SINGAPORE — Residents islandwide can get their bulky electronic waste such as refrigerators, washing machines and televisions collected from their doorsteps for free from 2025.

Waste management firm Alba Group will offer this free service to all households to make recycling e-waste more convenient, said Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment Amy Khor on Oct 13.

Alba, which was appointed in 2021 to run the national e-waste programme, currently charges a nominal fee of $40 to remove bulky e-waste.

Jakob Lambsdorff, chief executive of Alba E-Waste Smart Recycling, said the service will be free from Jan 1, 2025, except on weekends and for express collection of items.

Singapore introduced the extended producer responsibility scheme in 2021, which requires electronic goods producers and retailers to recycle their products when they are disposed of.

Giving an update on the scheme, Dr Khor said the total amount of e-waste collected for recycling in Singapore has increased from 3,500 tonnes in February 2022 to more than 22,300 tonnes as at September 2024.

Singapore generates an estimated 60,000 tonnes of e-waste a year. Lambsdorff said that although the rate of e-waste recycling is lower than expected, it has increased — by more than 10 per cent in 2023 compared with the year before, and more than 16 per cent in 2024.

The target for 2025 is to grow the recycling rate by more than 20 per cent, he added.

"We are taking the right approach. We need more awareness, PR (public relations) and education, and we need to make it more convenient, and that's what we're working on," said Lambsdorff.

The number of e-waste collection points located across Singapore has increased from 300 — in July 2021 — to about 870, Dr Khor noted in her speech at an event at Westgate mall to mark International E-Waste Day on Oct 13.

These points are at places such as electronics stores, shopping malls, community centres and supermarkets, as well as government and commercial buildings.

Residents also have other options to dispose of e-waste, such as the bulky waste removal service offered by town councils for large household appliances, and a scheme that requires retailers to provide a one-for-one take-back service of a product during delivery of a similar bought product.

Under the scheme, for example, if a consumer purchases a refrigerator from a retailer and has it delivered to his home, the retailer is obliged to take back the old fridge for disposal.

Dr Khor noted that only about 22 per cent of e-waste generated was recycled, according to the United Nations' Global E-waste Monitor published in early 2024.

This figure is expected to drop further to 20 per cent by 2030 as the amount of e-waste generated worldwide grows, she said.

"There has been a global surge in such e-waste due to shorter product life cycles and the proliferation of electrical and electronic devices. It is quite common to see a person owning and using multiple electronic devices," Dr Khor said.

Improper disposal of e-waste can contaminate the environment and harm public health as such devices contain heavy metals and hazardous substances, she added.

She noted that recovering metals and other materials from e-waste to manufacture new products will reduce the need to extract more raw materials.

"Recycling is, therefore, an important way to manage the e-waste problem by ensuring the proper end-of-life handling and extraction of resources," she said. 

Turning to the issue of data security, Dr Khor said this is a key concern in Singapore, and a reason why many have kept unused electronic devices at home instead of recycling them.

To safeguard their personal information, people should back up their data and log out of their own accounts before recycling e-waste like mobile phones or laptops, she said.

She gave the assurance that Singapore requires all data-bearing devices sent for recycling at licensed recyclers to first undergo data sanitisation and physical dismantling, to ensure that they are recycled in a secure manner.

E-waste collected by Alba is sent to the firm's logistics hub for sorting and weighing. Devices that can hold sensitive data are sent to recyclers with data sanitisation capabilities.

"I hope that this provides you with the assurance and confidence that your e-waste can be recycled securely," Dr Khor said.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.