This issue of Kaleidoscope is going to get more personal. There will be more talk of my personal experiences online, but I will still touch on some current affairs.
As the post may be long. Here is a content page to help you find your way through all the good stuff:
Virtual travel
The coronavirus pandemic has made it harder to be out and about for people worldwide. Increasingly, virtual travels, which simulate the travel experience on a virtual space, is becoming a popular option on the Internet. According to an article by the August issue of Straits Times Asia Insider, many tour operators are developing virtual travel tours, with engaging tour guides bringing visitors on the Internet to explore different places around the world (usually through live streams), and using images and videos to replace the experience of actually being there.
Using digital tools as part of the tourism is not entirely novel. It has been a mainstay in popular tourist attractions in countries such as China to enhance the experience. When I visited Xi'an during an immersion trip a few years ago, I was surprised to see a large number of QR codes prominently displayed at museum exhibits and park signboards. These QR codes offer access to multimedia content, from audio guides and pictures to additional information and insights on the place. By adding a digital element to the traditional tourism experience, travel becomes more enriching. Moreover, the digital functions also made it easier for tourists to share their experiences on social media, potentially attracting their friends to visit the places featured on their social media posts.
| QR codes seen in Chinese museum exhibits. Image from Google Images. |
However, with physical travel being out of the question, going completely virtual for travelling is now the way to go. I have jumped on the bandwagon too, and used a somewhat less conventional way of travelling - Google Earth. It has a "Voyager" feature that takes you to popular tourist spots worldwide. I picked Tokyo as my destination as I heard much about it from watching anime and I really wanted to know some of the scenic places as well as the history of the places there. I also searched up the featured attractions on YouTube to enhance my travelling experience, so that it feels like there are tourist guides bringing me through the various locations.
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| Here is what the Voyager function looks like in Google Earth. I chose the 48 Hours in Tokyo tour. |
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| This is what it looks like inside. The unique thing about Voyager is that it offers a 3D map of the place to give you a bird's eye view. Then it has a picture and a succinct description of the place. Most of the things in the map are computer generated imagery, so it does not look like the real thing, but it is close enough to give you a feel of what the place looks like. |
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| For a more immersive experience, I tried out the street views and photo spheres in the map. They are not too bad - you can do some quick cherry blossom viewing even when it is not the right season for it. I only regret that the images are of a low resolution. |
It is easy to grow bored of hopping around static images of places, so I had some videos to keep me entertained and educated. One of the videos I watched looked like this:
So, unless you know the good street view spots, it is not easy to feel good from a virtual experience. But at the very least, virtual tours can still be useful if you just want a quick escape from wherever you are right now and gain some satisfaction from feeling smarter after learning more about new places and cultures.
If these sounds like too much work, there are always free, ready-made guided tours online, such as this one which uses Google Street View:
Virtual travel experiences have challenged the way we interact with the world, and encouraged us to reflect upon why we travel. Is it for the novelty? To satisfy one's curiosity about a foreign place and culture? Or to search for one's own answers to the meaning of life and the human experience? Everyone has different reasons to travel, but I am sure what makes travelling so appealing is the innate curiosity humans have to find out more about the unknown, and using all their senses to experience what it is being like in a foreign land to satisfy whatever they are searching for.
There is another form of virtual travel asides from live streams, online researching and street view. Documentaries. I explored the rich culture and history of the Democratic Republic of Congo through a BBC Documentary. It presents a sad story of how the people have suffered under the reign of corrupt, exploitative rulers, whose greed and misgovernance have made the painful history filled with violence, poverty and discrimination repeat itself again and again.
A good watch: some elevator-themed mini-documentary to uplift your spirits!
As a person who is passionate about the subject of Geography, I find that this video provides us a refreshing perspective on how we look at cities and societies in general. Elevators have been and evolved with us for a long time. The current coronavirus crisis has forced us to relook at the way we interact with elevators. I have gained a few insights from this video:
First, smart technologies. I have experienced this first hand while I go to the ministry buildings in Singapore for studies, internships and interviews. You indicate the floor you want to go and go to the corresponding lift that will take you there. From what it looks like, it seemed that there was an algorithm that optimises the load between the elevators and distribute people with different destinations in mind as evenly as possible to reduce waiting time and overcrowded lobbies. This will become more important in the midst of the pandemic, where safe distancing has become necessary.
