Category: The Solution

#15: Passing on the Message

madeleineshutlerThe Solution

A New Social Movement 

When it comes to tackling pollution, governments are embroiled within state or international politics, economics and at times more pressing social issues. As such, local or community level responses are equally important in the fight against pollution. At the forefront of this, is environmental activism, a movement that has garnered new traction in today’s digital age of the Internet and Social Media. 

 

The Effectiveness of Activism (Conserve Energy Future, 2020): 

First and foremost, collective action provides hope and inspiration. An argument against environmentalism that is often cited is that one’s individual actions are too small to inflict change. Environmental activism with the creation of green groups or social media communities provide a sense of solidarity and proper organisation to the movement (Kong, 2019). This fuels the longevity of the movement since there is a sense of camaraderie and working towards a common goal. 

 

“The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share”

~ Lady Bird Johnson

 

Secondly, it provides crucial education to the general public. By raising awareness regarding consumer habits, national legislation and effects of environmental degradation, activism can aid governmental educational efforts while at the same time provide a critical lens to keep national policies in check. For instance, in the recent 2020 Singapore General Elections, @sgclimaterally and @theweirdandwild activists on Instagram, broke down each political party’s environmental policies and gave them aggregate scores. This put pressure on each party to ensure their policies were in line with the environmental needs and wants of future generations. 

 

Check out the environmental activists links here:

https://instagram.com/theweirdandwild?igshid=1opztb6bk9vox

https://instagram.com/byebyeplasticbags.sg?igshid=nvton8rdhawl

https://instagram.com/nocarrierpls?igshid=1bjavd7cc6k2p

https://instagram.com/lilearthgirl?igshid=1cy5a7zjfss2z

 

Thirdly, it puts pressure on the private sector. With a large group of people increasingly involved in green goals and environmental change, corporations are increasingly aware that their own practices and behaviour can easily come under fire for being non environmentally friendly. This drives private firms to rethink their practices, including “limiting carbon footprint, reducing waste, enhancing energy efficiency…employing eco-friendly innovative technologies” (Conserve Energy Future, 2020). 

Last but not least, Gerlach (2001) highlights that social movements such as environmentalism have the benefits of challenging the social and political norm while their large and fast spreading nature make it difficult to suppress (particularly in today’s digital age), penetration of different socioeconomic classes, promotes diversity in the movement thus leading to greater social innovation and problem solving. 

Given these benefits, it is heartening to see that environmental activism in Singapore is gaining fast traction. Inspired by the famous activist Greta Thunberg, an online protest was held in March 2019, with people sharing their proposed policies and business measures to combat climate change on Instagram and Facebook with the hashtags #climatestrike and #climateactionsg.

 

Figure 1: Singapore’s Online Activism movement (Source: Kong, 2019)

This was followed by Singapore’s first ever Climate Rally on September 21st, with speeches from local activists and a “die-in” that reflected the gradual collapse of the planet that humanity is heading towards. 

https://youtu.be/GctvPizE93k

If such public declarations of environmentalism support is not your cup of tea, there are less overt ways of activism that one can adopt today. This includes the concept of anti-hauls, which encourages consumers to rethink their purchases and stop their support for brands and products that do not align with their values (Forbes, 2017). Such a concept can be significant in encouraging de-materialisation and the slowing of consumerism within the environmental movement. 

Moreover, Singapore has multiple green groups that promote environmentally friendly habits and products that can help us in our own environmental journey. Click here for a useful list of them.

 

At the end of the day, it is up to each of us to do our part in fighting environmental pollution and its heavy consequences! Such individual action is at the crux of the solutions to pollution and the main call to action behind our @thepollutionrevolution blog posts. Below are the key highlights of the past 15 blog posts and we urge everybody to continuously learn and grow in our journey to end pollution. 

 

 

Author: Madeleine Shutler

 

References: 

Conserve Energy Future. (2020, May 15). Importance, Types and Excellent Examples of 

Environmental Activism. Retrieved July 24, 2020, from https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/importance-types-examples-environmental-activism.php 

Gerlach, Luther. (2001). The structure of social movements: Environmental activism and its 

opponents. Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy. 

