Where to recycle?

*Please feel free to correct me if there are any wrong information found*

Ok, this is delayed long enough. Soaking myself in animes and animes is turning out to be boring and making me feel useless. Frankly, the amount of stuff to deal with is kind of overwhelming (which is one of the reason why I'm soaking myself in animes) so I thought I'd start with something simple, also one of the questions contributed to the survey.

If you're too lazy to read everything below, you can just check out these 2 sites - NEA, SEC, for lists of places where recycling bins are located, where to recycle used batteries, print cartridges, printing hardware and computers.

Where do you find your recycling bins?

Actually if you click on the large "The Recycling Bean" icon on the sidebar, it would bring you to one of the National Environment Agency's webpages and from there you can navigate and find one closest to you. The website is actually very navigable.

Ok, to make it easier for you, this is the list of recycling bins in a Microsoft Excel file, provided on NEA's website. The thing is I don't know how accurate are the addresses of places they have provided, but why not walk past the areas in your housing estate and check it out? Do note that some places only have bins for one type of material like drink cans or paper.

You might be asking why don't we see these bins everywhere and why they might be in ulu places. A friend of mine gave me 2 reasons - firstly, there is the danger that people will throw stuff like cigarettes into the paper bins resulting in a fire (and this has happened before), secondly, people actually throw rubbish into these bins instead of recyclable items.

Where can we recycle used batteries?

On the same NEA webpage "The Recycling Bean" icon leads to, if you'd scroll down, is a list of places where you can recycle print cartridges, batteries (handphones' and others) as well as a list of places such as The Salvation Army, Cash Converters, Red Shield Industries Family Thrift Stores and other Thrift Shops, where you can drop off your assorted items like your furniture.

Yes, you can recycle your used Energizer/Eveready/Duracell/what-not-brand batteries.

Instead of referring to NEA's webpage for the list of places where you can deposit your batteries, I refer to this particular page of Singapore Environment Council's website. From what I know only Nokia Care Centres accept these batteries. What a friend of mine does is he fills two 1.5 litres bottles with batteries then heads down to deposit them at one go.

These Nokia Care Centres also accept, besides household batteries (as mentioned above), used/spent Nokia handphones, handphone batteries, and accessories. Only Nokia items, I suppose.

Nokia Care Centres:

1) Wheelock Place
501 Orchard Road
#03-03A
Wheelock Place
Singapore 238880
Tel: 6512 5778

2)Suntec City
No 3 Temasek Boulevard
#02-56/58/60
Singapore 038983
Tel: 6835 7537

3) Century Square
2 Tampines Central 5
#04-07/08
Singapore 529509
Tel: 6781 8914

4) Causeway Point
1Woodlands Square
#03-24/25/26 S
ingapore 738099
Tel: 6512 5779

5) Parkway Parade
80MarineParadeRoad
#B1-30/31/32
Singapore 449269
Tel: 6346 6589

As mentioned on the SEC website, Motorola also accepts their own handphone batteries, handphones, accessories and walkie talkies. Addresses can be found on the linked website.

Where can we recycle our used Print Cartridges, Printing Hardware and Computers?

1) You can sell them to your local karang-guni,
2) Several places from SEC website,
3) Through HP:

HP Supplies Recycling Programme - There are different proposed methods of returning original HP print cartridges for individuals, small businesses and public sector users.

For individuals (a.k.a us), original HP LaserJet and inkjet cartridges can be deposited into recycling bins like these,

at any of these retail shops or HP's main office itself:

Hewlett-Packard Singapore Pte. Ltd. (ATP-A)
HP Service Center
438A Alexandra Road Blk A #02-08
Alexandra Technopark (Lift Lobby 2)
Singapore 119967

HP also has a Hardware Recycling Programme which accepts "end-of-life HP and non-HP computing equipment like personal computer, laptop, computer monitor, handheld, notebook, server, printers, scanners, fax machine, digital camera, as well as associated external components such as cable, mouse and keyboards."

But if you are returning non-HP products, you need to have something to show that you have bought a HP product before. For more information, click on the hardware recycling link above.

I would like to end off this post with this thought:

Recycling isn't the answer to everything. Remember the other 2 Rs - Reduce and Reuse. Recycling uses more energy than you might think.

That recycling survey above

Practice starts in 9 hours 40 minutes. Practice ends in 13 hours 40 minutes.

Then after that it's time to work a little more on that practicalities of recycling idea. In the meantime if you have not done the survey, it would be great if you could fill it in, especially if you have recycling questions. I currently only have 27 survey responses. I'm going to have a small section here that brings out some questions about the practicalities of recycling you have raised as well as other questions that have crossed my mind. Get your friends to do the survey as well so that we have more ideas.

