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Recycling bin incident being probed

This article is more than 12 months old

When Punggol resident Eloise Huang sent her husband to the blue recycling bin at the foot of their block with a big bag of recyclables, she had assumed that all of it - paper, plastic, glass and metal - would escape the landfill.

Yet, according to a recent Facebook post by Ms Huang, the collector who came to pick it up removed all paper and cardboard from the bag before dumping the rest of the contents into the green bins meant for trash.

"Save your plastics, metals elsewhere for recycling, since they will end up in the normal bin," she wrote.

SembWaste, which collects recyclables in the area, and the National Environment Agency (NEA) say they are looking into the case. "At no point would we condone staff wilfully discarding materials meant to be recycled," said SembWaste.

NEA said its officers conduct random site inspections of collection from the blue bins and sorting activities at the materials recovery facilities.

"In this case, if the allegation is substantiated after our investigations, a financial penalty will be imposed on the public waste collector and demerit points awarded... which is taken into consideration during evaluation of future public waste collection tenders," said an NEA spokesman.

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