WASTE MANAGEMENT FOR HDB HOUSING IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Today, waste management and recycling are one of the major concerns for the world especially modern cities like Singapore. Being a small island with scarce land, landfill has to be minimized in order to ensure the future sustainability of the country. Also, in order to retain the fame of “Garden City”, waste has to be collected and transported in an aesthetical and efficient way. In the Singapore Sustainability Blue print, waste management is taken into consideration as one of the key areas to be looked into. Due to the lack of awareness and imperfect facilities, it will be a challenge for Singapore to reach the target of 70% recycling rate. This paper clearly studies the impacts of domestic waste management in Singapore. By comparison studies on the approaches and rationales taken between various cities of the world and Singapore, relevant recommendations are tailored to the context of Singapore in order to improve the current situation. The recommendations include the proposal of a new refuse chute system in HDB housing. Besides the facilities, modification of the current policy is also being proposed in this paper, especially to the Green Mark Scheme in order to raise awareness and emphasize on the importance of waste recycling. The methodology used in this paper is mainly focusing on case studies. Various countries are being studied on in order to find out the rationales and approaches that were being taken, which contribute to the success of waste management. Among the countries, one will be chosen for detailed study. Analysis will be carried out to find out effective waste management systems that can be adopted and relevant to local context. At the end of this dissertation, both contributions to knowledge and research are attained. However, due to the time limitation of the paper, the study only covers the collection and transportation of waste management. Further studies can be carried out on the other relevant areas.