ST : Estate to get recycling bin at each block

Jan 11, 2010

Estate to get recycling bin at each block

Admiralty Drive pilot project part of efforts to achieve 60% national recycling rate by 2012

RESIDENTS in Admiralty Drive will have a recycling bin at every HDB block as part of a pilot project to get more people to recycle.

The six-month-long project by the National Environment Agency (NEA), recycling company SembWaste and Canberra constituency will involve 14 HDB blocks.

The current arrangement for such bins in HDB estates is for five blocks to share one bin, which is emptied by waste collectors every week.

MP for Sembawang GRC Lim Wee Kiak said at the launch of the programme yesterday: 'Some residents complain that it's now too far away for them to walk, so we hope having one bin under every block will solve that.'

He asked the National Development Ministry to consider including recycling chutes when building new flats, and making it a building requirement in the future.

The pilot project in his constituency, said Dr Lim, would be a small step towards helping to achieve the goal of a national recycling rate of 60 per cent by 2012. The current rate is 56 per cent.

Residents at Admiralty also had the option of keeping their recyclable items in their homes for two weeks before collectors came around fortnightly. This option will be suspended during the pilot scheme period to better assess how many residents prefer recycling bins.

Admiralty Drive resident Bernadette Sayson prefers making the trip downstairs to deposit her recycling instead of keeping it at home for two weeks.

Said the industrial engineer: 'Sometimes we have so many things we want to recycle. It gets too much such that we can't wait for them to come and collect it, so we just throw it out as garbage.'

The 29-year-old added: 'Having a bin downstairs would be much more convenient than having to walk a few blocks away.'

The extra recycling bins should also solve the problem of overflowing bins, said Dr Lim. SembWaste estimates that increasing the number of recycling bins will raise its costs by 10 to 15 per cent, but believes the extra recyclable material collected will make up the difference.

If the project proves to be a success, it could be rolled out to other neighbourhoods islandwide, said Dr Lim.