Sorting the Eco-Citizen: Household Waste and Governmentality in Singapore

This article examines how ecological citizenship is differentially enacted by residents in Singapore through everyday waste practices. It argues that household waste management is a key site through which the state governs environmental conduct by framing waste routines as civic responsibility and mobilising residents to sustain a highly engineered sociotechnical regime. Drawing on a stratified household survey of 672 respondents conducted between December 2024 and January 2025, complemented by interviews with residents, the study develops an Ecological Citizenship Index (ECI) based on waste-related behaviours, perceived responsibility and environmental awareness. It shows that ecological citizenship is shaped less by ethnicity or income than by unequal capacities linked to education, gendered domestic labour, work constraints, housing conditions and neighbourhood infrastructure. The Singaporean eco-citizen thus emerges as a socially differentiated subject. More broadly, the article contributes to debates on environmental governmentality and post-political environmentalism by highlighting how responsibilisation sustains urban order.