9/23/2019

3 Rs - Repair, Reuse and Restraint

They design lifespans of products such as smartphones and laptop computers other electrical appliances to be artificially short, so that consumers are forced to ditch functional products and acquire new ones.

Some devices are also designed to be difficult to repair, or with replacement parts that are tightly controlled by the company, thereby making it challenging to extend their lifespan through replacing faulty parts.

Device repair services have also become few and far between such that consumers find it easier to buy a whole new device.

Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/wasteful-practices-of-affluence-repair-cutlery-plastic-bags-11880308

The above report is about wasteful habits of affluent Singaporeans. It is also about saving mother earth, about climate change and disappearing animals from this planet.  It is also about the existence of humankind while we, the supreme species on earth, charted our own course of death and destruction.

Today everyone is crazy and in heat about saving a few pieces of plastic bag when each piece of plastic bag when rolled into one is not bigger than the size of a 50c coin. Yes, it is wasteful consumption of plastic and the impact is severe when they are not properly disposed off and ended up everywhere, in the ocean, in the stomach of fish and mammals and killing them. What is the solution?

Saw a documentary by some kids in CNA proposing that instead of using one plastic bag for each item of purchase, they should put all in one big plastic bag. Just throw the fish, meat, vegetable, fruits, buns and cakes, all into on bag and save 10 bags. Brilliant ideas from the kids. But the kids at the end also knew that it was a foolish idea. But it was not worse than stupid people proposing to ban giving plastic bags to hold their purchases in supermarkets and make people buy more plastic bags to store their waste and swills for disposal.  The cheap plastic bag is the most efficient piece of invention of humankind. It is how it is being used and how it is being recycled or disposed that is the problem.

But the real problem is not the use of plastic bags but consumption. The article quoted above exposed the real problem behind the survival of the human species and mother earth. It is reckless and mindless consumption for the sake of economic growth. Use and throw, buy newer ones, pulling down houses and buildings to build more houses and buildings, scrapping good working vehicles after 10 years or less to buy new ones. These are very serious and expensive wasteful behaviour of human species. But no, no one is looking at them as they make economic sense. How much energy and material are wasted compare to the use of plastic bags? Such mindless behaviours are destroying mother earth! No, just turn a blind eye and go for the good thing, economic growth. Economic growth is everything. We need economic growth to get rich and appear to be richer. Nevermind about irresponsible and meaningless increase in population. Is that all there is to living?

The most serious human indiscretion and irresponsible act to destroy mother earth is increasing human population for the sake of economic growth. How much more is being consumed by one human bean alive for 80 or 90 years? How much more destruction would be due to his existence? If human beans start to think about controlling population growth, for human beans to live better quality of life, not to produce human beans for the sake of economic growth, there would be much less destruction and threats to the existence of human civilisation and the end of the world.  The main threat to the destruction of mother earth is CONSUMPTION by an ever increasing growing population. By maintaining and controlling population growth, the problems of a dying mother earth, the wide spread use and disuse of plastic bags would be more manageable without have to do crazy things and stupid things to try to solve a problem that humankind has created for itself ie economic growth through increasing population and mindless consumption.

Do we need more crazy and stupid ideas to control use of plastic bags and to control climate change? Do we need 10m population? Why do we need 10m population? How many more plastic bags would be used with 10m population when the amount used by 5.6m is already unacceptable?

Another example of saying one thing and doing another is the F1 races here, extended to 2021. Speed kills and the govt is promoting Speed thrills by spending billions of dollars on the wasteful F1 races. What does it say?

27 comments:

Anonymous said...


Hi good morning......

Not say I want to say...,

Whether it is 3R or 9R, who cares!

Don't waste time lah! TCSSssss very very very easy lah!

In Sg, the very very very expensive city state, what is most most most important is 3M! Not 3R! Not 3R! It is 3M!1

Make More Money!

No money no talk. No money you only LAN LAN! You die your business!

