The diversity of divestment in Singapore: Junk commodities, charity gifts, and recycling bins

Abstract

National and municipal recycling programmes are typically premised on their ability to reduce waste disposed in the landfill. However, a much wider variety of waste divestment conduits – such as trading with informal junk traders, making donations to charity, passing on items to family and friends – co-exist in many urban waste management landscapes. In this paper, we explore the cultures and economies of informal waste divestment practices in Singapore, in relation to the National Recycling Programme implemented by the government. We argue that one reason for the limited performance of the National Recycling Programme is because it reduces a relationship of (commodity) exchange or gift among persons, to an act of disposal in an impersonal recycling bin. Drawing on quantitatively and qualitatively obtained empirical data, we identify three frequently used conduits of divestment – junk traders, charity donations, and transfers to family and friends – that render radically different social meanings to divestment. While junk traders transform unwanted things into commodities, donations to charity, family, and friends transform unwanted things into gifts – creating rich ‘ regimes of value’ that perpetuate a thing’s career. Hence, the complexity of people’s relationships to material objects helps keep things out of the general waste stream. We challenge if this complexity should be reduced by ordering and governing household practices to fit into complicated long-distance infrastructures, such as the recycling system.