Go Green With Your Red Packets (Ang Bao)

Now that Lunar New Year has ended, you are either frantically opening up all the red packets (Ang Bao) to check how much you have or you are opening the remaining ang baos that you did not give out. Nevertheless, what do you do with the empty ang bao packets?

Why not do something good for Mother Earth? You can now recycle them into the Ang Bao Recycling Bins. A few organisations have came out with this initiative to help Mother Earth. These unwanted red packets can become useful materials again.

DBS started last year and is continuing this year to placed their Ang Bao recycling bin at all manned DBS and POSB branches from Jan 28 onwards. These recycling bins will be available until 31 December 2020, so customers can also recycle packets from other festive occasions, such as Hari Raya and Deepavali.

In 2019, DBS Bank collected close to 3 tonnes of red packets. These red packets are sorted, packed and sent to paper mills to be turned into paper pulp. They are processed into recycled paper sheets or new paper products.

OCBC is also collecting empty Ang Bao at all OCBC branches and this year, they collaborate with Tay Paper to bring these excess and made into cardboard boxes. According to Andrew Tay, head of business development at Tay Paper Recycling, it takes approximately 50 pieces of red packets to make a roll of toilet paper, and 70 to produce an A4-sized carton.

The recycling bins used to collect the red packets is made of cardboard boxes that can be further recycled. They will be placed in all OCBC branches till 18 February.

UOB is collaborating with an international upcycling company to convert these red packets into useful furniture, which will then be donated to charity.

Customers can drop their used red packets from 20 January 2020 to 14 February 2020 at designated UOB upcycling boxes. These boxes are conveniently located at 20 UOB branches and 5 UOB offices island-wide.

Social Space, a social enterprise, partners with Tay Paper to recycle the Ang Bao packet as well. All the Ang Bao packet will be recycled into paper rolls/sheets to create new paper products. They will be setting up their recycle bins at their designated location.

MARINA ONE

5 Straits View #01-03
(Garden Tower of Marina One Residences)
*Re-open on 28th January 2020

KRETA AYER
333 Kreta Ayer Road, #01-14
*Re-open on 29th January 2020

Do drop by the different locations with your empty Ang Bao to do a part for Mother Earth. Don’t forget to empty your Ang Bao first before dropping into all the recycle bins.

There will still be around 20% to 30% of red packets unsuitable for recycling.

Paper mills prefer red packets that are not printed with huge amounts of red ink, gold ink or glitter. Red packets not made from paper are not recyclable.

“As a whole, any item made up of mixed materials cannot be recycled in a Materials Recovery Facilities and needs to be incinerated. The usage of these extra materials used in the manufacture also requires more resources, thus contributing even further to one’s carbon footprint,” said SEC’s Mr Liow.