So...it is your survival or 3R? 3R can eat?

The choice is yours!

Hahaha....

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

@ DON’T PANIC, ENTREPRENEURSHIP & CAPITALISM WILL SAVE THE DAY!

My go-to general solution to any problem which crops up….especially ones which threaten our lives, liberty and our pursuits of happiness is : MORE CAPITALISM.

Yes, folks, the good old PROFIT MOTIVE...if there’s a buck to made, the effort will be applied, funding will “magically” appear, the work will be done, and the solutions to the problems will emerge…

WHERE THERE IS MUCK, THERE IS MONEY. Let’s face it, no one likes a dirty environment. Most of us also love our waterways and seas and many of us like watching sea creatures---marvelling at their majesty in their environment, or just fucking hunting them, killing them and eating them because---be honest here---many sea creatures are DELICIOUS! 😋

However, if the water in the sea is as dirty as the water in the toilet we shit and pee in, how can we enjoy clean food from the sea?

Enter: THE ENTREPRENEUR here is a diverse group of smart, motivated people who look for “solutions to problems” and seek to make FAT PROFITS from such ventures.

When humans see “profit” many of them are motivated to seek out such wins. Very soon there are many in the space so they COMPETE FIERCELY with each other---each one trying to “out-do” the other in quality, speed and cost. Often, there is cheating going on...which invokes “the solution to a problem is MORE capitalism” idea...and we have SHORT SELLERS to teach the cheaters a nice lesson, and earn a nice chunk of lucre in their “venture”.

Will there be “problems” from having a 10 million-soul population? Of course there will be...big, fucking, uncomfortable problems...so many of them.

So the thought of these problems have enabled Redbean and his nay-saying disciples to argue AGAINST open borders and increased immigration. Obviously they never factored in the idea: “the solution to a problem is MORE capitalism”...i.e. entrepreneurs to design and build smarter buildings, infrastructure, more implementation of AI and robotics, waste management, energy security etc. Boys and girls, there are BIG BUCKS to be made, and jobs galore for the people with the required marketable skills---i.e. the HUMAN skills robots don’t have...yet.

So, cheer up. Be positive you sullen, negative, depressing bunch of sour-faced motherfuckers! 😂👯 Or just fuck off and die quickly 💀⚰️
🤡

Anonymous said...

Glory be to the Father (LKY)
The Son (LHL)
And the Hole-ly Gohs (GKS & GCT).
All in the name of Glory.
A glorified life and a glorified legacy.
GDP growth at ALL COSTS.
That means, Millionaire Ministers will get Bonuses growth at ALL COSTS.

AT WHOSE COSTS?????????

imho said...

All these climate mongers want to introduce a global order so they approve everything - every construction, infrastructure, engineering need their approvals ie million dollar stamp. Its about $$$ again.

Actually to help climate is very easy. Consume less, fly less, shop less, less babies, stop going to the moon, stop making weapons etc. But globalists will feel the most in their shares price.

Anonymous said...

Formula 1.
- how much does it cost all our Singaporean citizens?

- who benefits?
- definitely not all Singaporeans benefit

- exactly who benefits?
- how much do they benefit?
- why are we subsidizing these people?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 9.36am

Less babies? U are 1o8% correct!

Bingo!

Anonymous said...

COE
- scrap the car after 10 years

Definitely very wasteful
- PAP government is definitely not environmentally friendly here
- maybe too greedy in collecting so much money from COEs?

How much money does PAP collect from COEs every month?

Anonymous said...

Hi 953am

Nothing wrong to collect more money! 3M! 3M! 3M! Correct?

Hahaha.....

Anonymous said...

@ 9.59am

You must be stupid.
Don't understand economics is it?

It's definitely bad for the economy if the government to collects too much money

Anonymous said...


Hi 1003am

Yes! I'm very stupid!

Please note that the govt did not put a knife at your throat to ask you to own a car!

NocarnoCOEtopay!

Relax lah.......

