Blog of Personal Response to Current Affairs
Article title: Singapore Retailers Go Green, 11 stores join campaign to use fewer plastic bags
http://app.nea.gov.sg/cms/htdocs/article.asp?pid=2068
Entry no. 4
Category: Societal Issues
Singapore is now introducing the Less Plastic Bag campaign. The campaign will include incentives to encourage shoppers to use less plastic bags, which includes charging customers for their plastic bags. This campaign will be likely to decrease the amount of plastic bags usage, as previous such campaigns in other countries have been huge successes. Through this campaign, the retailers save their bags, we contribute to environmental conservation, and Singapore benefits as its litter is reduced. Indeed, it seems like a win-win situation.
However, I feel that this campaign fails to address the main issue behind the problem. Granted that the campaign may be able to reduce the wastage, but the root of the problem has not been tackled. We are only focusing on plastic bags as if it's the be all and end all to all our problems. This results in people missing out the key concepts of the campaign, recycling and conservation.
Let us try to put ourselves in the shoes of a housewife who goes down to the supermarket to buy groceries. How many of them would truly understand the concepts behind this campaign? From what I have assumed from the news, to many of them this campaign may just mean having to pay more for the bag when shopping, or having to lug extra bags to the supermarket. As such, many of them view this campaign as troublesome.
I shall try to bring this issue to another context. Recently, Singapore also launched the Quit Smoking campaign. Part of the campaign was to broadcast gruesome images of a disfigured ex-smoker. Although it was hoped that the shock factor would cause smokers to quit, most of the smokers did not respond to it. Instead, they felt that they were being forced to quit, with their tables in the hawker centre being isolated etc.
Other campaigns, the One Million Smiles campaign, the Road Courtesy Campaign (Remember the corny “Pass it on, pass it on” song?), also did little to change the lifestyle
of Singaporeans. I suggest that this is because people have become focused on the most minute detail to campaign and change the consumer lifestyle in Singapore.
Therefore, I suggest that Singapore takes a step back and takes on a more holistic approach in their campaigns. What these incentives in the campaigns do is just enforcing laws upon people. Because of this, people may just feel resentful or irritated, and miss the whole concept of the campaign. They will just feel like they have been forced into a corner, and forced to do whatever the campaign tries to bring out.
As a conclusion, I believe that in order to tackle the root of problems, we first have to try to answer this key question “Why do people do that?” Only once we understand the factors behind the problems can we actually tackle them. If not, once the campaign fades away, people will start returning to their old ways and not change.
Its time we move beyond the plastic bags.
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