Tag: Singapore

22nd of November – 28th of November

Post author By Lilly
Post date 29. November 2021

Germany’s new government

Two months after elections took place at the end of September, the German parties Social Democrats, Greens, and Free Democrats announced last week that they have concluded their coalition talks. The leader of the Social Democrats party, Olaf Scholz, is expected to take over as chancellor from Angela Merkel. This means that Germany may finally have a new government. Some policies included in the new deal are raising the minimum wage to 12€, building 400,000 new apartments to fight the housing crisis, legalizing the sale of cannabis, and new plans to phase out the use of coal by 2030.

Other News

To help battle the skyrocketing oil prices worldwide, Britain, the U.S., China, India, Japan, and Korea have decided to release tens of millions of barrels of crude oil from their storage, according to the New York Times
A bus caught fire and crashed in Bulgaria, killing at least 45 people
A new variant of COVID-19 called Omicron that was first detected in South Africa has started to spread
52 people were killed due to a gas buildup and explosion in a Siberian coal mine last week
There were clashes between the police and demonstrators in Honiara, the capital city of the Solomon Islands. The protestors demanded that the prime minister resign.
The cyberwar between Iran and Israel has reached new heights

Tags Bulgaria, China, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, US

Analysis

Singapore’s sustainable packaging industry

Post author By Subhomita
Post date 26. November 2021

Introduction

Packaging can be made from any material and is used to contain, protect, handle, deliver, or present goods. A large proportion of Singapore’s domestic waste is packaging waste. In 2018 about one-third of disposed domestic waste consisted of packaging. Approximately 55% of the packaging waste was plastic packaging, whilst 25% was paper packaging. The remaining 20% was made up of other types of packaging materials, such as metal and glass. As packaging is so common yet hardly reused, we need to find ways to reduce and consume it more sustainably.

Sustainable packaging includes recyclable mono-polyolefin packaging, recyclable paper packaging, and degradable/compostable plastic packaging. Sustainable food packaging can help secure the safety of the food consumed and reduce the amount of food wasted. This in turn benefits Singapore’s food security, and, at the same time, provides solutions to solve plastic pollution.

The Singapore Packaging Agreeement

The Singapore Packaging Agreement (SPA) is a joint initiative started in 2007 by the government, industry, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to reduce packaging waste. Since its inception more than 200 organizations in Singapore have worked together to cut down on packaging waste. As of 2019, they have cumulatively reduced about 54,000 tonnes of packaging waste, resulting in estimated packaging material cost savings of $130 million for locally consumed products.

Supporting ground-up movements

One such initiative was Zero Waste SG’s Bring Your Own (BYO) campaign, supported by the Call for Ideas Fund. This initiative aimed to encourage consumers to use reusable bags and containers when they buy takeaway food, beverages, and groceries. Since 2017, more than 400 retail outlets have joined the campaign, providing incentives for customers to bring their own reusables. This has saved approximately two million pieces of plastic disposables and packaging. Leveraging the success of BYO, the NEA supported Zero Waste SG with the Partnership Fund to further develop the campaign in 2019 into Bring Your Own Bag (BYOB) to focus on reducing disposable plastic bag usage.

The packaging waste management roadmap

Packaging is not all bad. It extends the shelf life of food and protects new products from damage during transportation. However, the problem is excessive packaging. Mandatory reporting of packaging data and 3R plans for packaging were introduced in 2020 and legislated under the Resource Sustainability Act. This builds on an existing mandatory waste reporting framework for large malls and hotels, which will also be expanded to all large industrial and commercial premises, including large convention and exhibition centers. The mandatory packaging reporting framework means that producers of packaged products and supermarkets with an annual turnover of more than $10 million will be required to report data on the packaging that they put on the market and their 3R plans for packaging.

The mandatory packaging reporting framework will also lay the foundation for an EPR framework for managing packaging waste, including plastics. This ensures producers are responsible for the collection and recycling of the materials they use to package their products. The aim is to have the EPR system for packaging waste management in place no later than 2025.

Closing the plastics loop

The use of plastics is prevalent in our daily lives – many of our beverage bottles, takeaway food containers, and grocery bags are made of plastics. While plastics can be useful, they are often used in excess and discarded in large amounts.

Plastic has become an issue of significant concern globally as countries re-examine how to sustainably manage their plastic waste. In Singapore, we incinerate all our general waste, minimizing the amount of plastic that ends up as litter both on land and in the oceans. At the same time, because of the drive towards a circular economy to replace the “take-make-dispose” linear economy, and the push to reduce industrial carbon emissions, there has been an increasing interest in the industry to explore more advanced technology to close the plastics loop.

