Speeches
Catalyst 2026 - Dr Janil Puthucheary
17 June 2026
Speech at the Catalyst 2026 by Dr Janil Puthucheary, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment on 17 June 2026.
Good morning, everyone.
A very warm welcome to Catalyst 2026. Your presence today reflects something important: a shared commitment to building a more sustainable Singapore.
We are halfway through 2026, which has been designated as the Year of Climate Adaptation — a recognition that the climate is changing rapidly and that we must adapt to these changes. It is fitting, then, that we gather here today under this year's Catalyst theme — innovating towards a sustainable future.
To our exhibitors, we extend our deepest appreciation for your participation. Catalyst serves as an opportunity to showcase cutting-edge technologies and practical solutions to the very real challenges our environmental services sector faces.
In many ways, what you have presented here today is a teaser of what is to come. As we look ahead to CESG 2027, which will command a significantly wider reach and audience, we warmly invite you to bring these innovations to that greater stage.
IMDA’s refreshed Environmental Services Industry Digital Plan
In order to innovate, we need to be able to understand, deploy and scale the latest technologies. I want to take a moment to recognise the work of NEA and the Infocomm Media Development Authority who have jointly developed the refreshed Environmental Services Industry Digital Plan, or ES IDP, which we are launching today.
The ES IDP, last updated in 2021, has been thoughtfully redesigned. Rather than organising solutions by stages of digital readiness, it is revamped as a dynamic digital guide which maps solutions to key business touchpoints covering operations and scheduling, on-site service delivery, and corporate functions. Companies across the Cleaning, Waste Management, and Pest Management subsectors can now quickly identify and adopt the right digital tools for their specific business needs.
Beyond the redesign, the refreshed ES IDP also incorporates AI-enabled innovations, and with proven industry impact. One such example is RS Facilities Services, a homegrown SME, which is deploying Hivebotics' Toilet Cleaning Robot at Our Tampines Hub. This is not just a proof-of-concept, sitting in a laboratory. It is deployment addressing a real operational challenge — persistent manpower constraints in environmental services. By reducing reliance on manual cleaning for routine tasks, it enables cleaners to focus on areas that require human intervention and quality assurance – improving manpower productivity by 50% and achieving consistent hygiene standards of more than 80% across shifts. That is exactly the kind of success story the ES IDP is designed to enable and replicate. I encourage everyone here to explore the refreshed ES IDP on IMDA’s SMEs Go Digital platform and consider how this kind of solutions can support your own operations.
Spurring Innovation with Hard to Recycle Residues & Carbon Capture Exploration
While digitalisation is a powerful tool for all businesses, the environmental services sector is also one grounded in science and R&D. I am happy to share two new initiatives.
First, we are launching ‘Towards Resource Efficiency and Sustainability for Urban Environments’ or TREASURES for short. TREASURES is Singapore's first dedicated national research centre for residues and toxic industrial waste management. It is jointly led by NEA and the Nanyang Technological University with participation from other institutes of higher learning.
TREASURES represents a long-term commitment to tackling the waste streams that have, until now, been the most challenging to address. It is aptly named, as these materials cannot easily be recycled, but hold significant value to industry when properly recovered and managed.
TREASURES will bring together stakeholders from research, industry, and government to recover value from these waste streams — and in doing so, begin transforming Semakau Landfill from a place where waste ends its journey into a hub for resource recovery. That is an ambitious vision, but it is the right one for Singapore to pursue. We know that Semakau is our only landfill and it is filling up fast. For every cubic meter of Semakau we have to think about it very carefully. If we can think about how every cubic meter has a resource recovery potential, what Semakau means to us can then shift.
To initiate that work, TREASURES will open its inaugural grant call today, running until 17 August 2026. The focus will be on toxic industrial waste management and landfill transformation. I encourage researchers and industry partners to seize this opportunity. The problems are complex, but the potential to make a lasting and meaningful impact is equally significant.
Second, beyond land constraints, our waste sector also faces a carbon constraint. To sustainably manage waste in the long run, we will need to address the carbon footprint of our waste management infrastructure. That is why we will be launching a pilot carbon capture project at one of our Waste-to-Energy Plants – a meaningful step aimed at addressing the carbon footprint of waste management. We look forward to sharing more details as the project takes shape.
Waste Statistics & ZWMP Review
Technology and innovation alone cannot carry us to our goals. That is why we launched the Zero Waste Masterplan in 2019 to provide a framework for advancing circularity. And since then, we have been taking concrete steps to turn that framework into action.
Recycling Initiatives Rolled Out Under the 2019 ZWMP & 2025 Waste Statistics
Let me take this chance to recap some of the key milestones since 2019, as reflected in our latest waste and recycling statistics, which we are publishing today.
The results of our recent 2025 survey on household recycling show that more residents now know what can and cannot be recycled. This seems like a small step, but it is an incredibly important first step – public awareness and public behaviour. The public knowing what the right thing is to do and then doing that right thing is essentially the vision that we have around the management of waste. Public awareness continues to be an important issue to address, but we have made tangible progress, and it reflects the sustained effort of many partners who have helped to carry the Recycle Right message into homes and communities across Singapore.
The Recycle Right campaign was launched alongside the Zero Waste Master Plan to address one of the most persistent barriers to effective recycling — contamination, where recyclables mixed with food waste or non-recyclable materials compromise the recyclability of adjacent materials.
Beyond awareness, the Zero Waste Master Plan identified three priority waste streams for targeted intervention — e-waste, packaging waste, and food waste. Allow me to address each in turn.