Second, high-rise cities. Without the invention of elevators, building structures that go beyond six, seven storeys high will become more and more unfeasible, since it would be tiring for most people to scale many flights of stairs just to get to the storey they want. Elevators also made it possible for elderly, people with disabilities, and large groups of people (like families) to be able to access their homes if they reside in high-rise buildings. Elevators literally defined how modern cities look today, by making it possible for architecture to go higher. Not to mention how the high-rise buildings they made possible gave rise to a new kinds of sport - vertical marathons.
Third, vulnerable groups such as the disabled and low-income people. These people are more affected by the coronavirus crisis since they do not have access to functioning, safe elevators. It will be harder for them to maintain safe distancing since the elevators they use are more likely to break down, in addition to sharing poorly ventilated places of residence, yet they are the ones who cannot afford the technology to work at home, and will have to go out at work. As such, it is more difficult for them to contribute in stopping the spread of Covid-19.
The plastic crisis and a sustainable future for our world
The plastic problem is one that exists on many different levels. From its production, to its use and then its disposal by Singaporeans and many others worldwide, people are just becoming too wasteful.
First, let us focus on what we can relate to most - plastic use.
According to a study led by six alumni students from the National University of Singapore’s Master of Science (Environmental Management) programme in May 2020, Singapore households generated an additional 1334 tonnes of plastic waste during the two-month Circuit Breaker period, where nearly everyone had to stay at home.
This comes with a rise in food takeaways and delivery of goods for online shopping, where plastic packaging is inevitable. The plastic situation had become so out of hand that there are long queues of people outside of plastic distributors, waiting to get their hands on more plastic packaging materials.
Asides from takeaways and groceries, plastics have found themselves in many other applications:
- Shields and barriers in taxis and hawker centres
- Face masks and face shields
- Laboratory equipment
- Storage of medication, medical waste, samples, etc.
- The list goes on...
This plastic frenzy has been exacerbated by unvalidated concerns over health and safety, with food and beverage outlets imposing temporary bans on reusable containers to prevent cross contamination. However, medical experts have since clarified that such concerns are unfounded as well-washed reusables are safe when the coronavirus can be killed with regular dish soap and sanitisation.
On the other hand, concerns on reusable materials are much more serious when it comes to the clinical context. Many medical professionals rely on disposable plastics to maintain a high standard of hygiene and safety when it comes to handling biohazards and medication, since this is a matter of life and death.
The consequences of so much plastic waste is detrimental - our only landfill, Semakau Landfill, gets filled up faster, and we will soon see that our trash has nowhere to go. Even countries like China and Indonesia are refusing to take in waste imports for sorting and recycling.
To sum up what has been said so far, Singaporeans consume a lot, demand a lot of disposables and generate a lot of waste. Retailers have also worsened this problem by unfounded fears.
Now, before anyone reading this starts to crack from the guilt and horror from the shocking statistics, let me step back from consumers for the time being and go on to explain the second part of the problem which we consumers have no control of - oil.
One important fact to bear in mind is that plastic does not only come from crude oil. Plastic is made from natural, organic raw materials such as plants, coal, natural gas and crude oil. However, we see so much of our plastics made from crude oil because it is cheap.
Crude oil has been an extremely lucrative business, so when a deal to cut oil production between the largest oil producers in the world, such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, expired this year, they launched a price war in a bid to gain market share. In other words, these producers want to have a bigger share of the pie, so that their crude oil exports can give them more profits.
As such, oil prices had plunged more than 50% for the past few months, dramatically lowering the cost of producing plastics from crude oil. It is only natural that plastic distributors will want to buy these low-cost plastics, and not the more expensive alternative - recycled plastics. Otherwise, they would not be able to sustain themselves financially during the pandemic.
