The problem with anything in Singapore is that our bureaucrats-scholars are wonderful in writing papers-taking exams but not so good on working the ground and solving problems.
Nowadays, they seem a magic panacea to everything - advertisement.
Let advertise and convince the public.
Let’s speak good english
Let’s clear the table after use
Let’s not litter
Since LKY time, we know that advertisement could be useful but there is no denying that spending money like this seems to be an easy and convenient way to solve “problems”.
The budget could easily pass procurement and the "results" could be easily calculated (number of eyeballs in the movie theatre, the number of people travelling up and down a lift).
Just look at the amount of government agencies' advertisement that are happening in the movies. The last I calculated, government is taking up 50% of the airtime before the start of the movie1.
Since I do not watch regular TV, the only advertisement that have been reaching me is the BlooBin campaign in the lift .
National Environment Agency (NEA) is encouraging people to recycle properly but aren’t most people are trying to recycle “properly” already?
If we are not trying to recycle properly, we would have chuck the rubbish down the rubbish chute2 from our flats.
So who are they trying to convince here?
First, the exceptional small BlooBin is not helping with the effort as the recyclables are spilling over.
Secondly, the guys who are recycling are already educated and is trying to do their best.
Third, the guys who are throwing in the "rubbish" are not the regular recycler, they are the lazy fellow who happen to have a piece of rubbish while being close to the bloo-bin.
It is not the resident-recycler who needs an education, it is the lazy people who needs to be dissuaded from treating the BlooBin as their regular rubbish bin3.
NEA should aim to change the environment of recycling (changing the design of the bin, the process of recycling) than just trying to advertise-educate.
There are ways to get residents to sort their own recyclable at source and there are opportunities to educate them at the same time. If that is done, the level of sorting will be lower at the central recycling site.
A tip for NEA (low lying fruit) - If you really want to increase recycling, mandate the vending machine operators around the the ActiveSG (sports) centres to place recycling bin around their vending machines and collect-recycle their plastic bottle waste.
That seems like so easy to do… But I could be wrong as our bureaucrats-scholars may need to continue to shuffle some papers to be able to do so.
Maybe the government is trying to help the cinema to get through the pandemic…
In Singapore public housing, we dispose our rubbish through a common rubbish chute located in a centralised location on each floor.
Why would we even bother carrying our rubbish down and deposit it in the BlooBin?
No amount of advertisement would dissuade them from doing so.