STA provides packaging solutions responsibly, helping the world move towards a future in which the plastic packaging we use causes minimal impact on our planet. We recognise the importance of climate change, along with our role in helping people to achieve and maintain a good quality of life.
Plastics offer vital benefits to society. STA has seen how unmanaged plastic waste has become a serious issue. We want to play an active role in finding lasting solutions. STA is concerned about the global plastic waste issue. In some places, waste management infrastructure and traditional recycling don’t exist, or plastic waste is not managed appropriately. As a result, plastic waste can end up as litter. Plastic don’t belong in our oceans, rivers or landscapes. They belong in our homes, hospitals, schools and businesses, delivering benefits to everyone in Singapore and around the world, every day.
We want to play an active role in finding lasting solutions to this challenge, from innovating new bio-renewable and new sustainable materials to engaging and collaborating with industry and customers to drive effective solutions.
At STA, we welcome the United Nation’s (UN) sustainable development goals, which seek to tackle the world’s environmental challenges by 2030. We aim to play our part in helping governments, societies and customers to achieve them. We fully support the Paris Agreement’s goal to keep the rise in global average temperature this century to well below two degrees Celcius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celcius.
STA requires each of its suppliers to meet the highest standards for all goods and services. Our requirements include a commitment to rigorous quality assurance. In addition, suppliers must be committed, as we are, to ensuring the highest standards of Environment Responsibility.
In Singapore, waste management is performed to the highest standards by our government. We do not dump plastic wastes into the sea or into landfills. Rather these are incinerated and even the heat generated is not wasted but contribute to power generation and water desalination.
Below is an excerpt from the Straits Times. Published 17 Oct 2020.
Reusable plastic bags most eco-friendly option in Singapore. Next best is single-use plastic bag, instead of one made of paper or biodegradable polymers.
Findings by researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and their colleagues in Finland were published in August in the Journal Of Cleaner Production.
Assistant Professor Grzegorz Lisak, director of the Residues and Resource Reclamation Centre at NTU's Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute, who led the research, said: "Our main message is that reusable plastic bags are the best option, provided that they are reused many times - over 50 times to be precise.”
Context is important, he added. This is because bags have to be transported across different distances, depending on where they come from and where the city that imports them is. Each country may also deal with waste differently. In Singapore, which has a closed waste management system with incineration treatment, using plastic bags - both reusable and single-use types - may be the best option that is currently available, he said.
However, the paper bags found in Singapore – i.e. smaller sized bags found at food outlets and department stores – are suitable primarily for single use, due to their small size, lack of durability, and permeability to water. Hence, they cannot be used as bin liners. The production process of paper bags requires the usage of larger volumes of water as compared to plastic bags (Ayalon, Goldrath, Rosenthal, & Grossman, 2009) and can cost 6 times higher than plastic bags (Njeru, 2006).