Forbes, J. (2017, April 21). There’s A Seriously Problematic Side to All Those YouTube Hauls People 

Love. Retrieved July 24, 2020, from https://www.allure.com/story/anti-hauls-take-over-youtube 

Kong, Y. (2019, July 09). Protesting for the planet: Is climate activism alive in Singapore? Retrieved July 

24, 2020, from https://www.eco-business.com/news/protesting-for-the-planet-is-climate-activism-alive-in-singapore/ 

 

#14: Two Sides of the Coin – Comparing Pollution Action in Singapore and South Korea

madeleineshutlerThe Solution

Environmental Pollution, particularly household pollution or pollution we face on a regular basis, is a common problem globally in today’s highly urbanised world. As such, many lessons can be learnt from the various approaches different countries take in the fight against pollution. Today’s article does a cross comparison of two countries with similar pollution profiles – Singapore and South Korea. Both these countries in the past have faced pollution from plastic and excessive waste, and occasionally experience air pollution in the form of haze events and fine dust pollution respectively. However, South Korea’s environmental success stems from a largely top-down approach while Singapore’s environmental movement has garnered new speed from an increasingly bottom-up takeover. 

 

South Korea’s Top-Down Approach:

The South Korean government has ramped up its efforts against pollution in the past few years. In 2019, it legally designated the problem as a “social disaster”, enabling the government to tap on its $2.65 billion emergency reserves to fund policies combating Korea’s fine dust pollution (Chung, 2019). Examples of such policies include a mandate for every school classroom to contain an air purifier, and a cap on the sales of vehicles that run on petroleum, and artificial rain experiments. Such an approach legitimizes the fight against air pollution that South Korean residents have to face regularly, and have great potential to eradicate this health hazard. 

 

Figure 1: South Korea’s mandatory recycling (Source: The Straits Times)

 

Another environmental success of South Korea is its recycling and waste management system. In 2013, the government launched a compulsory recycling scheme, that included food waste recycling and special biodegradable bags.

 

Figure 2; South Korea’s Recycling Bags (Source: Livinko)

 

On average, households pay $6 a month for these bags, which contributes to 60% of the scheme’s total running cost (Chang, 2016). Households are expected to separate plastics and food waste accordingly, placing them into their respective bags before the trash is collected at fixed hours (6pm to midnight). Should the separation be found to be incorrect, the bags can be returned to the household since their address is recorded on the bag. Violation of the rules also warrants a 1 million won fine. Smart bins across Seoul also weigh food waste automatically and charge residents on an ID card. This motivates residents to reduce the overall volume and hence weight of their food waste, by for instance, removing all moisture first (Broom, 2019). As reported in a 2017 government study, these measures have enabled South Korea to recycle more than 85% of its total waste (Global Recycling, 2019). 

 

Singapore’s Bottom-Up Approach:

This mandatory recycling scheme is a world away from Singapore’s recycling programmes. Recycling in Singapore is on a self-motivated basis, though NEA has launched multiple National Recycling Programmes. There is however, a healthy amount of skepticism surrounding the final end point of the recycle bin trash collected. Boh (2019) reports that often up to 40% of its contents are contaminated with items that are non-recyclable, rendering the entire collection useless while reflecting the lack of awareness and education amongst Singaporean residents towards recycling. Furthermore, most public housing apartments have rubbish chutes on each floor, greatly trumping the searching for recycling bins that most Singaporeans perceive as an inconvenience. All in all, this has rendered Singapore’s recycling rate to hover at around 20 percent since 2005. Unsatisfied with this number, environmental activists have recently capitalised on the growth of social media to promote and raise awareness regarding environmental issues like pollution. This movement has led to a surge of community based and the beginnings of a bottom up approach in combating Singapore’s pollution issue. Prominent activists that catalysed this movement, particularly among the youth in Singapore are the @theweirdandwild, @lilearthgirl, @byebyeplasticbags.sg and @nocarrierpls on Instagram; eventually leading to the formation of Singapore’s first ever autonomous Climate Rally in 2019. 

 

Figure 3: The Youth Organizers of Singapore’s first Climate Rally (Source: The Straits Times)

 

In a similar fashion, community action was also prevalent in Singapore’s response to the Southeast Asian Haze events it encounters annually. During the 2015 event, many members of the community began to boycott companies that were linked to the forest fires in Indonesia, catalysing a social movement that stopped support for such pollutive events (Baker, 2015). This garnered great traction and many independent groups were formed to further such boycotts, research and awareness campaigns, including the People’s Movement to Stop Haze (PM Haze). Top-down approaches by the Government to tackle the haze may be restricted by its transboundary nature, bilateral relationships and bureaucratic tape but community based approaches such as the above harness consumer power and attack the companies profit making margins, directly influencing their very motive to start such forest fires. This shows the growing importance and effectiveness of bottom-up approaches in Singapore, including their potential to tackle more and more environmental issues in the future. 

