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Op-Ed: Can Singapore Solve Plastic Pollution?
- Terese Teoh, Kaela Teh, & Tara-Jade Sim
- 5 hours ago
- 14 min read
by Terese Teoh, Kaela Teh, & Tara-Jade Sim
Against a backdrop of mounting overall waste generated every year, 2030 recycling targets fading into oblivion, and climate targets struggling to keep pace with plastic-dependent trends, we are left to wonder: how did we end up here?
In this Op-Ed, members of youth environmental group Singapore Youth for Climate Action (SYCA) dig deeper into the root causes of plastic pollution such as plastic overproduction and false solutions, with the hopes that Singapore may soon unlock a truly circular economy.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are the writer’s own and are not representative of MAJU’s views. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or corrections of errors.
Acknowledgements: MAJU would like to thank Singapore Youth for Climate Action for their thought-provoking insights into plastic policy. We deeply appreciate their dedication to driving meaningful environmental advocacy.
Introduction
A quick perusal of parliamentary debates show that we have been discussing plastic pollution since 1991 -- demonstrating our national struggle to conceive a solution to plastic pollution for more than three decades. This local stalemate is reflected in the global arena, where the deadline to finalise the final treaty text of the Global Plastics Treaty extended once again with no end in sight.
In Singapore, we have tried many strategies: the government brought in the blue commingled recycling bins, small businesses emerged with reuse and refill stations for daily essentials, and community groups tried to prolong the life of single-use packaging as far as possible. Yet plastic waste remains on the rise year after year. How effective would the new beverage container return scheme be? What kind of solutions actually work, and which ones don’t?
In this Op-Ed, we consider reasons for our impasse, and explain why our national approach still entrenches a plastics-dependent lifestyle. Having outlined areas we believe are missing in Singapore’s plastics policy, we attempt to re-centre the waste hierarchy and present an alternative strategy we dream of seeing our country achieve.
Plastic Overproduction
In the last two decades, global plastic production has more than doubled. By 2050, plastic production is forecasted to rise by another 77 per cent from 2022 levels. This exponential growth is producing a glut of plastics that far exceeds demand. In some parts of the world, the issue of oversupply is so dire that plastic production facilities operate only at half capacity. In other parts, production plants are shutting down due to poor demand and unhealthy profit margins.
While it's the full lifecycle of plastics that perpetrates climate damage, plastic overproduction is bound to aggravate plastic pollution no matter how well-designed a plastic waste management system is. Recent research analysing brand audit data has identified direct links between plastic production and pollution.
Plastic production is also where 61 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions are made. It requires significant burning of fossil fuels; research found that for every tonne of plastic produced, about 0.82 tonnes of coal and 0.64 tonnes of oil are used. It is also worth noting that coal is the predominant fuel used in China’s polyvinyl chloride (PVC) industry.
Contrary to popular belief, Singapore is a significant global hub for plastic polymer production. Singapore is the production site for a range of plastic types such as PVC, LDPE, HDPE, PP, PS and more. At current growth rates, Singapore’s plastic resin market may reach SGD 25 billion by 2030. In addition, the value of Singapore’s plastic exports is valued at around USD 12-15 billion annually, demonstrating Singapore’s undeniable role in the plastics ecosystem.
To date, there has been no effective attempt to directly control plastic production in Singapore. Policies such as the Mandatory Packaging Reporting (MPR) scheme or the 5-cent plastic bag charge has been introduced to moderate demand from businesses and everyday consumers respectively. Yet, its targeting of plastic use at the midstream and downstream parts of the supply chain exerts little pressure on upstream plastic producers to change production quotas accordingly. Furthermore, the MPR is particularly hamstrung by limited transparency, exemptions that allow businesses to defer report submissions, and unclear definitions of what packaging must be declared. Its approach is testament to the laissez-faire approach policies take, nudging consumption but hardly addressing plastic overproduction head on.
The opening of a new plastic production plant in 2024 further reinforces how Singapore is still a long way from considering production cuts (or even just a plateau) a reality. Furthermore, economic policies governing the advancement of the plastics market are largely designed without public input, which results in the public only knowing about the development of a new plant at the very late stages of approval, when it becomes too late to influence decision-making.
Back in January 2025, we wrote to the Ministry of Trade and Industry to express these same concerns. Unfortunately, our email was met with silence.
To what extent is recycling a solution?
Faced with the dilemma of balancing economic growth with environmental protection, many lean into the comforting narrative that our world can be saved with more recycling. This widespread misconception has lent a convenient excuse for producers to continue ramping up production without limits.
There exists an undeniably heavy emphasis on recycling in Singapore’s waste management narrative. Pragmatically, recycling minimises waste entering Semakau while simultaneously minimising disruption to our pro-business, consumer-centric environment. Culturally, recycling campaigns are able to directly involve the populace, “engineering…social behavior and attitudes regarding environmental issues” without being overly imposing on individual lifestyle habits.
