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The future is Circular: Singapore's Zero Waste masterplan.
How Singapore plans to tackle waste before our landfill runs out of space.
Over the last 40 years, the amount of solid waste disposed of in Singapore has increased seven-fold.
At current rates of 800,000 tonnes of waste annually, the city-state’s only landfill at Semakau Island, covering an area of 350 hectares, will run out of space by 2035.
Most of the general waste generated can be incinerated. This includes paper, cardboard, food, and some plastics.
These incinerated items are sent to one of the four incineration plants in Singapore where they are burnt into incinerated ash which is sent to Semakau island.
They are turned from waste to energy to generate electricity in the process.
Non-incinerable waste, which comprises bulky household appliances, explosive waste, construction debris, and toxic industrial waste, are also sent to be buried in Semakau.
About 2,000 tonnes of incinerated ash and non-incinerable waste are sent to Semakau on a daily basis. That’s the equivalent of about two cargo ships of waste daily!
In order to manage limited landfill space, it is paramount for Singapore to reduce waste & increase recycling rate.
Currently only 52% of 6.86 million of solid waste generated in 2023 is recycled. Bulk of the recycled waste are from commercial and industrial.
Construction and Demolition Waste had a high recycling rate of about 99% which is the result of lesser C&D Projects conducted in 2023.
Paper recycling has dropped from over 50% a decade ago to 31% in 2023, mainly due to freight costs and commodity prices.
On the lower end of recycling rates are Food & Plastic waste, at 18% and 5%, respectively.
Waste generation has increased by 1.3% in FY2023, due to an increase in public-facing facility activities, as Singapore resumes to business-as-usual post-covid.
This uptick highlights the ongoing difficulty in curbing waste generation, especially as the country rebounds from the pandemic and activity levels increase.
However, the government’s efforts in scaling recycling programs & waste reduction has not gone to waste, resulting in waste-disposed-per-capita to fall by 9.1% & improvements in household recycling rate, from 64% to 72%, between 2021 to 2023.
Yet Singapore isn’t recycling enough as a nation. Our overall recycling rate has dropped from 57% to 52%, between 2022 to 2023.
This drop is largely attributed to a significant decrease in construction and demolition (C&D) projects. Thus lesser C&D waste being disposed.
This also means that recycling rate for other waste types has not improved.
How does reducing waste and recycling help climate change?
Globally, the waste sector ranks among the top three sources of methane caused by human activity—alongside agriculture and the oil and gas industries—and contributes approximately 20% of these emissions
Combating the Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Waste
At incinerators, combustion and burning of waste also releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, along with other pollutants.
Landfills themselves also emit other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.
By reducing incinerated waste & increasing recycling, we can divert more waste away from incinerators & therefore reducing waste combustion-related GHG
Reducing organic materials in waste disposal can also reduce methane emissions from landfills.
On a global scale, organic waste accounts for roughly 65% of total waste, with food and garden waste comprising the majority of this portion.
This is an even bigger reason to separate organic waste out of our landfills or to treat them via composting or anaerobic digestion.
By diverting organic waste from landfills, we can also reduce the methane released from landfills when materials decompose.
Hence Singapore has been looking to cut methane emissions from wastewater sludge through incineration.
A major sludge incineration plant—one of Southeast Asia’s largest—is being developed by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and ECO-Special Waste Management (NCCS).
The facility is expected to reduce emissions by about 129,000 tonnes of CO₂e annually and has been registered under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to generate carbon credits locally.
Finally, Integrated Waste Management Facilities (IWMF) such as the ongoing development of Tuas Water Reclamation Plant (TWRP) and an Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF), collectively known as Tuas Nexus.
Tuas Nexus will include one of Southeast Asia’s largest sludge incineration plants, which will help to reduce direct methane emissions from wastewater sludge through incineration.
It also is in bid to help to maximise energy efficiency in Singapore’s water and waste treatment operations.
By recovering energy back from the solid waste and used-water treatment processes, such as generating enough electricity to sustain its own operations, and directing excess electricity back to the national grid.
Zero Waste Masterplan:
Monitoring waste generation is complex, but the public sector is making strides in data collection to improve waste management strategies.
This year, 10 GreenGov SG facilities underwent waste audits to identify key areas for improvement.
Food waste, plastic, and paper/cardboard are among the largest waste streams in public sector operations, and targeted strategies are being developed to tackle these challenges.
The 3 Rs of waste management:
To combat waste, the public sector is continuing its advocacy for reducing, reusing, and recycling—making data more accessible to businesses, organizations, and individuals to encourage more sustainable practices.
Transitioning from Zero-Waste to Circularity
While zero waste is a key strategy, circularity and building a circular economy are increasingly being picked up on by the public sector and citizens.
Incorporating refillable designs into products and services is an example of the circular model.
However, Circularity doesn’t happen overnight in a vacuum.
It often involves multiple stakeholders, really looking at integrating and embedding sustainability as a core value across the entire supply chain, such as the materials, suppliers, production, consumer and end of life etc.
The circular model redefines the economy around principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible.
Learning how to better care for the environment isn’t just about recycling.
While the emphasis on the "3 Rs” is important, the reality of achieving zero waste requires far more aggressive action in rethinking consumption patterns, improving waste-to-resource systems, and tackling the root causes of waste generation.
One “R” we often forget to tackle, at the root of it, is to ‘Refuse’.
We can reduce the need to recycle, by reducing the waste we generate, by refusing to over-consume and live more sustainably and consciously.
There needs to be a comprehensive and systematic approach, including stronger policies to curb waste at the source or stronger implementations.
Singapore's zero-waste ambition risks remaining an aspirational goal rather than an achievable reality in the near term. We need a revolution. Not just in the way we tackle our waste, but in how we think about waste as more than just something that goes in the trash.
To learn more about the Circular Economy, sign up for our upcoming public workshops:
Singapore also has introduced new regulatory frameworks to reduce packaging waste:
Singapore Packaging Agreement (SPA), was launched in 2007 successfully reduced 62,000 tonnes of packaging waste with S$150 million in savings since its inception.
The Resource Sustainability Act (RSA) to be implemented in stages between 2020 and 2025 aims to manage three key waste categories: electronic waste, food waste, and packaging waste, including plastics. The law places responsibility on producers to ensure the environmentally responsible disposal and treatment of their products at the end of their life cycle.
Mandatory Packaging Reporting (MPR) aims to reduce packaging waste and would lay the foundation for the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework for managing packaging waste (& electronic waste).
Beverage Container Return System; to commence on 1 April 2026, with a transition period for all stakeholders including beverage producers and retailers to design and operationalise the Scheme smoothly for the convenience of consumers. The NEA has issued a licence to Beverage Container Return Scheme Ltd. (BCRS Ltd.) on 29 July 2024 to design and operationalise it. By the full implementation date on 1 July 2026, all beverage containers covered under the Scheme in Singapore must be labelled with the deposit mark and carry a 10-cent deposit.
Singapore Manufacturing Federation (SMF) has partnered with the National Environment Agency (NEA) to launch an industry-led initiative to expand industry capacity in managing waste sustainably and help organisations meet the new MPR requirements.
Productive Hawker Centres programme: Disallows use of disposables for dine-in meals at new hawker centres. Subsidies will be provided to stallholders of hawker centres that adopt CDW with common crockery.
Other Resources/Citations:
Waste Insights | NEA Recycling Guide | Tuas Nexus | Singapore Waste statistics | Clean & Green Singapore: The Waste Problem | KPMG study: Unlocking Sustainable Packaging Opportunities
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