NEA notes blase attitude among teens especially
Amresh Gunasingham & Poon Chian Hui Straits Times 18 Nov 10;
LITTERING may be an age-old issue, but a new breed of litterbugs is giving the authorities something to worry about.
Young offenders may still be a minority, but they are growing in number. One in 10 - or 4,278 - of those caught last year were young people under the age of 21. This is up from 1,835 in 2006.
Some 400 of them, between the ages of 18 and 21, were also served Corrective Work Orders for chucking cigarette butts and food wrappers at popular hang-outs like shopping malls, parks and bus stops.
But more worrying than the numbers, says the National Environment Agency (NEA), is that young people, particularly teenagers, are displaying a 'more nonchalant' attitude towards littering.
The excuses come thick and fast and carry a familiar tune: 'I couldn't find a bin', 'littering does not harm anyone', and 'many people do it'.
Full-time national serviceman Samuel Chi, 20, admitted as much: 'Sometimes, when I am about to get into a car and I happen to be eating something, I will throw the wrapper in the carpark.'
Student Wong Ee Wen, 20, said she feels awkward backtracking to pick up litter that she has dropped.
For years, schools have attempted to play a role by organising, for example, clean-ups within their campuses or at beaches. But these tend to be done on an ad hoc basis, partly due to a lack of funding.
National University of Singapore sociologist Paulin Straughan, who worked on a study of the behaviour of litterbugs last year, said that young people may use littering as an outlet to rebel.
'In schools and at home, they have authority figures around and have to conform to norms and follow the rules. For some kids, when the glare is lifted from them, it is a chance to break the rules,' the associate professor said.
Some also litter simply because they can get away with it, given that the 100 enforcement officers at NEA cannot trawl the entire island at the same time.
The three-decade-old anti-littering message could also have become lost in translation, said Prof Straughan.
'Young people generally do not like to be told what to do. In school, they tend to get told what to do all the time.'
Full-time national serviceman Benjamin Lin, 19, recalled participating in clean-ups at East Coast beach while in primary school. But he admitted that much of what he learnt about littering was gleaned outside the classroom, from advertisements at bus stops and MRT stations and the newspapers.
The NEA's latest programme for schools, launched last week, is trying out a different tack. It hopes to tap a key finding in a recent study of litterbugs, which showed that among the young people who littered, many had a strong sense of responsibility for the environment.
The Students Embrace Litter-Free programme hopes to give students more say over how they learn about the topic.
In classrooms, for example, they will be encouraged to participate in role-playing lessons, where various scenarios involving litter will be played out and students will be asked to think about the issue, said an NEA spokesman.
'This will help students reflect and become more conscious that there is no excuse to litter regardless of the circumstances.'
Schools will also adopt a public space, say, a park or beach in their neighbourhoods, which they will be tasked with keeping clean.
One school that has already started doing so is Nan Hua High School, which has students monitoring the cleanliness of the bus stop outside their school every day.
Said Mr Chia Yew Loon, its head of department for community relations: 'Not only are students asked to pick up litter found at the bus stop, they are also encouraged to remind one another and even members of the public to keep the area clean.'
The authorities hope to get at least half of all the primary and secondary schools and junior colleges to take up this programme within the next two years.
So far, 26 schools have indicated an interest in the programme.
Property agent Pek Hong Hai, 44, who has two teenage daughters, said he has never told them not to litter.
'Perhaps I take it for granted that the schools would have already told them about it,' he said.