Anonymous said...

All those talk about saving the earth are just hubris. One big global furniture conglomerate talked about saving the earth by not providing customers with plastic bags, but what about the big fat catalogue that they printed every year and distributed to households. How many trees were cut down to produced all those papers?

The whole world's economic growth is built on unabated wastage of resources, so that factories can continue to churn out throw away products that consumers can throw away at the slightest hint of malfunction, because nowadays they are made so that repairs are ridiculously expensive, and therefore considered unwise, and may cost as much as buying a new replacement. One example that comes to mind is printers, that are priced so cheap that changing the ink cost almost the same as buying a new printer, which ironically also comes with a set of ink.

Things are all made not to last, otherwise factories making lasting products will not survive. It is all intentional, not because they make lousy products. Would you believe that many years ago my fridge, not a popular brand, served me for almost 35 years. Nowadays you are lucky if fridges can last 8 to 10 years.

This is a habitual wasteful world, already imbued with the wasting habit, not stolen as Trump would put it, but copied from the West, and can never change, whatever campaigns about saving the earth they may trot out. After all, the Government directly encouraged wastage by their implementation of the COE system for vehicles. Would you believe that it's implementation is to curb car growth or is it to collect easy money and laughing all the way to the bank? Governments are the ones that set the tone, all for economic growth and GDP bragging rights. Governments all help the rich.

But when the melting ice continues, rich or poor will all go the same way. They think that building sea walls will solve the problem?

The West generated so much waste that they dumped them on third world countries for decades, and now these countries have refused to be their dumping ground. Now that the East has itself fallen into the Western habit of wasting resources, who is going to save the earth and prevent climate change?

Anonymous said...

Singaporeans were trying the save Singapore by not producing more children to increase the burden on the island with more consumption and wasting resources.

What did the garment do instead? It threatens the people with economic growth. No growth, no good life. The people still don't bite. So the garment went out on a mad population drive by importing more and more people into the island to consume more services, food, resources etc etc, to increase economic growth, the easy way.

Who are the real culprits in destroying Singapore and mother earth? import more people, build more housing, build more shopping centres, food courts, hawker centres, good for the economy......

Anonymous said...

@ 9.48am

Who Benefits?
----------
Who benefits when Ministers are paid million dollar salaries?

How does Singaporeans benefit when a Minister is paid a million dollar salary?

Anonymous said...

All these comes from Humans' Greediness, it's been like this since Homo Sapiens species evolve from bad to worse till this planet's destruction & new humans evolved thru space age or so..

Anonymous said...

The day will come when some countries will just dump waste into the sea. It has already happened discreetly, with ships loaded with waste sailing from somewhere to nowhere and came back empty of it's cargo of waste. It's dumped into the sea of course! Humans are like that. So long as your place or yard is clean, who cares about dumping in rivers and seas.

Just watch those YouTube videos of polluted rivers and islands of waste floating in the ocean. Islands of waste as large as small countries of the world. But who cares about who created them! So it will continue!

The real problem comes when nuclear waste, that have been piling up for decades have no where to be stored and you can only guess what they will do. Some that were already dumped into holes on islands in the Pacific are leaking. We do not know what is the condition of those dumped in the oceans decades ago. The day will come when we will be enjoying radioactive seafood without realising it. Maybe we are already at that stage with what is happening at Fukushima, despite all the attempts to cover up the real situation.

Anonymous said...

Thank God, at 11.10 am, Chee and TCB still not in the line of fire. But it will come, as sure as this morning's sunrise.

Anonymous said...

@All,

Nevermind! Only tcss here on this TCSS blog is still good!!

Sinkies no guts to do Yellow Vest protests like in France!

Anyway humans are NOT evolved to be environmentally conscious --- we are evolved to CONTROL nature, not let nature control us.

Anybody in S'pore spending more than $600 per month is basically contributing to EXCESS waste & greenhouse emissions & environmental destruction.

