In the last years, Singapore has set clear targets to transition towards a circular economy. To advance on those targets, the country has introduced policies and strategies to encourage businesses and society to adopt sustainable practices. In 2019, Singapore launched a Zero Waste Master Plan, which lays out strategies for waste and resource management within the context of the circular economy. With this plan, Singapore aims to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills by 30% by 2030. And it targets food, electronics, and packaging, including plastics, as priority waste streams. This report provides an overview of Singapore’s food waste management with special emphasis on food waste valorization strategies. Through an exploratory study and conducting interviews with different stakeholders, i.e., individuals, government, businesses, research institutes, key drivers and constraints to increasing food waste valorization were identified. The report also includes the view of food waste experts on valorization strategies that can be applied in the Singaporean context.

Singapore is a city-island-state in the transition towards a circular economy. The country has already implemented policies and adopted several approaches that contribute to closing loops for e-waste, packaging waste, and food waste. However, other areas that also contribute to a circular economy have not been fully explored in Singapore. One of these areas is resource recovery from wastewater streams. In this report, we review state-of-the-art technologies to recover valuable components from domestic wastewater and sludge. These technologies are analyzed based on technological maturity and applicability for the recovery of phosphate, and organic compounds such as volatile fatty acids, bioplastics, and biomass. The report covers the current status of the recovery of these compounds in the Singaporean context and identifies factors that can promote or prevent the application of the recovery processes.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of anaerobic co-digestion of brown water (BW) [feces-without-urine] and food waste (FW) in decentralized, source-separation-based sanitation concept. An effort has been made to separate the yellow water (urine) and brown water from the source (using no-mix toilet) primarily to facilitate further treatment, resource recovery and utilization. Batch assay analytical results indicated that anaerobic co-digestion [BW+FW] showed higher methane yield (0.54–0.59L CH4/gVSadded) than BW or FW as a sole substrate. Anaerobic co-digestion was performed in the semi-continuously fed laboratory scale reactors viz. two-phase continuous stirred-tank reactor (CSTR) and single-stage sequencing-batch operational mode reactor (SeqBR). Initial 120d of operation shows that SeqBR performed better in terms of organic matter removal and maximum methane production. At steady-state, CODs, CODt, VS removals of 92.0±3.0, 76.7±5.1 and 75.7±6.6% were achieved for SeqBR at 16d HRT, respectively. This corresponds to an OLR of 2–3gCOD/Ld and methane yield of about 0.41L CH4/gVSadded. Good buffering capacity did not lead to accumulation of VFA, showing better process stability of SeqBR at higher loading rates. The positive findings show the great potential of applying anaerobic co-digestion of BW+FW for energy production and waste management. In addition, daily flush water consumption is reduced up to 80%. Decentralized, source-separation-based sanitation concept is expected to provide a practical solution for those countries experiencing rapid urbanization and water shortage issues, for instance Singapore.

11 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables, 1 appendix supplementary data https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.03.234.-- This work is a contribution to the consolidated research group 2014 SGR 498 of the Generalitat de Catalunya | We analyzed the concentrations of trace metals/metalloids (TMs) in the water, sediment and plankton of two semi-enclosed marine coastal inlets located north of Jurong Island and separated by a causeway (SW Singapore; May 2012-April 2013). The west side of the causeway (west station) has residence times of approximately one year, and the east side of the causeway (east station) has residence times of one month. The concentrations of most of the TMs in water and sediment were higher in the west than in the east station. In the water column, most of the TMs were homogeneously distributed or had higher concentrations at the surface. Preliminary evidence suggests that the TMs are primarily derived from aerosol depositions from oil combustion and industry. Analyses of TMs in seston (>. 0.7 μm; mostly phytoplankton) and zooplankton (>. 100 μm) revealed that the seston from the west station had higher concentrations of most TMs; however, the concentrations of TMs in zooplankton were similar at the two stations. Despite the high levels of TMs in water, sediment and seston, the bioaccumulation detected in zooplankton was moderate, suggesting either the presence of effective detoxification mechanisms or/and the inefficient transfer of TMs from primary producers to higher trophic levels as a result of the complexity of marine planktonic food webs. In summary, the TM concentrations in water and seston are not reliable indicators of the bioaccumulation at higher trophic levels of the food web | This work was funded through grant MadeInPlankton from Singapore National Parks Board - Singapore (NParks) and DHI-NTU Research Centre and Education Hub, Ung EliteForsk grants 10-093759 and 10-094773 from the Danish Ministry for Independent Research to GD, and Projects PROTOS (CTM2009-08783), TOPCOP (CTM2011-23480) and FERMI (CGL2014-59227-R) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness to AC | Peer Reviewed