Name: How to solve our big trash problem | CNBC Reports
Uploaded: 2021-04-26T17:50:09.000Z
Duration: 12 min 56 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Every year, the world generates more than 2 billion tonnes of trash.

That's enough to fill over 800,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Advanced passive voice

About a third of the world's waste is being openly dumped or burned.

This is a challenge we've seen over and over, where users are unable to pay for use

where users are unable to pay for use of the system,  where there's an affordability gap.

And by the year 2050, the amount of rubbish generated annually is expected to increase

As the rubbish piles up, no number of landfills and recycling programs

The waste management process comprises the collection, treatment and disposal of waste.

Solid waste can come from several sources, mainly from residential and commercial properties,

and industrial facilities, such as medical, electronic and construction waste.

With COVID, overall we've seen medical waste increase about 40%.

It's often the poor that are the most affected by lack of waste management services,

whether it's because they're not receiving waste management services due to

where they're living or waste is being  dumped by the communities.

Even as medical waste piles up, it's a tiny fraction of municipal solid waste.

Of the 2 billion tonnes of waste generated globally, 12% is plastic waste,

but it's dwarfed by food and organic matter,  and paper & cardboard scraps.

Once all that trash is collected, there are 3 main ways it is treated and disposed of:

by burning the trash in an incinerator, using a landfill

or dumping it openly without any processing whatsoever.

While 33% of global waste end up directly at open dumps,

governments are increasingly recognizing that  these sites are bad for the environment

Instead, they are opting for more sustainable ways to manage their waste, such as incinerators

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in  densely populated Singapore,

more than 17 times that of India and 200 times that of the U.S.

Between 1970 and 2016, the amount of solid waste disposed in Singapore increased about

7-fold as its population and economy grew.

Of the 7 million tonnes of waste generated in the country in 2019,

The journey of a single piece of trash brings us to Tuas South Incineration Plant,

the largest waste incineration facility  in Singapore to date.

Kan Kok Wah is the general manager of the plant,

one of four such facilities in the country  which can convert waste into energy.

Waste is collected from industrial, commercial premises and household premises.

An average of about 600 trucks are coming to Tuas South Incineration Plant.

They will discharge the waste into the bunker.

Cranes will then grab and feed the waste into the incinerator.

The temperature in the furnace is about 850 – 1,000 degrees.

You will achieve a 90% reduction in terms of volume.

This will then help to conserve the space required for landfill.

So the need to conserve land is very critical for Singapore.

Along the way, we have magnetic separator.

Ferrous and non-ferrous metal will be recovered from the ash.

Ash will then be transported from the ash pit to another facility.

Pollutants produced during incineration are treated before being released into the atmosphere,

Water will be converted into steam from the energy recovered from the combustion of waste.

This water will be then converted into high temperature, high pressure steam

20% is being consumed internally, with the rest being exported to the national grid.

The total power generated by the four waste-to-energy incineration plants in Singapore,

contributes about 2–3% to the national  electricity demand in the country.

An upcoming waste-to-energy plant built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

and water treatment company Hyflux will be able to incinerate

3,600 tonnes of waste per day while  generating electricity to be self-sufficient

and providing excess power to the national grid.

How much waste is collected and  managed in TSIP?

In 2019, about 1.08 million tonnes of waste is collected.

That's equivalent to about 3,000 tonnes of waste daily.

After the incineration process, my journey takes me on a ferry to the country's only

landfill located along the Singapore Strait, one of the busiest waterways in the world.

Semakau Landfill is an off-shore landfill enclosed by a 4.3-mile perimeter rock embankment,

which creates a sea space to fill with  incinerated rubbish.

In operation since 1999 and costing nearly half a billion dollars,

Actually we are made up of two big islands called Pulau Semakau and Pulau Sakeng and

these two are joined together to  what we see here.

A barge ferries more than 2,000 tonnes of waste between mainland Singapore

and Semakau Landfill daily, says Desmond Lee, general manager of the landfill.

We have big equipment such as the dump truck, excavators, etc.

These are equipment that we use daily, and you can hear-

This barge actually comes from the  Tuas Marine Transfer Station

from Tuas, travels 33 kilometres journey all the way here.

Tell me about how the ash is going to get transferred out.

There is what is called the long-arm excavator.

This excavator will grab the ash and as well as non-incinerable waste,

and drop into what we call the dump truck.

The trucks will then unload the ash into specific cells within the lagoon.

To prevent leaks and contamination of the sea water outside the rock bunds,

the perimeter is lined with impermeable membrane  and a layer of marine clay.

As the water level within the lagoon increases with rainfall and the dumping of the ash,

the overflow is discharged into the open sea

after being treated at a wastewater treatment plant.

If you travel around Semakau, you'll see there's a lot of mangroves around,

This is a testimony to the absence of adverse impact from our operational landfill.

We also want to ensure the marine life and nature in this area continue to strive.

How filled is Semakau Landfill right now?