We cannot help it that so much plastic is produced and we often find ourselves in need of it, but the third and final issue of our plastic problem is something that we definitely can do something about - where our plastic waste goes.
There is much talk about Singapore going zero-waste, but that goal could be unreachable if we do not buck up in our recycling. Plastic recycling is, well, dismal, at about 4% according to the latest statistics.
Why are so much plastics not recycled?
- Entire batches of them had to be discarded away once they were contaminated by food and liquid waste.
- Not all plastics can be recycled in Singapore's context. Polyvinyl chlorides (No. 3) and polystyrene (No. 6) cannot be recycled here. Biodegradable bags cannot be recycled too! Although their chemical composition is meant for them to decompose in landfill environments, they go straight to the incinerator in Singapore.
Image found from orgayana.com - Not all types of plastics have the same value. Higher value plastics, which are No. 1 (PET - polyethylene terephthalate), 2 (HDPE - high density polyethylene) and 5 (PP - polypropylene) are more likely to be recycled as they are more profitable. For the low density polyethylene (LDPE - no. 4), they are soft to the touch and are low in value. As such, recycling companies will incur costs if they recycle LDPE.
- Also, coloured plastics usually have a lower market value as they cannot be dyed flexibly and are not often recycled since they are harder to identify with automatic sorting machines.
- The most unfortunate fact of all - most plastics can only be recycled once or twice. More than that, they get downcycled and cannot be used again anymore. This is unlike aluminium, which can be recycled indefinitely.
Underlying all these problems are the cost of plastic recycling, technical limitations, widespread ignorance of what are considered recyclables by the local population and severe limitations in where our trash could go, now that countries are refusing to take in our waste.
If the statistics and technicalities are too confusing, here is a video that illustrates how plastics get recycled in Singapore:
What can we do for a better future? Here are some of my ideas:
- Do away with the ignorance!
- Spread awareness of container lending programmes, to maximise the use of reusable containers. Or even better, bring your own reusable container whenever you want to get a takeaway!
- Follow social media accounts and personalities who are very knowledgeable about recycling, and level up your recycling skills on the way! This is important because there are actually a lot of products like snack wrappers and masks that are made from composite materials (plastic combined with a lot of other things like rubber, paper, aluminium, etc), and they cannot be recycled locally as we lack the technology for this.
- Businesses and government policies can consider imposing on a plastic tax to better reflect the environmental costs of plastic use, while giving rebates / reusable containers and bags to lower income groups for them to still be able to get their daily essentials.
- Or, they can invest more in recycling research so that we can overcome all these technical and cost limitations that is stopping us from becoming a zero-waste nation.
- Delivery options can change too.
- There are already suggestions calling for delivery companies to make no cutlery and no straw as the default option for deliveries. This is important because disposable cutlery like these cannot be recycled.
- Since large group of people like families and companies are ordering so much online, maybe online retailers can allow them to order in bulk and group orders of the same kind into a single packaging. We can save on packaging costs and it is more convenient this way, as long as consumers feedback to them about wanting their deliveries to be done this way.
- Instead of ordering so many deliveries, we can explore other ways of getting food. I think during the pandemic where it is harder for people to go outside of their homes, vending machines can be a safe and convenient way of getting food and drinks.
- A more direct way to reduce the need for plastic is to pick up cooking as a skill and learn to make our own food. It is a rewarding experience, perfect for curing boredom, and is beneficial for our stomachs and the environment!
- Create your very own waste management strategy. Using what you have learnt and research online, see what needs to be reduced, reused and recycled. Make it a habit to find out more about what the things you use are made up of, and plan how to dispose of them accordingly when you are done with it. Personally, I feel that reducing our consumption is the best way to protect our environment, but we also need many more people to start reusing and recycling things in order to reduce the waste we generate and incinerate.
We need to cultivate a culture where we treat our environment and things with more care and respect. There are already legends and folklores that celebrate that and inculcate such values to young children. One example that I know of are a group of monsters called tsukumogami, which came from a belief that gods and spirits reside in everything of this world, including the objects that we use.