And yet, despite the attention paid to recycling by government bodies and other environmental NGOs, initiatives to improve plastic recycling have consistently proven unsuccessful. Singapore’s Environmental Council’s 2018 position paper on the plastic ecosystem in Singapore provided seven recommendations, five of which were pushes for recycling campaigns and legislation. NEA’s 2023 Bloobox initiative offered each household a free “recycling box” to properly segregate recyclables before bringing them to blue recycling bins, more fondly referred to as “Bloobins”. Despite all these efforts, domestic plastic recycling rates have hovered around single-digit percentages since 2014.
So, why have recycling rates for plastics remained abysmally low? The crux of addressing low plastic recycling rates lies even deeper than just fixing consumer behaviour.
The universal symbol for recycling, the Mobius loop, is very similar to the symbols used by the plastics industry today, which paints a misleading picture of the recyclability of plastics. The widespread use of chemical additives in plastics complicates recycling. When the plastic feedstock itself is a toxic chemical buffet – latest scientific data shows that over 16,000 chemicals have been identified in plastics, including 4,200 chemicals of concern – it is unsurprising that recent research shows that recycled plastic contains hundreds of toxic chemicals.
Also, plastic recycling requires a pure feedstock, but many plastics are either mixed material or mixed plastics today. Mixing PET with “even a small quantity” of PVC, for example, will end up degrading the PET product.
Finally, even if we surpass the above hurdles to recycling, plastic still cannot be recycled indefinitely. Unlike glass and aluminium, plastic degrades each time it is shredded and melted. The majority of plastics will end up only being recycled once or twice before they have to be landfilled.
It is no wonder that in a 2017 research paper, researchers wrote that: “Recycling delays, rather than avoids, final disposal. It reduces future plastic waste generation only if it displaces primary plastic production; however, …this displacement is extremely difficult to establish.”
The fact that plastic is being exported to other countries to be recycled should not be a way to massage our conscience either: given the hazardous and pollutive nature of plastic recycling, critics have decried the general practice of rich countries exporting plastic waste to poor countries as a textbook example of environmental injustice. According to 2021 plastic waste export data, a substantial proportion of plastic waste is sent to Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam for recycling. Many countries which have historically accepted plastics from Singapore, such as China and Malaysia, have now already banned or heavily restricted plastic imports. Just last year, Thailand imposed a complete ban on imports of plastic waste to combat toxic pollution. This means more and more of our recyclables are directed to the incinerator. This further highlights the unsustainability and ineffectiveness of recycling as a long-term means of managing plastic waste.
Finally, we explore the sad reality that most plastics created were not meant to be recycled. Investigative journalists have uncovered that plastic industry insiders have been conscious of this fact for a long time, spending millions to pull the wool of plastic recycling over consumers’ eyes in order to sell more. As Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry (today known as the Plastics Industry Association) told NPR, “If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment.” With this outright self-pronouncement, we ought to be more cautious in accepting the apparent goodwill of companies who greenwash their plastic footprint with recycling claims.
There was never an enthusiastic belief that recycling was ultimately going to work in a significant way.”
— Lew Freeman, former Vice President of the Society of Plastics Industry
Having established that plastic recycling is unworkable as a large-scale solution, we now proceed to consider how much of our infrastructure prioritises plastic reduction and reuse over recycling.
Singapore’s plastic-embracing policy infrastructure?
Behind Singapore’s shiny, squeaky-clean cityscape lies four incinerators–the bedrock of our waste management system. From the first one constructed in 1979, Singapore is presently home to four incinerators. The upcoming Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF) will be Singapore’s largest incinerator, capable of processing 5,800 tonnes of incinerable waste per day. Given current rates of waste disposal, we need a new incinerator every 7-10 years – each costing around a few hundred million dollars – and a new landfill every 30-35 years. At our present rate of waste disposal (around 2,000 tonnes of incineration ash and non-incinerable waste dumped daily), Semakau landfill is projected to run out of space by 2035.
It is crucial to highlight that incineration is antithetical to efforts to reduce plastic waste generation. Due to the petrochemical nature of plastics, plastic is an important source material for incineration. Ironically, if plastics are crucial to the operation of the incinerator, then constructing more incinerators is a perverse incentive for plastic waste generation. Observers note that building a legacy of incineration tends to lock governments into contracts that make incineration cheaper than recycling. In Europe, Denmark is known to have a long history of burning its waste, with its first incinerator established in 1903. As investments into incinerators grew, these plants came to serve a dual purpose – generating electricity for Danish homes while also processing waste. Indeed, Denmark today requires an import of around one million tonnes of waste every year to keep the incinerators operating, a demand that is at least partly driven by genuine energy needs rather than waste disposal alone. Yet this arrangement carries costs: it does not seem to be a coincidence that in 2018, Denmark ranked the top producer of municipal waste per capita in the region, and the infrastructure itself continues to produce harmful emissions regardless of its energy output. Recognising this, and considering that incinerators do not cohere with its climate goals, Denmark is presently working on cutting incineration overcapacity by 30% over the next decade. Clearly, Denmark's experience demonstrates that even where incineration delivers benefits, any structural dependence on it will ultimately overpower zero-waste efforts.
