Published on The Nanyang Chronicle, Vol. 14, Issue 7. Photo courtesy of Foo Chee Chang. The article, renamed "Reduce and reuse before recycling," was published on 31st March 2008 in My Paper.I was wondering what to do with a read copy of a newspaper.
Considering how environmental conservation is becoming a widespread practice, the most obvious answer would be to dump it into the recycling bin.
However, this is an assumption that needs to be challenged.
As global temperatures continue to rise, people have finally warmed up to the 3Rs – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Celebrities in Hollywood are jumping onto the environmental bandwagon. For example, Sheryl Crow has a tour bus that runs on bio-diesel, while Cameron Diaz drives a Prius and uses recycled products.
Recycling, however, is hardly an effective solution to our environmental conundrum as it does not cut down on human greed and wasteful consumption, which is the root cause of our current woes. In other words, recycling is a reactionary measure, and not a preventive one.
However, it is the concept of recycling that seems to have hit home with the general public, perhaps due to the visibility of the recycling bin, which has become an iconic symbol of environmentalism globally and in Singapore.
And it seems the practice has caught on among locals; at least that is what statistics are telling us. Latest figures from the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources show that Singapore’s recycling rate – which is the total amount of waste recycled as a percentage of the total amount of waste generated – has risen from 40% to 49% between 2000 and 2005, and the ministry aims to increase this to 60% by 2012.
While recycling does have an important role in environmental conservation, it does not address the root causes of our environmental problem: human greed and high consumption.
But these are problems requiring very complicated solutions. Asking consumers to buy less would be an economic disaster, as advertisers, marketers, and the government are counting on them to spend the dollar and contribute towards economic growth. Therefore the next best solution would be to curb wasteful consumption.
In an article titled “What’s Your Consumption Factor?” published in the New York Times on 2nd January 2008, Jared Diamond shed light on how wasteful consumerism is contributing significantly to the gravity of the environmental problem.
He reveals how people in developed countries have a consumption factor of 32, consuming that number of times more resources than a typical person in many developing countries. In other words, a typical Singaporean consumes 32 times more resources than a Kenyan.
To make matters worse, as countries prosper and develop, the standard of living will increase, and the citizen’s demand for material possessions will rise as well.
Even though the developed nations are moving towards sustainable development, their progress are offset by countries like India and China, who would not only become the biggest engines of growth on the global economy, but also the biggest contributors of pollution.
With a combined population of 2.5 billion people yearning for a taste of the high life, it would seem that we are spiralling inevitably towards an environmental meltdown.
Even as environmental activists, governments, and scientists busy themselves with reversing the planet’s environmental woes, individuals do have a part to play in all of this.
More than just recycling our trash, we need to alter our spending behaviour and stop splurging on wasteful purchases. Diamond shows in his article how people can always work towards maximising resources without having to compromise on standard of living. He then cites the example of Western Europe, which consumes about half as much per capita oil consumption as America, yet enjoys a higher standard of living.
All we need is a little bit of creativity. The January 12th, 2008 edition of The Straits Times reported on how a Swedish state-owned firm is using body heat from a quarter-million commuters from Stockholm’s central station to heat up its office building. Through the use of ventilators and pipes, heat is directed into the building, where it is used to heat up water.
As clichéd as it sounds, the 3Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle – is apt in describing how an individual can contribute towards environmental conservation.
As a result, in the order of importance: first, we reduce, then we reuse, and for everything else – we recycle.