Overall, both approaches have their respective benefits and their effectiveness depends on cultural context. Both Singapore and South Korea demonstrate that be it through national or community self-motivated movements, greater awareness and education about the severe threat of pollution and waste is the first step to achieving social change. 

 

Author: Madeleine Shutler

 

References 

Baker, J., & Si. (2015, October 9). Many will boycott products from haze-causing firms: Poll. Retrieved July 23, 2020, from https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/many-will-boycott-products-from-haze-causing-firms-poll 

Boh, S. (2019, June 14). Singapore wants year of zero waste. But it’s rubbish at recycling. Retrieved July 23, 2020, from https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3014403/singapore-wants-year-zero-waste-its-rubbish-recycling 

Broom, D. (2019, April 12). South Korea once recycled 2% of its food waste. Now it recycles 95%. Retrieved July 23, 2020, from  https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/south-korea-recycling-food-waste/ 

Chang, M. (2016, April 23). Culture shock over South Korea’s mandatory recycling of food waste. Retrieved July 23, 2020, from https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/culture-shock-over-south-koreas-mandatory-recycling-of-food-waste 

Chung, J. (2019, March 13). South Korea steps up fight against pollution, says problem is ‘social disaster’. Retrieved July 23, 2020, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-pollution/south-korea-steps-up-fight-against-pollution-says-problem-is-social-disaster-idUSKBN1QU08E 

Global Recycling. (2019, September 19). South Korea: The Aim Is a Resource-Circulating Society. Retrieved July 23, 2020, from https://global-recycling.info/archives/3205 

 

#13: One Man’s Trash is Still Another Man’s Trash

AliciaThe Solution

Now let’s talk about the impact we have when we dispose of household objects we don’t want with the intent of someone else reusing the item, or the item being recycled into more useful materials. Huge amounts of waste are produced annually in 1st world countries, and to lessen that guilt and environmental cost, many people attempt to at least recycle some of their waste. While recycling is definitely a more eco-friendly solution than simply incinerating all trash, we often overestimate its environment-saving potential. Moreover, indiscriminate recycling, or aspirational recycling, actually serve to hinder, and even nullify the benefits of recycling.

 

The act of recycling usually comes from a good place, but lack of information and laziness often reduce the potential goodness that can come from this waste solution. Thus, it is important to learn a couple things about how recycling is actually carried out by waste management companies.

 

  1. Throwing non-recyclables into a recycling bin hinders the recycling process.

Did you know? Non-recyclable items in recycling bins can cause an entire batch of recyclables to be thrown into the landfill or incinerator. This is because non-recyclables such as greasy pizza boxes and low-grade plastics can contaminate other perfectly recyclable objects. Moreover, it is difficult for waste management companies to sift out a few of these offending objects amidst tonnes of recyclable waste. Recycling companies still depend on making a profit after all, and it is not cost-efficient to employ people to sort through every object recycled. This required cost to manage recyclables, combined with the decreasing prices for selling recyclables, put pressure on recycling companies to package and export recycling more hastily. Not to mention, in 2018 China greatly reduced the imports of “foreign garbage” (Albeck-Ripka, 2018), banning certain types of recyclables and only accepting recyclables that are no more than 0.5 percent contaminated (World Trade Organisation, 2017). This means that much more recycling is in fact going to landfills, especially if people recycle indiscriminately. Do your part and check out this list of non-recyclables.

 

2. Recycling still negatively impacts the environment, just at a slower rate.

There are limitations to recycling. Not only does a portion of recycling still routinely end up being incinerated or dumped, but the process of recycling also consumes energy and emits pollutants. Many countries are still dependent on exporting their recycling to other countries who are willing to process it. This process requires fuel to sort through and transport recycling to the designated country. Moreover, increased fuel consumption also means more air pollution generated as a result of burning fuel. While recycling is a beneficial process, it may be more effective to reduce the rate of consumption altogether by encouraging reuse of objects, thus reducing waste output, as shown in this TED talk video below:

 

 

3. Clothing recycling is not as effective as we are likely to believe.

Have you ever come across a clothing recycling bin in fast fashion stores like H&M (below)? While clothing retailers might lead you to believe that you can lessen the burden of fast fashion by recycling clothes, the technology required to properly recycle clothing is unable to catch up with the sheer speed of consumption. Not only does the process of breaking down clothing fibres reduce the quality of the fibres, but the amount of clothing being thrown out is too much to process with the current level of technology (Bain, 2016). A lot of fabric is still dumped in the trash, and the remainder is being ‘donated’ (read: dumped) by the tonnes in developing countries like Africa, where it causes further damage at its final destination (Rodgers, 2015).

