Today is the first (and last) time I’ve ever ordered a drink from LiHo. I asked what’s the difference between the Singapore Fruit Tea and the Korea Fruit Tea; the former has passionfruit while the latter allegedly has yuzu. So I went with the latter which tastes like citron tea. Actually, citron (a Korean fruit) and yuzu (a Japanese fruit) are two totally different fruits, and this drink had lots of citron peel and flavour, watermelon, lime and orange slices. And lots of ice.

I said no to the small plastic carrier but I still feel so guilty/regretful because of the unnecessary amount of plastic involved. As a consumer, I would like to contribute less to environmental damage by cutting down or ideally cutting out cold takeaway drinks such as Starbucks, bubble tea entirely. Food outlets can cut down reliance on plastic by swapping to biodegradable, more environmentally friendly products like bioplastics or encouraging customers to bring back their reusable plastic cups.

Governments can increase the availability of recycling bins in areas with high human traffic and disposal of plastic waste (In Tokyo and London, there are many such recycling bins for metals, plastics, etc.) to reduce the number of tonnes of waste we, as humans, produce. In 2018, we produced so many million tonnes of rubbish that by 2035, the one and only landfill in Singapore will be completely full. Just think about it, a man-made island for our trash will have literally no more room to store the plastic water bottles, plastic bags, etc that we used once and threw away.

We might throw a plastic cup away after a single use and forget all about it but that piece of plastic will continue to exist on our earth for a long time. And it will slowly make its way in the form of micro plastics into the fish/meat/water we consume.

As NTU academic Sonny Ben Rosenthal puts it, “There is no rubbish piling up in the streets, so Singaporeans don’t perceive a waste problem or feel personally responsible to reduce waste.”