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