Furthermore, incinerators contribute to air pollution and climate change. Toxic emissions such as dioxins and furans are bound to be released, even for state-of-the-art incinerators. In June 2019, the highest administrative court of the Netherlands found that a waste-to-energy plant had incorrectly measured the level of toxic emissions, resulting in large amounts of unreported and unregulated emissions. This is likely not an isolated case, and observers have noted that this practice of obscuring excessive emissions was in fact commonplace among Europe’s waste incinerators. Incinerators are complicit in causing climate damage, with incineration on par with coal-fired power plants in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
In sum, our dependence on incinerators is an approach that is financially costly, pollutive, and land and energy-intensive. As a land-scarce country, incinerators appear as attractive quick-fixes, but they still remain a short-term solution which arguably jeopardises the health of our land and people in the long-term. That does not mean that we support returning to the age of open landfills, which would cultivate another environmental disaster. Instead, we ought to set our eyes on another kind of solution, which we outline below.
Tackling plastic pollution from the upstream: Implementing a plastic production cap
“Just as you can’t put out a fire while continuing to add fuel, we can’t address the plastics crisis while allowing limitless plastic production. A cap on plastic production is a necessity for a rights-respecting plastics treaty.” — Krista Shennum, researcher at Climate Rights International
As the quote above aptly suggests, any sort of plastic control at the downstream stage will be simply unable to handle the “persistent and cumulative nature of plastic pollution” that stems from overproduction of the material. Singapore’s plastic policy framework must shift to one that explicitly limits and phases down plastic production overall.
As suggested by numerous international publications, the implementation of such a cap can occur incrementally. Firstly, a baseline reference year should be set (2019 or 2020 is most commonly suggested). This establishes a clear, quantified ceiling against which downscaling will take place. Then, clear targets for reducing plastic production can be established, progressively lowered over time. This, of course, has to come alongside limits on new primary polymer capacity, in other words halting the creation of new plastic production facilities.
Rebutting arguments against a plastic production cap
A common rebuttal is that, precisely because of our plastic-dependence, capping plastic production would mean lacking the plastics we need to sustain our lifestyles. As a result, our quality of life would drastically drop upon the introduction of a plastic production cap. This fear of a lack of plastic is exaggerated and misplaced.
First, our present system is already so heavily inundated with plastics that supply exceeds demand. Globally, the petrochemical industry is struggling with losses due to overcapacity. China is today the world’s largest plastic producer, accounting for around one-third of global plastics production. This massive expansion in primary plastic polymer production has significantly transformed global directional flows of plastic imports and exports. This development has in turn affected the traditional operations of other petrochemical industries in Asia. In Korea, reports suggest that half of petrochemical firms are at risk of bankruptcy. In Singapore, ExxonMobil recently announced plans to permanently shut down one of two steam crackers (which produce plastic monomers) from March 2026. These issues reveal that the market's production has failed to correct its supply in response to overcapacity. The most sensible response to this reality would be to cap plastic production immediately.
Second, this argument unfairly limits an understanding of ‘impacts’ to those experienced by the privileged, who mostly enjoy the benefits of plastic more than the harms. It fails to account for those who instead disproportionately experience the harms of plastic pollution – a textbook example of environmental injustice. A fuller understanding of the varied impacts would also lead us to avoid privileging the life experiences of one social group over another, which is tantamount to treating one as more deserving of environmental rights than another.
Hence, a more just approach is to weigh the uneven social burdens across different groups before concluding how society will be affected as a whole. It is clear that, while most in Singapore may be inconvenienced with the hypothetical phase-out of certain single-use plastics, frontline and fenceline communities in plastic manufacturing sites would enjoy significant improvements to health – a priceless commodity. Failing to factor the environmental and humanitarian impacts of plastics as an unseen cost of pollution thus points to an inherent failure of the market. Overall, there is little sense or justice in the status quo: a system that sacrifices the health of some communities just for the sake of short-term convenience.
Building the right infrastructure to support plastic-free lifestyles
To do so, this cultural transition must adhere to just transition principles, which means it has to be fair, inclusive and equitable. They are relevant to consider at all stages of the plastics lifecycle, and must be the cornerstone of the whole policy design process. Community support is essential for a reuse economy to be self-sustaining, and to materialise that, we must ensure that one group does not disproportionately suffer the social impacts of the transition.
