Straits Times 27 May 07

Garbage of Eden
Pulau Semakau, the artificial island created in 1999 to take in Singapore's trash, is
setting an example for the future of conservation and urban planning, reports Eric
Bland
SINGAPORE'S only landfill is a 20-minute ferry ride south from the main island. On Pulau
Semakau, coconut trees and banyan bushes line an asphalt road. Wide-bladed grass, short
and soft, forms a threadbare carpet. The only visible trash is a bit of driftwood on the rocky
shore, marking high tide in an artificial bay. Water rushes out of the bay through a small
opening, making waves in the Singapore Strait. The smell of rain is in the air.
You would never know that all the trash from Singapore's 4.4 million residents is being
dumped here 24 hours a day, seven days a week - as it will be for the next 40 years. This is
no ordinary landfill: the island doubles as a biodiversity hot spot, of all things, attracting rare
species of plants and animals. It even attracts ecotourists on specially arranged guided
tours. Eight years in the making, the artificial island is setting an example for the future of
conservation and urban planning.
Pulau Semakau, which is Malay for Mangrove Island, is not the first isle of trash to rise from
the sea. That dubious honour goes to a dump belonging to another island nation, the
Maldives, off the southern coast of India. In 1992, the Maldives began dumping its trash
wholesale into a lagoon on one of its small islands. As the island grew, it was named
Thilafushi; its industries include a concrete manufacturing plant, a shipyard and a methane
bottler.
What distinguishes Semakau from Thilafushi - and almost any other landfill - is that its trash
has been incinerated and sealed off from its surroundings. Singapore burns more than 90 per
cent of its garbage, for reasons of space. Since its independence from Malaysia in 1965,
Singapore has grown to become one of the world's 50 wealthiest nations. Not bad for a city
state little more than one-quarter the size of the smallest US state, Rhode Island. Its rapid
rise, however, created a huge waste problem. In the early 1990s, the government began to
heavily promote a national recycling programme and to campaign for industry and residents
to produce less waste.

From trash to ash

SINCE 1999, garbage disposal companies have been recycling what they can - glass, plastic,
electronics, even concrete - and incinerating the rest. The Tuas South incineration plant, the
largest and newest of four plants run by the Singapore Government, is tucked away in the
south-west part of the main island. A recent visit by New Scientist found it surprisingly clean
and fresh. The incinerator creates a weak vacuum that sucks the foul air from the trashreceiving room into the combustion chamber.
Not that incineration is problem-free. When Singapore began burning garbage, its carbon
emissions into the atmosphere rose sharply while its solid carbon deposits dropped,
according to data gathered by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. During the
last couple of years, however, its emissions have stabilised. 'Our recycling programme has
been more effective than we anticipated,' says Mr. Poh Soon Hoong, general manager of the
Tuas South plant.
Once they started burning trash, the big question was where to put the ash. In 1998, the

Government built a 7-km-long rock bund to connect two offshore islands, Semakau and
Sekang, and named the new island Pulau Semakau. The complex cost about S$610 million.
The first trash was dumped there in April 1999, the day after the last landfill on the main island
closed. 'We weren't trying to design an island that would attract tourists,' says Semakau's
manager Loo Eng Por. 'Disposing of the waste was a matter of survival.'
How they do that is key to the island's success. At the receiving station, cranes unload the
ash from barges into dump trucks, which drive out to one of 11 interconnected bays, called
cells, where they dump their debris. The seawater is first pumped out of a cell, which is then
lined with a layer of thick plastic to seal in the trash and prevent any leakage. Materials that
can't be burned or recycled, such as asbestos, are wrapped in plastic and buried with
dirt. Each month, samples are tested from the water surrounding a working cell, and so far,
there is no sign of any contaminated water seeping into the ocean. Four of the 11 cells have
been filled to about 2m above sea level, then topped off with dirt and seeded with grass. A
few trees dot the landscape. 'Gifts from the birds,' says Mr. Loo. 'We plant the grass, but not
the trees.' Once all the cells are filled, which will be in 2030 or so, workers will start over
again, dumping burnt trash onto the plots and covering it with earth, gradually forming taller
hills. The government predicts that by 2045 its recycling and waste elimination programmes
will make its landfills obsolete.
One complaint about Pulau Semakau was that it called for the destruction of mangroves on
part of the original island. Singapore's National Environmental Agency saw to it that the
mangroves were replanted in areas adjoining the landfill. 'We expected some of the new
mangroves to die off,' says Mr. Poh. 'But they all survived. Now we have to trim them back.'
The island now has more than 13ha of mangroves, which serve as a habitat for numerous
species.
'Pulau Semakau is quite a success,' says Ms. Wang Luan Keng of the Raffles Museum of
Biodiversity Research at the National University of Singapore, and by all accounts the
ecosystem is thriving - so much so that since July 2005, the island has been open for guided
tours. 'Visitors are stunned and amazed to see the rich biodiversity,' says Ms. Ria Tan, an
expert in ecology who runs wildsingapore.com, a website on nature-related activities in the
area. At low tide, nature groups walk the intertidal zone, where they can see starfish, snails
and flatworms. Coral reefs are abundant off the western shore, and dolphins, otters and green
turtles have been spotted. Fishing groups come to catch and release grouper, barracuda and
queenfish. Birdwatchers look for the island's most famous resident, a great billed heron
named Jimmy, as well as brahminy kites and mangrove whistlers. In 2006, the island logged
more than 6,000 visitors, and that number is expected to rise.
The island is crucial to Singapore's future. 'People may say the Semakau landfill is bad,' Ms.
Tan says. 'What is the alternative? Toss it to some other country? Kill off some other habitat
on the mainland? The garbage has to go somewhere. I see the Semakau landfill as an
example of one aspect of successful, sustainable urbanisation.' She shares the concerns of
city planners: 'The resource constraints that Singapore faces today will be those the rest of
the world will face eventually,' she says.
That is why the rest of the world should be watching: Time will tell whether Semakau is a
useful model for conservation. Meanwhile, the island's managers would like to see it become
a permanent nature reserve where people can come to hike, relax and learn about nature,
without a guide. As Mr. Loo says: 'It's a great place to get away from the boss.''

Eric Bland is a science journalist based in Boston, Massachusetts. This story appeared in the New Scientist
magazine.