural and tensile strength was slightly above those mortar mixture without glass contents. Lastly, a visual inspection was documented to note the pattern of failure under compressive test.