This is not a school project but an independent one started by me like, 3 days ago. I'm no expert but let's see what we can do.

If you have already done the survey but have suddenly thought of something you'd like to add, please feel free to comment here or email me.

Recycling survey

I have always had numerous questions popping up in my mind whenever I attempt to decide what to put or not to put into the recycling bags provided by SembCorp or into recycling bins. There seem to be so many things around me for which I have no idea if they should or can be put into the bins.

I tried searching online for a more detailed list of items which can be recycled in Singapore, because apparently not every country/district/province recycle everything or the same things, but have not found a lot of stuff. However, SembCorp does have a short list or description on what can or cannot be recycled as well as a longer elaboration on glass recycling. I believe this might answer some basic questions we have on recycling.

In any case, I got fed-up searching for information and as such, I now want to know if others face the same problem as me, and more specifically, I want to know exactly what kind of items have you all wondered if they can be recycled, or have put into your recycling bins/bags before. Also, what other kinds of questions do you have on recycling? For instance, what to do with empty ink cartridges or do we have to wash the items clean or are getting rid of the larger waste in containers sufficient for recycling (because they will wash for us)? I mean it isn't very easy to wash a container when you're out.

I wonder why nobody in the higher-up chairs ever tried to answer these questions or get the information to us. Don't recycling start from the bottom and how can I recycle properly if I have so many questions plaguing me?

Another thing I wanted to do is to see if there is anything I can do, however little it is, to help answer some of the questions you might have about what to recycle or not to recycle.

As such, I have created a survey to get an idea about the questions you might have about recycling. (Dammit, I know this is a convenience sample, but applicability of results is not a problem here, so convenience sample should serve me fine.) I would appreciate if you could fill in this short survey and list as many things as possible if the questions ask of you. There is also a section inside allowing you to list any other questions you might have about recycling.

Do note that this survey is only for Singaporeans or people residing in Singapore.

Recycling Survey

Thank you!

If you have any other comments, want to correct something I have said here, or would like to share some recycling information whether exclusive or not to Singapore, you can comment here or email me. Email's in the "About Me" box in the side-bar.

NUS - Going (more) green

Couple of weeks ago, the University adopted a 25 degree Celsius central air-conditioning policy as part of the move towards being more environmentally friendly. I could not be happier because now I don't have to freeze in the LTs anymore and my heart don't have to ache so much at the thought of how much more unnecessary gases are released into the atmosphere, just so that shops like "Winter Wear" can earn more.

Anyway, received NUS Students' Union newsletter in my mail just now. Here are parts of the email:

Rebate2Earth Campaign – Reduce the Use of Plastic Bags on Campus

Surveys have shown that about 40,000 plastic bags were used per month in the past year in the NUS Co-op stores alone....

... NUSSU Students Against the Violation of the Earth (NUSSU SAVE), in collaboration with the Office of the Provost, the Campus Sustainability Committee and NUS Co-op, will launch its Rebate2Earth Campaign on Monday 4th February 2008.

With effect from next Monday, NUS Co-op will no longer be dispensing free plastic bags for purchases made at its stores. Instead, plastic bags will be available at $0.10 each. The proceeds collected from the sale of plastic bags will be deposited into a coin box at the cashier’s counter and will go towards supporting future environmental projects in NUS.

Over the next few months, more partners, stores and canteens in the University will participate in the Rebate2Earth Campaign....

So from 29th January onwards, if you want to either save your 10 cents or contribute a little to saving the environment, remember to bring your own bag to the Co-op when you all buy things ok! If bringing a bag/plastic bag/extra bag is too embarrassing, actually you can just stuff your books into your normal school bag.

I realized there are actually quite a few environmentally-conscious ones among those I know. Never thought I'd hear my friend tell me we should recycle the plastic microwave containers that the food we bought from the canteen were stored in.

The Recycling Bean may emphasize on recycling, but he also approves of any other green moves

The Recycling Bean

I just created "The Recycling Bean"!

Inspiration drawn from Jing Hong's MSN nick and the "Bring Your Own Bag" scheme. I drew this from scratch using Microsoft Paint because I have no other drawing software and it turned out quite alright anyway.

I'll be incorporating this into my sidebar to show that I support recycling. It's also damn cute can! If you want to use this "bean" to spread the word of recycling, please go ahead and do so. Any suggestions on improving The Recycling Bean's look is welcome (because I quite suck at design).

Oh, and would the name "The Recycle Bean" or "The Recycling Bean" be better? Or would there be no difference? Or would you suggest any other name?

Even better, create your own if you want to!