Tell that to the naive students & your MPs!

But who wants to live like a penniless retiree or monkey in the jungle?!?

At least be man enough to admit this, and not be hypocrites.

Anonymous said...

#VTO
#STOP-FEEDING-THE-MONKEYS

Virgo 49 said...

Next generation babies born without backsides and limbs and arms and cocoos..

The other babies making machines still have their own.

Anonymous said...

Knn lar

Anonymous said...

Hey, GD evening Uncle Chua Chin Leng, perhaps you may let a little toastmasters lecturer called Oliver Chua Rui teach u a lesson about climate change , listen to his teachings: " ...Let’s teach our parents a lesson for once..” . Or u could juz ignore him as one nimcumpoo ( as it's for the young gens not for your own grandkids wat).

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

@ 828:

This:
https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2019/09/23/young-environmentalists-urge-singaporeans-to-band-together-to-demand-a-systemic-change-from-the-government-sg-climate-rally/

is just part of a coordinated global effort by the climate scientists. The coordination and planning were fantastic. Schools in Europe and elsewhere closed for the protests as students marched and attended rallies. Collectively, this is the BIGGEST climate protests ever and one of the biggest globally coordinated "social awareness" events.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/21/across-the-globe-millions-join-biggest-climate-protest-ever

Are you WOKE yet?

Anonymous said...

If cars don't knock you.

Pmd will.if gas don't blow

Got pmd batteries will.

Anonymous said...

New citizen need accident.

Anonymous said...

@Matilar 23Sep2019 9.15pm

Hello Matilar. The little kid was question the Sinkieland's climate change & declared that parents or people like Uncle Chua listen to him for once only, r u AWare? Or is Matilar=Uncle Chua Chin Leng?

Anonymous said...

Something big is stiring underneath the Earth.
Something big is stiring up in Heaven.
Something big is stiring amongst the humans.
Something big is warning that something big is coming.
Coming for You!
Whoever You are, You know Yourself.
That Something BIG is definitely coming for YOU!

Anonymous said...

Why The State Is A Parasite On Society - Part 2


Let me put it this way. Since government is institutionalized coercion – a very dangerous thing – if you want a government it should do nothing but protect people in its bailiwick from physical coercion.

What does that imply? It implies a police force to protect you from coercion within its boundaries, an army to protect you from coercion from outsiders, and a court system to allow you to adjudicate disputes without resorting to coercion (and without having to pay very costly court fees that deter the commoners from seeking justice).

I could live happily enough with a government that did just those things. Unfortunately, the US Government is only marginally competent in providing services in those three areas. Instead, it tries to do everything else conceivable against your individual will, freedom, safety annd security.

The argument can be made that the largest criminal entity today is not some Colombian cocaine gang, but the US Government. And they’re far more dangerous. They have a legal monopoly on the force to do anything they want with you.

Don’t conflate the government with America; they’re different and separate entities. The US Government has its own interests, as distinct as those of General Motors or the Mafia. In fact, I’d probably rather deal with the Mafia than I would with any agency of the US Government.

Even under the worst circumstances – even if the Mafia controlled the United States – I don’t believe Tony Soprano or Al Capone would try to steal 40% of people’s income every year. They couldn’t get away with it. But – because we’re said to be a democracy – the US Government is able to masquerade as “We the People,” and pull it off.

Incidentally, the idea of democracy is an anachronism, at best. The US has mutated into a domestic multicultural empire. The average person has been propagandized into believing that it’s patriotic to do as he’s told. “We need libraries of regulations, and I’m happy to pay my taxes. It’s the price we pay for civilization.” No, that’s just the opposite of the fact. Those things are signs that civilization is degrading, that the members of society are becoming less individually responsible. And therefore that the country has to be held together by force.

It’s all about control. It's all about power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Most of the people that gravitate to government like to govern the country, meaning to control other people. Contrary to what we’re told to think, that’s why the worst people – not the best – want to get into government.


Continues ...