SINGAPORE - Singaporeans are taking more personal responsibility for keeping food spaces clean, says a new survey, with 95 per cent of all respondents returning their trays and crockery every time they ate at a coffee shop or hawker centre in 2022. This is a 46 per cent increase from the number in 2021, following a fine that was introduced...
Straits Times file
Additionally, 84 per cent of respondents said they believed that the individual diner is primarily responsible for keeping tables clean, rather than cleaning staff or outlet operators, up from 58 per cent of respondents in 2021. Professor Paulin Tay Straughan, sociology professor at SMU and co-lead of the study, said the findings of this year’s study regarding food spaces were exciting from a sociological perspective, because they pointed towards norms of a greater personal responsibility for keeping coffee shops and hawker centres clean.
An attitude of thinking that cleaners are mainly responsible for keeping public spaces clean will pose an increasing problem as the Republic grapples with a shortage of cleaning staff and the cost of cleaning services goes up over time, said Prof Straughan. She added: “It’ll certainly be hard for us to empty trash and so perhaps there are areas which we should save for the limited amount of help that we can get, but it is doable for us to wipe down table tops after using them.”
For instance, rubbish bins should still be cleared in a timely fashion, and there should be a number for citizens to call if they see that they are not, to have their concerns addressed. Even more radical frameworks of responsibility could be created, with citizens of an area given ownership over the cleanliness of their neighbourhoods, she suggested.
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