Recycling

2 weeks ago, we spotted something new at our void deck:



WY, especially, was so excited to see this brand new recycling bin that he declared that he would actively 'source for' items to be recycled!

My 1st thought was: Hmm, does this mean they will no longer be continuing the fortnightly collection of used items for recycling? I thought that was a good programme and has been quite successful. Several of our neighbours regularly bag their old newspapers + plastic bottles + Milo tins + old clothings etc in those big green recycling bags handed out every other week, for the collection. It has now also become quite a habit for Mother and ourselves to do that, too.

But then, I must concede that there are several obvious limitations/inconveniences in that green-bag programme:

a) We have to keep the items inside the house for more than a week - space at home is limited. For us, we are also concerned that some items like plastic milk cartons may still attract ants even though we have already rinsed them;

b) We must make sure that we bring the items out to the corridor only at the 'correct' time - got to blame the karang-guni men for this. Some of them, especially the mainland Chinese KGs, always behave like scavenging hounds who have no qualms tearing apart the bags and grabbing the items they want and leaving the balance in the partially-torn bags, all in a mess. Claims by the recycling companies who provide the green bags that such looting of the bagged items is tantamount to theft has not deterred these can't-care-less scavengers;

c) Collection from floor to floor is a back-breaking and tedious chore - this is no joke, I have seen it myself how a couple of foreign workers of the recycling company would run from floor to floor to pick up the bags (some are really heavy, I think) and then once they have gathered big enough a load, they would dash to transport these onto the truck waiting downstairs. Their supervisors (some elderly Chinese men and women with waist pouches and shouting into their handphones) would yell at them to hurry up. Tough job for all, I think.

So, maybe it is better to install this new recycling bin at the void deck afterall? But then, there has been no announcement nor any publicity about the bin so far. No education is a dangerous thing, you know.

Knowing how people in our neighbourhood would behave, I am not very optimistic about the success of the recycling bin. These are the possibilities:

a) People may abuse the bin - they are likely to simply toss whatever rubbish they have in their hands into the bin. Partly eaten food + drinks will probably end up in the bin too. The less enlightened will just conveniently treat the bin as just another (bigger) rubbish bin, especially since the sticker on the bin says this:



b) The bin may not be cleared fast enough - there is no indication on how frequent the bin will be cleared. And if the bin starts to overflow, then that by itself, would become an eyesore and then progressively a nuisance or maybe even a health hazard. It may then finally die a 'natural death'.

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Barely 2 days after the bin was seen at our void deck, it was relocated to the open area next to the playground.

It was raining, so we couldn't use it. We had to leave the empty detergent powder cardboard box which we had specifically brought downstairs, at the bin chute area instead. From a distance, we saw that the bin was already filled to the brim; in fact, a few 1.5l cola pet bottles were sticking out from the yellow opening of the bin.

And because the bin was ajar (the black rubber-flap was held open by the pet bottles), I am sure rain-water has been and still is being collected in the bin. With the current epidemic level of dengue incidence, I wonder if the authorities will just conveniently decide that the bin is a bad idea and so have it scrapped quickly?

Sigh, this is a classic case of good intention, no planning and bad implementation. A half-hearted and quarter-baked programme. Such a pity.

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I have just called the town coucil to give my feedback to them:

a) design of the bin - why invite all kinds of obviously-different-material items into one common bin? Shouldn't these items be separated?

b) location of the bin - why place the bin in the open instead of the void deck? The collection of rainwater in the bin makes the bin a potential Aedes breeding site.

Let's see if any corrective action will be taken soon.