Reducing Use of Disposables for Dine-in Meals at Hawker Centres

42 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Sustainability and the Environment (a) for each year in the past five years, how many and what percentage of stallholders at hawker centres have not provided disposables for dine-in meals; and (b) what steps the Ministry will take in the coming years to further reduce the use of disposables for dine-in meals at hawker centres.

Ms Grace Fu Hai Yien: Since November 2016, the National Environment Agency (NEA) has disallowed the use of disposable crockery and cutlery for dine-in meals at all new hawker centres. Since September 2018, this policy has also been applied to all new stallholders at existing hawker centres. All stallholders in the eight hawker centres that have adopted centralised dishwashing services under the Productive Hawker Centres programme have also switched to using reusable common crockery for dine-in meals.

While NEA does not collect statistics on the number of stallholders at hawker centres that provide disposables for dine-in meals, the majority of our stallholders use reusable crockery and cutlery to serve meals.