I am Vaddadi Divya Asritha and this is my Literature Review. Our research is on the attitudes and perspectives of people towards NEWater.
What is NEWater?
With the Singaporean population growing everyday,there is a need to find alternative to satisfy the human's needs and that is NEWater.
It is a high-grade reclaimed water that has been purified with advanced membrane and ultraviolet technologies. NEWater is ultra-clean; it has passed more than 30,000 scientific tests and surpasses the World Health Organization's requirements for safe drinking water. It is the third "tap" in the "Four National Taps" strategy to provide Singapore with a sustainable and diversified supply of water. The other three taps are water from local catchments, imported water from Malaysia and desalinated water. NEWater is expected to meet 40% of Singapore's water needs by 2020. (Lim, 2010)
Attitudes of people towards NEWater:
To some people, the idea of drinking recycled sewage is akin to eating cockroach-chip ice cream—unthinkable, even if shown to be safe.
There were some reports that had negative tones or opinions about recycled water. Many of the reports were related to how NEWater would affect bilateral relations with Malaysia. Politicians in Malaysia took pot-shots at NEWater, warning their people that the water in Singapore could be unclean and even suggesting that Malaysia should sell sewage and not water to Singapore.
Opinion polls were conducted in Queenstown. The results showed that many Queenslanders felt uncomfortable drinking water that came from sewage and industrial waste. (Ching, 2010)
Although reclaiming the water is good,there are also some advantages and disadvantages of NEWater.The first advantage of NEWater is that it help to reduce Singapore's dependence on other countries for imported water.This means that Singapore does not solely depend on Malaysia for water and even if Malaysia were to terminate their Water Contract with Singapore one day,Singapore would not be affected much.The Second advantage is that NEWater helps to maximise the use of water on Earth.Through recycling the water,it helps to maximise the use of resources left on the Earth to ensure that there are sufficent supply to last the future generations.The third advantage of NEWater is that it helps to save space and it is energy efficent which means that money would not be wasted in the process.
The first disadvantage of NEWater is that it is very expensive.It requires a lot of processes to obtain the NEWater which means that a lot of money would have to be spend.The product itself is costly which means that if it was to be sold in supermarkets,it would not be cheap and not many people would be able to afford it.The second disadvantage is that not many Singaporeans are used to the NEWater yet.Most of the Singaporeans are still used to the imported water from Malaysia and it would take a period of time before they get used to the NEWater. The third reason is that many Singaporeans don’t fancy the idea of drinking processed sewage water. (Xinyi, 2010)
References:
Jean Lim. (2010). NEWater. Retrieved from http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_1555_2009-08-11.html
Leong Ching (2010). Eliminating ‘Yuck’: A Simple Exposition of Media and Social Change in Water
Reuse Policies (Water Resources Development). Retrieved from http://www.spp.nus.edu.sg/docs/Asiasia/2011/Leong_Ching-Eliminating-Yuck.pdf
Xinyi. (2010, May 7). NEWater(Pros and Cons). Message posted to http://x3pureelement.blogspot.sg/2010/05/newaterpros-and-cons.html
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