 

Author: Alicia Tiu

 

References

Albeck-ripka, L. (2018, May 29). Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not. Retrieved July 22, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfills-plastic-papers.html

Bain, M. (2016, November 30). Recycling or donating your unwanted clothes “is not a solution” for the planet, Greenpeace says. Retrieved July 22, 2020, from https://qz.com/849209/greenpeace-takes-aim-at-clothes-recycling-for-doing-next-to-nothing-to-reduce-fashions-environmental-footprint/

Miller, K. (2017, January 14). 13 Advantages and Disadvantages of Recycling. Retrieved July 22, 2020, from https://futureofworking.com/13-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-recycling/

Rodgers, L. (2015, February 11). Where do your old clothes go? Retrieved July 22, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30227025

We Want Refill. (2018, August 14). Aspirational Recycling: When Good Intentions Have Harsh Consequences. Retrieved July 22, 2020, from https://wewantrefill.com/aspirational-recycling-when-good-intentions-have-harsh-consequences/

 

#12: So what can we do?

AliciaThe Solution

Now that we are more aware of the ecological impacts of the household objects we buy, as well as the harmful chemicals that may be released into our homes, what steps can we take to reduce these negative impacts? The most effective method is to be a mindful consumer: to reduce the number of items we buy and to know what we are purchasing.

 

This method of reducing consumption and making our purchases last longer is known as dematerialisation. It is the process of getting more out of fewer purchases. If you are interested in how dematerialisation works (on a large scale), check out this TED talk below:

 

 

This philosophy can be applied to our ordinary, daily lifestyle. Even little changes can make huge differences: An average Singaporean uses roughly 156 plastic bottles, 156 polypropylene plastics (think bubble tea cups!), and 208 plastic bags a year (Singapore Environmental Council, 2018). Imagine, if you only used a reusable bottle and a reusable nylon bag throughout an entire year, you would be saving 156 plastic bottles, 156 plastic cups and 208 plastic bags! We can apply this logic to most other purchases which we quickly consume and then trash. From clothing to electronics (do you really need a new phone every two years?!), to even food products, we can afford to reduce consumption of these items without really reducing the amount of happiness we derive from consuming these products. Moreover, instead of purchasing brand new items, we can alternatively purchase second-hand items, so that perfectly good stuff thrown out by other people do not immediately end up in the trash.

 

Dematerialisation also involves being more mindful of what we are purchasing; it is buying objects that can last longer, and have fewer impacts on our health and on the environment. For example, when we buy cheap polyester clothing, each time we wash the fabric, microplastics shed from the weave and are washed down the drain (Roos, 2017). These microplastics eventually end up in polluting our oceans and poison our fish. What we can do is reduce the amount of polyester clothing that we purchase, and instead opt for more durable cotton and organic weave clothing that we can use for longer periods of time without replacement. Alternatively, we can opt for purchasing services to repair objects, instead of replacing them willy nilly. Being aware of what we are purchasing also involves checking the label of our purchases, to see if there are any potentially harmful chemicals in them that could leech out into our air or water.

 

Author: Alicia Tiu

 

References:

Earth Day. (2018, March 29). Fact Sheet: Single Use Plastics. Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://www.earthday.org/fact-sheet-single-use-plastics/

Mistra Future Fashion (2017). Microplastics Shedding from Polyester Fabric Report. Retrieved July 21, 2020, from http://mistrafuturefashion.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/MFF-Report-Microplastics.pdf

Singapore Environment Council (2018). Consumer Plastic and Plastic Resource Ecosystem in Singapore. Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://sec.org.sg/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/DT_PlasticResourceResearch_28Aug2018-FINAL_with-Addendum-19.pdf

Sutherland, R. (2016). 2016 : WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST INTERESTING RECENT [SCIENTIFIC] NEWS? WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT? Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26750