On e-waste, in 2021, we introduced Singapore's first Extended Producer Responsibility — EPR — scheme, placing the responsibility for end-of-life collection and recycling on the producers and importers of electrical and electronic equipment. This was a structural shift in how we approach producer responsibility.
On packaging, a major milestone this year was the launch of our second EPR scheme — the Beverage Container Return Scheme — targeting clean stream collection of plastic and metal beverage containers.
We are also investing in upstream efforts to make packaging more sustainable. For example, we are supporting a project under the Closing the Resource Loop (CTRL) Funding Initiative to develop novel packaging materials that are more amenable to recycling. Solving the recycling problem means working on both ends — what we collect, and what we design.
On food waste, we have introduced mandatory food waste segregation and reporting requirements for large commercial and industrial generators, and we expect the commencement of the Tuas Nexus' Food Waste Treatment Facility to make a meaningful difference to the recycling rate which has remained stable at 18% in 2025.
We are also finding ways to extract value from food waste by investing in valorisation. Under the CTRL Funding Initiative, we have awarded three such proposals — one of which is Mottainai, whose representative is speaking here today. Mottainai is working on a project that converts barley spent grains — a by-product of brewing — into plant-based tuna products.
These are real and meaningful initiatives. However, our overall recycling rate was 52% in 2025 — down from 59% in 2019. The domestic recycling rate fell from 17% to 11% over the same period, while the non-domestic recycling rate fell from 73% to 67%.
We have to have an honest examination of these numbers. The global economics of recycling have shifted significantly — logistics disruptions, commodity price volatility and tightening import restrictions have made recycling harder to sustain commercially, not just in Singapore but worldwide with paper prices having been significantly depressed and plastic offtake difficult to secure. This is precisely why a review of the Zero Waste Masterplan is necessary and timely, and why we are approaching it with fresh eyes.
What’s Working – Reduced Waste Generation Per Capita & Per GDP
Before I turn to what needs to change, let me highlight some key data that sometimes get overlooked.
Even as recycling rates have dipped, the absolute amount of waste recycled has increased. We are recycling more today than we were last year.
Additionally, each person in Singapore generated about 0.83 kilograms of waste per day in 2025 — 21% less than in 2015.
Non-domestic waste per unit of GDP has also fallen by more than 30% over the last decade. These numbers reflect a genuine shift in how Singaporeans and businesses think about consumption. That foundation matters as we look ahead.
The Case for Reviewing the ZWMP
We have seen success in waste reduction efforts, the concurrent challenges faced in recycling mean we must do more to divert waste from Semakau and extend its lifespan beyond 2035. This is why we will be reviewing our Zero Waste Master Plan — to take stock, and to find new ways to accelerate our shift towards circularity.
A key component of our review will be how we can improve the economics of recycling by obtaining cleaner, less contaminated recyclables.
Domestic recycling is also a priority for us, and we will be reviewing our current National Recycling Programme to increase the effectiveness and volume of recyclables recovered from households.
On paper and cardboard, many of us will be familiar with the sight of blue bins overflowing with cardboard boxes — a telling sign that households and businesses are generating significant amounts of cardboard and are eager to recycle responsibly. NEA has been working closely with our Public Waste Collectors to make it easier for households and trade premises to do just that.
Furthermore, we are open to industry collaboration and to initiatives that enable upstream segregation across the domestic and non-domestic sectors. If we can recover cleaner streams of recyclables, we can reduce the costs of recycling as we do away with resource intensive segregation and cleaning steps.
As we review our efforts around recycling, I want to reaffirm an important principle in circularity. While recycling helps us to ensure that materials find new useful life, it is even more important to reduce the waste generated in the first instance, by reducing consumption, and encouraging reuse where possible.
Everyone has a role to play – individuals to make the necessary changes in your lifestyle, entrepreneurs to bring new and viable ideas to encourage reduction and reuse, and industries to continue upstream redesign and waste reduction efforts.
The government will also explore how we can better support efforts to shape consumption behaviour, and the growth of new, more sustainable business models.
We will also examine how we report our annual waste statistics, to better reflect efforts across all 3Rs and waste disposal — that is what ultimately goes to our Waste-to-Energy plants and Semakau Landfill. How we measure progress shapes how we think about it, and we want our metrics to tell the full story.
We will review how technological solutions, including AI, can support our efforts across the waste value chain — from improved sorting and contamination detection to optimising collection logistics.
Lastly, we will update our projections for the lifespan of Semakau Landfill, including measures to ensure sufficient landfill capacity beyond 2035.
Much of what I have outlined today – reducing and reusing more, recovering cleaner recyclables, and rethinking how we measure progress – will form the backbone of this review. In the coming months, MSE and NEA will be engaging the public, industry, and non-governmental organisations on ideas and proposals. We aim to have a refreshed Zero Waste Master Plan ready in 2027 and are committed to ensuring that it reflects the best thinking in Singapore.
Closing Remarks
Please allow me to close with this.
We are in the Year of Climate Adaptation – a year that asks us to confront uncomfortable realities with ingenuity and resolve. Climate change, resource constraints and the need to do more with less — these are not peripheral concerns. They are central to our story, and no single agency or organisation can solve them alone. The review of the Zero Waste Masterplan is not simply a government blueprint — it is an invitation to every Singaporean to help shape how we live in the decades ahead.
Catalyst is a testament to what becomes possible when we come together with a shared sense of purpose. When government, industry, and innovators convene to examine the same challenges and commit to finding solutions in partnership — that is when meaningful and lasting progress is made.
To everyone present today — thank you for your time, expertise and commitment to a more sustainable Singapore. I hope today's conversations spark new ideas and forge partnerships.
On that note, I declare Catalyst 2026 open. I wish you all a productive and inspiring day ahead.