The NDP 2020 executive committee will explore an opt-out option for the fun pack, among other suggestions, Member of Parliament Louis Ng said in a Facebook post on May 24.
Acknowledging that there were both people who wanted and did not want the fun pack, Ng said that he believes "we should give everyone a choice" and that this will also help to reduce wastage.
The fun pack was already planned to be more environmentally-friendly
Ng added that prior to the changes brought about by Covid-19, this year's fun pack had already been designed to be more environmentally friendly with less items.
He elaborated that green groups had been meeting the committee and himself since 2019 to propose making the fun pack more "reusable" by removing the plastic bag, single-use plastic bottle and discount booklet.
These suggestions were adopted by the committee for this year's fun pack.
As for the new fun pack, Ng added that apart from the removal of the aforementioned items, the "usual clapper, scarf and sun visor" will also be absent.
Here is his post in full:
Post comes amidst a petition of over 77,000 people wanting to opt-out from receiving the fun pack
Ng's post comes amidst a petition that has since garnered over 77,000 signatures, as of the time of writing, from people who want to opt-out of receiving the fun pack.
The petition had been started by one Singaporean, Kaushik Ilango, on the grounds that the resources utilised for the fun pack could be better spent to help those in need.
Ilango also clarified that while he was not against the idea of a fun pack, he hoped that allowing an opt-out option would reduce the potential amount of waste.
More details about the petition here:
Top image from Louis Ng Facebook