HDB Residents Get 18,000 Vouchers for Free IKEA Recycling Bins

The planet is dying. Partly because we create so much trash, and partly because a global superpower believes pollution is just China telling lies. Regardless, NEA is stepping into the fight with IKEA. Get your free recycling bins, y’all:

What’s free? I want!

18,000 HDB residents are getting a voucher this month, which they can exchange for a free recycling bin at IKEA. The residents all come from BTO flats in new precincts, including MacPherson, Bidadari, Sembawang, and Sengkang. It’s a joint initiative by the National Environment Agency (NEA) and IKEA Singapore, to inspire more households to recycle.

The vouchers will be sent by mail. Yeah, this initiative to save the Earth starts with printing 18,000 vouchers and manually delivering them door-to-door; we’re off to a good start.

The vouchers can be recycled at IKEA’s Tampines or Alexandra branches. Great, now we have 18,000 more people to fight for a place in the meatball line.

Why are we doing this?

Because in a survey of 5,000 Singaporean households last year, only six in 10 recycled regularly. Which doesn’t surprise us – we can’t get people to return trays in hawker centres, and you want them to drag their garbage all the way to a recycling bin?

Only about 56 per cent of Singaporean households recycled, and it was mainly newspapers, magazines, junk mail, brochures, and writing paper. Even then, most of it was contaminated with food. Most people didn’t recycle plastic and metals, and those that did often did it wrong.

Did you know if you want to recycle something like a Styrofoam container, you need to wash it first? Yeah, dumping it with your leftover carrot cake in it just messes up everything in the bin. And if you want to recycle drink containers, like your Coke can or beer bottle, you’re supposed to rinse these out first.

(Again, did we mention we’re too lazy to even return trays?)

Anyway, this initiative should help a bit. It’s a bit much to expect someone to wash and rinse out their containers in, say, the middle of the road when they’re passing a recycling bin. But they might do it if the bin’s right outside their door.

Is it likely to work?

Getting people to throw stuff in recycling bins isn’t hard. Getting them to exert the 0.05 per cent of extra effort to throw it in the right-coloured bin is bit harder. Getting them to clean things out and then bring them to the right bin? That’s not going to have a high success rate, not without a stronger incentive.

The struggle isn’t to get people to recycle; it’s to get them to recycle the right way. So here’s an opinion:

Give out vouchers for IKEA meatballs instead of recycling bins, to promote the habit. More Singaporeans will walk their asses to the bins with washed out recyclables, for that kind of reward. We’d need to devise a way to track it, but it would work, damn it.

Would you recycle for meatballs? Voice your thoughts in our comments section or on our Facebook community page.

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