COST of chicken rice: $4.
Cost of kopi-O: $1.
Cost of clearing your tray: Priceless.
That's the message the National Environment Agency (NEA) and Singapore Kindness Movement are sending come December - at a cost of $10,000.
To encourage people to return their trays after eating, they are joining forces with The Straits Times' "Goodness Gracious Me!" campaign from Monday by supplying tray-return racks at Zion Road hawker centre.
Left behind @ Zion Road.
ST Photo: Joseph Nair
A similar effort at the same place had failed in 2003.
Diners said the return racks were too far away. They'd also said clearing their dirty plates was "icky".
But, with the ST campaign gaining traction, the NEA is trying again - with plans to roll-out the effort to more hawker centres next year. They hope that the move will improve work flow for cleaners - all of whom will continue to be employed.
What started out as a movement in five kopitiams has now expanded to canteens in a school, an industrial estate and a hospital in the span of just a few months.
Clearing trays may sound like a small thing, but to cleaners like Madam Wan Sow Kheng, 46, the small steps taken by individual diners literally made a big difference.
"Sometimes, I have to walk from one end of the hawker centre to the other just to clear a single plate. When you do it many times a day, it can be exhausting," she explained.
And the benefits are not just reaped by the cleaners either.
For diners, it could mean less time waiting time for a table. Now that's certainly something to look forward to nation-wide!
Read the full story here.