Take, for example, the adoption of chemical recycling to turn plastic into feedstock or fuel. Apart from the current prevalent technology of using mechanical recycling to recycle plastics, chemical recycling technology involves converting separated or mixed plastics back into pyrolysis oil, naphtha, methanol, and syngas. These products can either be converted back into building blocks that can be used to make new plastic products or converted into fuel to replace fossil fuel sources. In particular, there are opportunities for mixed or dirty plastics to be recycled. This is crucial as these mixed and dirty plastics cannot currently be recycled. As a petrochemical hub, Singapore is well-placed to harness this new growth area to close the plastics loop.

Imposing a charge for single-use plastic bags may divert demand to paper or bio-degradable bags, which may not be more resource-efficient from a lifecycle perspective. This is because the production and disposal of all materials have some degree of environmental impact. Therefore, we will have to work on managing excessive consumption of all types of packaging and disposables.

Sources

Tags Packaging, Singapore, Sustainability

Analysis

Singapore’s Economic Transformation

Post author By Lilly
Post date 21. July 2021

Introduction

In the 1960s, Singapore was an underdeveloped country with scarce resources after being a British colony for more than 100 years. Today, Singapore is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and has transformed into a modern city with the second-highest population density in the world and a skyline full of skyscrapers. How was this possible?

Singapore immediately after gaining independence

After gaining independence in 1965, Yusof bin Ishak served as Singapore’s first president and Lee Kuan Yew was Singapore’s first prime minister. At the time Singapore was facing many problems. Most of Singapore’s 3 million inhabitants were unemployed and more than two-thirds of Singaporeans were living in slums or so-called squatter settlements in the fringe part of the city. Singapore’s immediate neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia, were initially not friendly towards Singapore. Additionally, Singapore lacked access to natural resources, a clean water supply, proper sanitation, and infrastructure. Originally, the prime minister at the time, Lee Kuan Yew, hoped to modernize Singapore through foreign aid, but no country showed interest in helping Singapore.

Singapore and globalization

While a member of the British colonies, Singapore’s economy was focussed mainly on the entrepôt trade. However, there was very little perspective for the future of this industry. Therefore, politicians decided to focus on industrialization, specifically developing labor-intensive industries. This was a big step as Singapore had undergone very little industrialization before. Once production started, Singapore was forced to adapt once again as its neighbors (Malaysia and Indonesia) did not want to trade with it. Therefore, Singapore started looking into globalization as an opportunity to trade with the “developed” world. To attract foreign investment, Lee Kuan Yew worked to create a Singapore that was safe, corruption-free and had low taxes, putting in place harsh penalties — even including the death sentence — for people who disobeyed the law. Furthermore, all independent labor unions were also meshed to form the National Trade Union Congress (NTUC). These new measures helped Singapore become attractive for multinational corporations, especially because Singapore’s political system was very stable.

Singapore and foreign direct investment

Singapore was hugely successful in attracting multinational corporations. In fact, by the end of 1972, “one-quarter of Singapore’s manufacturing firms were either foreign-owned or joint-venture companies” (according to ThoughtCo.). Among the foreign investors, Japan and the U.S. were especially influential. All of the cash flowing into Singapore meant that between 1965 and 1972, Singapore was able to achieve annual double-digit GDP growth every single year. In order to maintain their growth, the government decided to start heavily investing in education. Technical schools were set up and the multinational corporations investing in Singapore were encouraged to train their unskilled workers. People who couldn’t find jobs were given jobs in sectors such as the tourism and transportation industry by the government.

Singapore today

Today, Singapore’s port has become the second-busiest in the world, only behind Shanghai. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, more than 10 million visitors came to Singapore annually. Aside from the shipping and tourism industries, Singapore’s medical industry has also grown significantly, alongside the banking industry. Despite its small size and comparatively recent economic transformation, Singapore is now the 15th largest trading partner of the United States. In 2019 there were over 3,000 multinational corporations that operated in Singapore. If you don’t mind abiding by some comparatively strict laws, Singapore is one of the best places to live these days, offering its citizens the third-highest life expectancy in the world. Singapore really has become a “powerful and financial center” (according to the BBC) of the world.

More recently, Singapore has had to grapple with an increasing number of unemployed due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Aid packages and policies have been put in place by the government to protect jobs and create opportunities for people. However, Leila Lai states that in order to survive, “Singapore will need to accelerator economic transformation and establish itself as a key player in the Asian and global realms of technology, innovation, and enterprise.” Although there is hope, only time will tell to what extent Singapore will be able to recover from the effects of the pandemic.

Sources

Tags Foreign direct investment, GDP, Globalization, Singapore, UK