Commingle
[A Guest Post by Eunice and Ka-Neng Au]Note: April 2020 update at the bottom of this post. Growing up in a densely-populated county in New Jersey, Eunice learned to separate her recyclables from the weekly trash (rubbish). Aluminum, glass, cardboard, newsprint, mailers, and eventually plastics, too, would be placed curbside in their own containers. As the local district reviewed best practices for recycling, we eventually reduced the need to sort and streamlined the process to just two containers. Living in Singapore, we’ve come to see that all recyclables are combined into one commingled bin where the individual distinctions of each item no longer mattered. With the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus (2019-NCOV) coinciding with the traditions…