Hence, we examine how we can shift from plastics-dependent systems to ones which mainstream reuse and refill. Despite the glaring need to curb plastic use, our daily habits – the 820 million plastic bags, 467 million PET beverage bottles, and the 473 million other plastic disposable items we go through annually – show that we are unmistakably reliant on plastics. This means that plastic production caps must be paired with viable alternatives to single-use plastics.
While addressing the needs of diverse communities – from bakers to hawkers – seems an insurmountable task, we find that environmentally sustainable alternatives to plastics are already embedded into Singapore’s culture. The Climate Justice Alliance upholds cultural sensitivity in their just transition principles, stressing the need to retain cultures and traditions that had been sacrificed for economic survival. Think traditional hawker stalls, where takeaway nasi lemak is wrapped in banana or pandan leaves, or where Hokkien mee is wrapped in opeh leaves. Reviving such traditions not only provides completely biodegradable and non-toxic alternatives that are cheaply and readily available to hawkers, but also draws on Singapore’s unique heritage, which the government is trying to preserve. If such sustainable, culturally authentic alternatives were so widely used in the past, why do we assume plastics must be a crucial mainstay in our lifestyles today?
Ground-up initiatives already demonstrate the feasibility of culturally relevant and community-driven alternatives. Unpackt, Singapore’s first package-free grocery store, lets shoppers refill products like nuts and biscuits using their own containers. Their pay-by-weight model ensures affordability for ordinary households, dispelling myths that sustainable lifestyles are a privilege reserved for the affluent. Similarly, Muuse’s free reusable container loan system in hawker centres provides a convenient alternative to single-use takeaway containers, even including containers specifically for halal diets.
These ground-up initiatives show that when plastic-free alternatives are designed with community needs and habits in mind, eco-lifestyles can transform from simply a niche to a cultural practice, while ensuring all communities can play a part in it.
Ensuring a people-centred system
Applying just transition principles also requires us to examine present inequalities caused by plastic pollution. At the downstream level, workers in the informal waste collection sector suffer the health impacts of living in a heavily contaminated environment. During an open discussion at the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations last year, some wastepickers shared that they struggle to make a living off recycling unrecyclable plastic, and that they would in fact be much better off if we had less plastic in the waste ecosystem.
How can we enhance social protections for workers in current jobs? How can we not only support these workers with new jobs, but also ensure that their new jobs do not carry the same environmental and health hazards as their previous ones? How can new jobs empower and reaffirm cultures and identities?
To better investigate this phenomenon, SYCA is currently working on a project engaging the neighbourhood garang guni, in order to better understand how we can improve fair remuneration for this important group of people who do much manual labour in saving items from being landfilled.
As a general principle, we champion adopting a more people-centric approach to work alongside the techno-centric approach predominant in the current waste management system, as seen below.
Techno-centric (our status quo) | People-centric (our hopes) |
Capital-intensive (a lot of natural resources and money required to sustain) | Creates jobs |
Burns and/or landfills waste | Identifies and reduces waste |
Little economic incentive for reducing waste | Creates economic incentives for waste reduction |
Locks societies into a path dependency of increasing waste generation | Enables long-term waste reduction |
Table comparing a techno-centric waste management system to a human-centric one.
Adapted from GAIA AP and re-designed by SYCA (2026).
It is impossible to design a one-size-fits-all approach for a just transition. Answers to the above questions can only be obtained through meaningful engagement processes that tap on communities’ unique expertise and experiences, who deserve full participation in policy design. This helps to ensure that final recommendations are appropriate, relevant and useful.
Conclusion
As we reevaluate our 2030 waste reduction targets, what measures will we take to make them happen? Attitudes of indifference towards plastic overproduction, combined with an excessive optimism that recycling works, both threaten to defeat any meaningful progress made. Establishing the requisite reuse and refill infrastructure nationwide is a critical first step to phasing out non-essential single-use plastic, and thorny questions about other types of essential plastics can be dealt with later. However, until that happens, these targets are nothing more than empty sandcastles floating in the air.
About the Authors:
Terese Teoh (she/her) is the president of youth environmental group Singapore Youth for Climate Action (SYCA), where she co-leads the Plastics Treaty Working Group. She has tracked the Plastics Treaty since the beginning of 2024, and INC-5.2 was the first conference in the process she attended. Terese is currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in law at Singapore Management University.
Volunteering primarily at SYCA and Fashion Parade, Kaela is an undergraduate pursuing Philosophy and Political Science. She is deeply passionate about environmental ethics and politics, and hopes this article can serve as a wake-up call to the global waste crisis hidden behind our culture of convenience.
Tara is a freshman studying Geography and Political Science in NUS. Troubled by the normalisation of overconsumption culture, she is a long-time volunteer with circular initiative Package Pals, and wrote this piece with SYCA in hopes of getting people to think twice about what they buy and bin.