Pritam Singh and the Workers’ Party take a different approach to reusing and recycling

Workers’ Party (WP) secretary-general Pritam Singh explained the party’s stance towards recycling, and how he took an extra step to find out about emissions produced through incineration.

On single-use plastics, Pritam wrote, “Some weeks ago, a younger member of our media team casually remarked the Party purchases lot of single-use mineral water bottles during Hammer outreach that are consumed and discarded immediately”.

Along with the party making a conscious and green effort to reduce single-use plastics, the secretary-general spoke about single-use plastic bags that are very prevalent in Housing Development Board (HDB) flats. It is common practice for those living in HDB flats to dispose of their waste by throwing it in single-use plastic bags.

He added, “Unlike other neighbouring countries that are moving or trying to move to biodegradable plastics bags (as their waste is buried in landfills), Singapore incinerates its waste”.

Taking it one step further

The Workers’ Party also enquired about emissions produced from biodegradable single-use bags, as opposed to the common, non-biodegradable ones.

He wrote, “According to a National Environment Agency (NEA) life cycle study, substituting single-use plastic bags with biodegradable bags in the Singapore context is not likely to improve the environmental outcome”.

Since the type of single-use bag did not seem to make much of a difference as the emissions from incineration came up to be the same, Pritam took a step back and looked at straws.

He commended the move by food outlets to attempt to phase out plastic straws.

Pritam also asked his readers for other suggestions on efforts to become more environmentally conscious. /TISG