SINGAPORE - Since about a week ago, residents in Housing Board (HDB) flats in Sengkang began receiving a folded plastic cutout in their mailboxes. Sent by Sengkang Town Council (SKTC), each cutout can be assembled to create a box for holding fliers. 

SKTC is the latest town council here to roll out the initiative – which minimises leaflets being stuffed between gate grilles and littering the floor outside one’s unit.

HDB said it does not have an official record of when the scheme was started, but an online search showed that Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council piloted the initiative as early as 2011. 

“All residents in Sengkang, around 55,000 of them, will receive a flier box,” a spokesman for SKTC told The Straits Times. 

The town council said it has already received several calls from residents asking when they will receive the flier boxes. 

Most town councils ST spoke to said residents can request for the boxes, which will be mailed to them for free. 

These include Marsiling-Yew Tee Town Council (MYTTC) and Tampines Town Council (TTC).

“Residents are generally happy to receive the flier boxes, as it provides them with more convenience,” a spokesman for MYTTC said, explaining the ink on fliers can sometimes damage the paintwork on metal gates. 

MYTTC said it started distributing the boxes from 2022. All households in the area, or more than 50,800 units, have received one each. 

TTC said it adopted the measure in 2020 after receiving feedback from residents that fliers were being left around and outside their units, or underneath their doors. 

“We are receiving regular requests from residents for our flier box, and the feedback has been positive,” TTC said. 

TTC told ST that it will produce enough flier boxes for all 70,000 HDB units under its charge, if there is demand for it. 

Other town councils are in the midst of adopting the initiative. A spokesman for Chua Chu Kang Town Council said it is currently in the planning stage.

Some residents like Mr Jerald Chua, 30, who lives at Bedok Reservoir Crescent, think the initiative helps to keep the neighbourhood tidy. 

“In the past, fliers were prone to fly away and end up as litter along the corridors,” he said.

He added that the boxes can also double as a safe spot for small delivery parcels.

But not all households seemed to be using the issued boxes.

In Sengkang’s Rivervale Walk neighbourhood, out of the 96 units ST visited, just 33 had the box fixed onto their gates. 

An additional five units had made their own boxes, or had decorated the white box they were issued with their preferred design. 

Anchorvale Link resident Madam Ann Ong, 62, said she would not be using the flier box despite having just received it in her mailbox. 

She said: “We don’t receive a lot of fliers nowadays, and we tend to just throw them away anyway.”

Some residents in other neighbourhoods said they would not use the flier boxes. 

Ms Samantha Young, 29, a Toa Payoh resident, said flier boxes could worsen problems with junk mail. 

“I think it encourages people to put more fliers around our houses, which is not what we want,” she said. “It is just more rubbish for me to have to take out at the end of the day.”

For those more particular about design, some said the flier boxes distract from the look of their gates. 

Mr Lau Yu Fan, 30, who lives in Tampines Avenue 5, said that he would not be using the plastic boxes because he did not think they were aesthetically pleasing. 

“I would rather spend some money to buy a nice woven basket and hang it on my gate instead,” he said. 

But one man’s eyesore is another man’s treasure. 

A four-year-old post on online marketplace Carousell listed a “brand new HDB flier box” for sale at $15. The listing has since been marked as sold.