Singapore’s dirty little sense of entitlement

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What has happened to us? Why has our humanity and suzhi regressed even as our standard of living, education and quality of life have progressed?

much of it has been achieved through the thankless, grimy hard work of Singapore’s 60,000 cleaners who pick up after the six million of us.

Outsourcing public hygiene to low-paid labour has created a culture of complacency where cleanliness has become a commodity, purchased through migrant labour; not a civic virtue

Singapore’s efficient model of governance has left citizens passive and spoilt. We have got too lazy and too used to a lack of accountability – open the rubbish chute in your HDB flats and you can pretty much chuck anything down it. The National Environment Agency doesn’t require you to sort your trash or recyclables either: It hires people to do that for you downstream.

Singapore’s domestic recycling rate 

was a dismal 11 per cent last year

, a record low. And as much as 40 per cent of what is recovered in the commingled recycling bins is contaminated

We’ve managed to make some new habits stick with our tray-return policy through enforcement – 65 per cent return rate before warnings and fines were dished out, to more than 90 per cent now.