SINGAPORE — While a crowd of around 55,000 fans sang their hearts out at the National Stadium on the first night of the sold-out Coldplay concerts on Tuesday (Jan 23), a group of 10 volunteers armed with green trash bags waited patiently outside.

They were there for a post-concert clean-up effort organised by Stridy, an environmental not-for-profit organisation.

One of the volunteers is Ms Nutan Shah, a 58-year-old retiree who calls taking care of the environment her passion.

She was there with her husband who is a music fan.

Ms Nutan called it a “win-win for all” as the volunteers get to hear bits from the concert, a chance to make new friends and clean up the environment.

Staging their clean-ups at mainstream concerts by Coldplay and Taylor Swift is part of an effort to generate more visibility that "litter is consistently everywhere", said Mr Yasser Amin, chief officer at Stridy.

Tuesday's volunteer clean-up is Stridy’s first concert clean-up planned in anticipation of the trash surrounding the vicinity of the event after it ends. 

Stridy regularly organises clean-ups in urban areas in collaboration with corporations and schools.

While other high traffic events like Formula One and the National Day Parade typically have cleaners who will clear the surrounding litter once people leave, Mr Yasser said Tuesday's clean-up was organised as a trial as the group was unsure how the area outside the Sports Hub would be left after the Coldplay concerts.

However, they were aware that many non-ticketholders would come to enjoy the concert outside. 

When TODAY reached the National Stadium at around 9pm, there were over 100 members of the public sitting outside one of the National Stadium gates, some with food and picnic mats, listening in to the ongoing concert. 

The group involved in the clean-up first met at around 8pm, sat on foldable chairs and listened to the sounds from outside the stadium. 

At around 10pm as the concert began to wind down, they took their trash grabbing tools and trash bags to canvas the area surrounding the Sports Hub. 

In a clean-up that lasted over an hour, the group cleared hundreds of cigarette butts and collected 3kg of trash.

Stridy has also planned a clean-up for the Coldplay show on Saturday as well as the upcoming Taylor Swift concerts, which begin March this year.

URBAN LITTERING IN SINGAPORE 

The participants from the post-concert clean-up said that the waste collected only points to larger issues of urban littering in Singapore.

Stridy — a portmanteau of “stride” and “tidy” — focuses on tackling waste management issues such as littering and has a mobile application where individuals can track their impact when participating in clean-up activities. 

In Singapore, over 3,700 "strides", or clean-up walks, have been logged in the Stridy app since its inception in 2020.

This has resulted in over 5,800kg of trash being collected.

“Usually in Singapore people think clean-ups can only happen at beaches, but this is not true,” said Mr Yasser.

“When we do clean-ups at East Coast Park, we start at the car park areas and areas around McDonald’s and the playground. By the time we hit the beach, we have bags full of trash,” said Mr Yasser.  

A clean-up organised by Stridy typically spans one hour and will end with a debrief, where Mr Yasser will share more about the importance of clean-ups and issues related to waste management in Singapore. 

“We want people to realise that doing clean-ups is very far from being the solution — this is just plugging a symptom,” he said. 

“But no matter what, these are powerful experiences to show people that littering is an issue.”

Mr Yasser said that clean-ups are the starting point for many to become conscious on the extent of the local littering problem and inculcate more eco-conscious habits like using sustainable materials.

For Stridy’s operations and marketing manager, Ms Vanessa Tan, the clean-ups are only one method of combating larger issues in Singapore, such as a “significant level of over-consumption” and a “lack of accountability” for how people treat their environment.

“Instead of just (thinking) ‘Okay, I’m just going to play here and throw my things here, and ask someone else pick up after me’, what I really hope is that people do feel that they are part of the community and civil society, and that they should take ownership of where they play, love and should want to protect.”