Urban Trash

Singapore is having another cleanliness drive, particularly litter in the HDB estates and the Government has formed a workgroup to look into dirty habits in the heartland. In reality, it's a simple issue with well understood themes:

Dense HDB living with small individual and large public space reduces personal responsibility. People who in past times would have swept their yard daily now just leave the corridor to be jet-washed by the council.

Littering is perceived as victimless and unpunishable. People who throw tissues and Q-tips out of bathroom windows are never going to be caught. It's the same spots on the void deck apron and under some kitchen windows that are littered; it's patently a minority at fault.

Same with smokers who as a global group seem to be unconcerned that cigarette butts are not biodegradable and, yes, I can see them in the bushes, drains, grass, etc. There's a chap opposite me who smokes at the window (so as not to befoul the flat); he'll stand there, smoking and spitting then flick the butt down onto the void deck apron. Since he stands in exactly the same spot each time, the ledge below his window has a large grey stain from the flicked ash. No one stops him.

The communal letterboxes at the void deck are strewn with junk mail leaflets; I don't blame residents, it's hard to pull out the contents without scattering these 2 x 3" scraps and few bother to stoop down to pick up junk mail. The authorities could stop this in an instant by banning private marketing flyers just as private condos do.

Setting fires for spiritual purposes is passively condoned by the authorities. The daily piles of ash, burnt walls, blobs of wax, burnt joss sticks and smoke continue despite the supplied braziers mere yards away.

Dog walkers? I don't think I've ever seen one with a poop bag. People just know not to walk on grass verges.

The ST article also mentions foreign workers which is low blow; numerically it's a local problem and the lack of enforcement against local recidivists makes this sound astonishingly patronising:

"They do not know that this is an offence here. Therefore, the town council staff and grassroots members have to give them advice. We need some time to educate them."

Apparently our local council is making an extra effort and just today we received a flyer from the local MP in this very topic:

"CLEANLINESS IN HOUSING ESTATES

1. If we look around our estates in mid-morning, by and large, they are very clean. But this doesn't remain for long and by the afternoon littering creeps in. Bits and pieces of paper are strewn from the HDB void decks to the parks and streets in private estates. By night fall it gets worse. Littering has become a persistent problem. Not only is it unsightly, it encourages breeding of pests like mosquitoes, which transmit diseases like malaria and dengue.

2. The National Environment Agency will extend litter enforcement from HDB town centres to the housing estates such as lift lobbies, void decks and letter box areas from April 2008. The first phase will involve a select group of constituencies. Further phrases will be introduced pending a review by NEA after the first three months of operation.

3. Keeping our estates clean is a shared responsibility. It rests with YOU and US. We are ultimately the ones who either make our estates clean or we destroy this beauty with litter everywhere. Between the two, I think your choice is obvious. You want to keep the surrounding areas clean. So let's make a committed collective effort and STOP littering and throwing unwanted receptacles around our estates.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Er LEE BEE WAH
MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC"

Note that the focus is on public health (discarded plastic bags & drink cups may collect water & breed mozzies), not civic pride or aesthetics.

Nothing will change because the daily clean up by the council is an environmental deus ex machina. No matter what mess is created, the faithful council cleaners will be out before 6am restoring order; people do not need to take any personal responsibility. The article confirms this with evidence from the Cleanest Estate awards:

"Yuhua Village Market and Food Centre at Jurong East Street 24 - one of the winning food centres - had relied heavily on stallholder and town council help to keep its premises spotless"

I wouldn't say Singapore is especially blighted by littering; Hong Kong & Malaysia are worse. But Singapore invests heavily in cleaning up and it would enhance a sense of natural justice if some of the above niggles were taken seriously instead of workgroups and photo-ops of MPs jet washing pavements.

Gone Missing

The annual Miss Singapore Universe beauty pageant crowned Shenise Wong as the winner last night but you'll have to read about in the paper as it wasn't televised by MediaCorp due to falling audience interest. Shenise is pretty, tall, dark and a foreign exchange broker who when asked what animal she would most like to be chose a dog, for its loyalty and intelligence.

Even with the publicity from films like Miss Congeniality, a Sandra Bullock and Michael Caine light comedy of a few years back, the tense world of lip gloss and sling backs is a sub-cultural backwater. The Straits Times have a discussion board that is often refreshingly down to earth and welcome contrast to the stuffy tone of the main paper. On this topic, the apathy was tangible so when one commenter linked to the missosology.org and I initially mis-scanned it as misogyny.org (how Freudian is that?).

This is the kind of sideways contextual teleport that is unique to the web. The site's About This Website is a hoot; it was setup by a Filipino in 1998, initially as a personal site, but by 2001 was dedicated to the various Miss Whatever competitions, and was quickly creaking with 115 hits a day, requiring a change of hosting company. Wow, 115. Per day.

Shenise and her canine fantasy now go on to represent Singapore in the international finals held in Vietnam in July.

HDB 2.0

The claimed brave new world of Web-2.0 is the target of much fun, such as this article about an online Barking Dog report service offered by Croydon Council. It made me wonder what Singapore could usefully have an HDB anti-social behavior website for:

• Burning Joss-sticks on landings
• Ghost bonfires on the grass
• Talking loudly on the mobile while standing at an open window
• Bad karaoke, full volume, Saturday mornings
• Learning to play the drums
• Dropping ash / cigarette butts from windows / corridors
• Spitting from windows / corridors
• Throwing Q-tips out of windows

I could go on but there's little sport in it. The HDB dept. sets policies for high-density living. For example, pets:

Not all residents like pets, or are comfortable with neighbours keeping pets.

HDB has allowed one dog of an approved breed to be kept in an HDB flat. The approved breeds of dogs are the smaller dogs which are generally more manageable. Please click here for the list of approved breeds of dogs.

Cats are not allowed to be kept in HDB flats as they are nomadic in nature and are difficult to be confined within the flats. Due to the nomadic nature of cats, the nuisances caused by cats such as shedding of fur, defecating/urinating in public areas, noise disturbance etc would affect the environment and neighbourliness in our housing estates. In view of this, HDB has the policy of not allowing cats to be kept in HDB flats.

HDB allows flat owners to keep other pet animals such as fish, hamsters, rabbits, birds, etc which generally do not cause nuisance to the neighbouring residents.

That's news to me. Only one, small dog and no cats. My neightbour has a cat and I've always wondered why it seems deadly afraid of straying more than 10ft from the flat door. Now I presume he has been strongly disciplined that way to avoid complaints from neighbours.

And the dog rules flies in the face of what you see around the flats. Lots of small dogs, but many people with 2 dogs. There's an Indian chap who has an enormous, lupine animal; you know the type, with strange blue eyes. It's an mild-mannered animal but there's no way it's on the HDB official dog breed list. There were posters put up matching its description advising it missing and offering a reward for return. Sounds like it was stolen to order as frankly, how do you lose such an animal? It's not like car keys.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals tries their best. They recently put up posters on good practices for feeding the (officially stray) cats around the blocks (nothing you didn't already know) and their website features an adopt an animal list. There's no cats but instead it's mostly non-HDB approved dogs so only private householders can adopt them and even condos and apartments have rules. It's not looking good for Moo Ping and friends.