Singapore's Landfill Island

Pulau Semakau is Singapore's sole landfill. But it takes only... "processed" waste or refuse. And by "processed", I mean incinerated.

Singapore has land constraints. A problem Japan also shares. And not surprisingly, their solution is the one we also settled on.

And also Sweden's "Waste to Energy". Which they consider to be "recycling" because the rubbish is being "recycled" into energy.

[Note that the two links above on Japan and Sweden are from Australian TV and they may have a bias for recycling things... the conventional way. The host of the second link in his story on Sweden's waste management seemed more keen to critique incineration, and to equate the high temperature incineration with simple burning and his interview with Prof Goran Finnveden seemed to be for the purpose of drawing out a critique of "burning plastic". The video's host presented him as someone "who has studied waste-to-energy for many years". You can compare his profile with the claims of his experience. I am not saying he is not qualified or experienced, but I believe (and I may be wrong as I have NO Evidence) that the interview was tightly edited to present a sceptical view of incineration as "recycling" and as a true solution for Australia.]

Regardless of Australian's (TV host) scepticism, the "waste-to-energy" system is the approach for Japan, Sweden, and Singapore.

And the ashes and non-combustible (e.g. glass) are sent to Pulau Semakau landfill.

Here are two videos (by Nas Daily) on that island:






Singapore (and Japan and Sweden) chose the "waste-to-energy" model because of various constraints - land, labour, culture and values, and practical considerations.

Recycling has many limitations. Firstly, plastics come in various types and each type have to be processed differently to recycle them. Also materials to be recycled have to be pristine. But often our cardboards, plastic, and metals are contaminated.

Recycling processes usually target a single component. So copper in copper wires might be recyclable, but before it can be, it needs to be removed from the insulating plastic (usually by burning). There's precious metals in many electronics, but it needs to be separated and extracted from the device (in many instances, it means some lowly paid menial worker will extract the material by hand, and be exposed to hazardous materials).

As such, the process of recycling is intricate, exacting, time and resource intensive (usually), and very often, hazardous and polluting. Paper recycling exacts a huge toll on water resources.

When China closed its doors to importing "recyclables", it was because a lot of the "recyclables" were contaminated (or adulterated) with non-recyclable wastes. Technically, China did not ban imports of recyclables, but rather the recyclables cannot have more than 0.5% of contaminants. Which is so high a bar that it is as good as a ban.

Until China's "ban" came into effect on 1st Jan 2018, the recycling business was lucrative, spinning straw into gold. But it was not sustainable. The environmental costs to the country hosting the recycling plants was not factored in, an externality borne by the host country. And also because China did not want the image of the "world's garbage dump".

“China finally realised that it was a net deficit to their country to take this scrap,” says Jim Puckett, director of the Basel Action Network, a non-profit focused on the hazardous waste trade. “The harm to the groundwater and the harm to the air, those have big economic costs.”

... The plastic recycling process involves washing the materials, producing wastewater full of contaminants, and heating up the plastic to produce pellets, which can release chemical additives and emissions into the air.

After China banned recyclables, the recyclables found their way to South-East Asian countries like Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia.



The truth is, the global recycling trade is unsustainable.

Globally, about half the plastic intended for recycling is traded overseas, according to a recent study in Science Advances... At the beginning of 2017, a bale of low-grade mixed plastics could fetch $20 per tonne in California, but a year later it cost $10 to dispose of it. The National Sword policy [China's ban] “challenges us to admit that recycling isn’t free”...

The S.E.A. countries are responding by also clamping down on such imports, often illegal, and closing their doors as well.

One Thai asked, "if recycling is so good, why do the developed nations export their recyclables to developing nations?"

And therein lies the truth. Recycling is not an unmitigated good. It has costs in human lives and to the environment.

The result is, with the China ban, recycling has gone up in flames:

The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yogurt containers, and other items into recycling bins. But in the past three months, half of these recyclables have been loaded onto trucks, taken to a hulking incineration facility, and burned, according to the city’s government.

And those incinerators are low temperature incinerators without safeguards to reduce dioxins and other pollutants and hazardous fumes from spewing into the air. They were never designed or intended as a means of managing and reducing waste. And so the solution is as bad as the problem.

Singapore's solution was planned, and takes into account the hazardous and polluting fumes that would be emitted and ensures that what exhaust is emitted is safe. And the residual ash is sent to be buried in Pulau Semakau.

However, Pulau Semakau is only a solution until about 2035, when the island would hold all the ash and non-combustible it can hold.

The video below presents future plans for managing our waste.



Note however, that none of the ideas or projects mentioned in the video above include a new landfill or replacement for Semakau.

It's all well and good to aspire to Zero Waste, but that is aspirational, not necessarily achievable.