Abundance in the city and waste

It's time for Chinese New Year spring cleaning again. Whenever such occasion comes, my void deck's lift landing would be filled with an unsightly mess of household items and furniture thrown out by the residents. The variety ranged from plants, stationery, dining chairs, tv consoles, to even Phua Chu Kang's boots (yup the yellow ones)!

Even though many of these household items were worn and dirty, a number still seemed to be in working condition. When I looked at these items, uncontrollably, images of the third world countries suddenly flashed in my mind- where people stay in makeshift huts, children have no shoes to wear and families do not even have chairs or cushion to sit in at home. Singapore is a city of abundance indeed but also a place of much waste.

Looking around us, material wastes don't only come from households. At the workplaces, we are also generating tons of stuff that go into the trash bin daily (possibly more than what we threw out from our houses) - used papers, plastic wrappings, mis-printed labels, ink cartridges, boxes, food and whatever else that you could name.

If only people were less lazy and more mindful to seek out avenues to share or donate unwanted items, if only our recycling system is more efficient than having those 'rain-and-trash-collecting' blue bins at void decks, if only we ingrain better daily habits or work processes to reduce and reuse waste... our city would be a more beautiful place from the inside.

:)

Let's ponder the above when we de-clutter for CNY and at the same time start reducing our material wants (be a shopaholic no more).

PS: Stop throwing plants and dirtied plastics into the blue recycle bin for goodness sake! *face palm*

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