Waste Management

[Music]

hi there

my name is zara i’m 11 years old i was

born in singapore

and lived there for most of my life

while living there

i never found a piece of rubbish

outside of the trash can

i’ve traveled to karachi lots of times

since that is where my parents were born

and most of my family lives there as

well

from what i have seen over there karachi

is

quite polluted compared to singapore

now i live in germany germany is

almost as clean as singapore is germany

has

a very high recycling rate of 67 percent

this must have to do with the fact that

there are trash cans for each type of

material

this is good because the waste is

already sorted

from the moment that it is thrown into

the bin

i decided to inquire more about

singapore’s waste management

how is singapore so glistening clean how

do they do it singapore is a tiny red

dot on the world map

with a population of almost 6 million

people

only three decades ago this metropolitan

city

was at risk of sinking in its own

waste a few years ago

singapore river and the kalong basin got

extremely dirty

so between the years of 1977

and 1987 they did a massive cleanup for

both of these rivers

they did physical cleaning of the heavy

polluted rivers and this massive

exercise

also involved the removal of various

sources of pollution

in 2014 statistics show that each person

was generating

1 370 kilograms of waste

per year that’s equal to

7 million tons of total plastic waste

however 60 of the waste was recycled

and the remaining 38 was incinerated

and burned at 1000 degrees celsius

the energy generated from the

incineration plant

is used to light up the whole city

only two percent of the waste went to

landfill

let’s compare singapore to other

metropolitan cities

in southeast asia with a similar sized

population

manila is the capital of the philippines

solid waste management

is a major problem in the philippines

especially in cities like manila

this city generates 10 000

tons of waste per day

this amount of waste that they generate

is estimated to triple

by 2030. 85

of the waste ends up in landfills the

rest of the rubbish mostly ends up in

rivers

in jakarta the capital of indonesia

76 of waste ends up in landfills or in

the environment

jakarta has one major landfill where 6

000 tons

of waste ends up every day

but so much waste ending up in landfills

or in the environment

is just not the best solution to this

problem

bad waste management clogs up waterways

contaminates soil and causes harm to

animals and humans

it leads to deforestation and can be

breeding the ground for disease

and epidemics it is estimated that the

amount of waste

generated by humans will triple from 1.3

billion

tons to 4 billion tons

and you just heard me correctly i just

said

4 billion tons by 2100

the earth does not have infinite

resources to go

around to accommodate to a growing

population

big metropolitan cities around the world

especially in developing countries will

have to adopt to more sustainable waste

management practices like singapore

some ways that cities of the future and

even

you guys can help with this is to one

use incineration plans to burn all the

waste

two reduce reuse recycle

and lastly say no to single-use plastic

because there’s not really a point of

using a product made out of plastic

once and then throwing it away

thank you for listening to my speech