No litter, seniors leave dinner venue spick and span

My Paper AsiaOne 11 Feb 15;

SINGAPORE - Senior citizens have been praised for cleaning up after themselves at a dinner event on Sunday - a contrast to the litter younger partygoers left behind at Clarke Quay over the weekend.

After a Changi Simei Golden Jubilee Dinner on Sunday, elderly folk who attended the event cleared their own tables, said a contributor to citizen journalism website Stomp, who wanted to be known only as Tay.

"Proud" of what the seniors did, Tay said that the floor was left "spotlessly clean" too.

The dinner, held at the open field next to Eastpoint Mall, was open to Simei residents who paid a fee of $5, while those from the pioneer generation paid a discounted price of $2, Shin Min Daily News reported yesterday.

It is understood that some 500 people were there for the dinner.

Tay said that what the seniors did "should put the young fans at the Laneway Music Festival at Gardens by the Bay to shame".

At last month's music festival, an appalling amount of rubbish was left behind by about 13,000 concertgoers.

Tampines GRC MP Baey Yam Keng said that it was good to see senior citizens being conscientious at the dinner event.

"When attending events, we should not dirty the venue. We should clear the trash we create," Mr Baey told Shin Min. While there were cleaners at Sunday's event, the seniors still helped to clear their tables, so this made what they did even more significant, he added.

But the same cannot be said of those at Clarke Quay.

Last Friday night and Saturday morning, many irresponsible partygoers left behind trash at Read Bridge, The New Paper reported yesterday.

The paper observed that many people drank and left bottles, cans and plastic bags after they were done.

For cleaner Keria Peli, it is not uncommon for him to collect 50 bags of litter in one night on the bridge and its vicinity.

On bad days, Mr Keria, 49, can collect 30 bags just from one round of cleaning the bridge. This is despite there being at least five dustbins there.

Going by the photos of the litter, it did not seem much had changed after last month's Laneway "meadow of trash" incident.

At the time, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Facebook that Singaporeans should pick up their own litter so that the country could move from a "cleaned city to a truly clean city".

Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong later said that without foreign workers, "Singapore is likely to become a 'garbage city'".
But their words may have fallen on deaf ears.

At Clarke Quay, many partygoers appeared to think nothing of littering and assumed someone would clear the rubbish for them, The New Paper said.