Singapore is looking into publishing the photos of litterbugs in community spaces so the public can help identify them.

Offenders who are identified will be subjected to the law, such as being charged in court and fined, the National Environment Agency (NEA) said.

However, NEA added that in cases involving young children, the elderly or vulnerable groups, it will exercise care.

Combating littering

In a bid to combat littering, the number of closed-circuit television deployments will be increased by four times to around 1,000 a year to step up surveillance against littering.

Senior Parliamentary Secretary Baey Yam Keng revealed these figures on March 4, during the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment's Committee of Supply debate on his ministry’s spending.

More and larger scale and higher visibility blitzes will also be conducted at "cleanliness hotspots", from 21 in 2023 to more than 100 in 2024.

Corrective Work Orders which involves recalcitrant offenders being required to clean public areas for at least three hours, will be conducted at these hotspots.

Between 2021 and 2023, about 1,600 Corrective Work Orders were issued, it was revealed.

The latest initiative comes in the wake of a 15 per cent increase in feedback on littering from 2022 to 2023, compared with the two years before the pandemic.

Baey said more needs to be done even though Singaporeans are "generally civic-minded":

"However, we continue to observe some persistent issues, that require us to go beyond just public education."

Making coffee shop and hawker centre toilets cleaner

Singapore is also setting up The Public Toilets Taskforce to review ways to improve the cleanliness of public toilets, particularly those at coffee shops and hawker centres, through infrastructure, cleaning and public education.

It is co-chaired by Baey and Andrew Khng, who is the chairman of the Public Hygiene Council.

Close to 240 public toilet-related enforcement actions were taken against premises owners or managers in 2023, NEA said.

A study in November 2023 found that the overall perception of public toilets was still unfavourable.

But the same study said that while hawker centre toilets were perceived to have improved, coffee shop toilets were seen to be as dirty as they were three years ago.

Top photos via Singapore Police Force & NEA