University Students Lobbying to Save Semakau Landfill
By: Basu Mallick Koustav
A group of fourth-year students from the National University of Singapore are petitioning Office of Environment and Sustainability to double the number of recycling bins on the Kent Ridge campus as part of their final year project to prolong the lifespan of the Semakau Landfill.
The students hope that increasing the number of bins would make recycling more convenient for students and staff to recycle their unwanted material. The current university recycling rate is 12%, which is considerably lower that the national’s average of 56%.
The students proposed ideas such as creating new recycling bins for other materials such as used stationery and used course packs, as well as relocating some of the existing recycling bins to more strategic locations.
However, Marcus Tay, an executive from the Office of Environment and Sustainability, rejected these ideas and said his Office did not have sufficient resources to handle the implementation of such proposals.
He added that recycling is not a priority, as it does not contribute to savings cost in terms of dollars and cents, unlike increasing the temperature of air conditioning in the library.
The students, who are from the Communications and New Media Programme in Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, hope to collect a thousand signatures from students and staff members.
The group of students, who call themselves Greenovative Communications, is intending to hold the petition for one week near April 1 next year to commemorate the 11th anniversary of Semakau Landfill.
The director for the team, Goh Tong Jee, said, “They (Office of Environment and Sustainability) cannot ignore such a petition as it will not reflect well on them. A thousand voices are much stronger than just one.”
Greenovative Communications will be carrying out a campaign that will encourage active participation from the university community. They intend to collect and recycle 500 kilograms of material by encouraging members of the community to individually bring half a kilogram of material for collection. Each member will be given a jigsaw puzzle each where the final 1000 piece picture will be of the Semakau Landfill.
Greenovation Communications will be launching their campaign under Roots and Shoots, a programme dedicated in encouraging grassroots activism to better the society by helping animals, the environment or the community.
The Semakau Landfill is Singapore’s first and only landfill. It is located on the offshore island of Pulau Semakau, which has a thriving ecosystem. It began operations on April 1 1999 and is expected to last till 2045. The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources hopes to extend this deadline through resource conservation initiatives such as recycling.
(Insert website link to Pulau Semakau landfil http://www.wildsingapore.com/places/semakau.html )
