You've probably seen reports on plans for building a mega waste incinerator on an artificial island beside Shek Kwu Chau. Though rejected by a Legislative Council panel, the plans have not been abandoned. After four Hongkongers were this month given permission for a judicial review of the plans, the government responded that there is no alternative to building the incinerator at Shek Kwu Chau.
Is this true? Can Hong Kong find no better way of dealing with waste than shipping it to a beautiful coastal area and setting fire to it? There's actually a range of alternatives, ranging from straightforward to one that seems verging on science fiction.
At first, I believed reports that the planned incinerator technology is so advanced that the emissions would be wonderfully clean. After all, Hong Kong used to have four waste incinerators, but closed them all down by 1997 because of concerns over air pollution - and the government would not be so crazy as to plan a similarly dangerous facility today. Or would it?
Information on incinerators reveals that even the best of them emit significant quantities of particulate, which were a key concern with the past incinerators, and have been shown to have more adverse health impacts than earlier realised. Improved techniques might reduce dioxins, yet incinerators produce an array of toxic molecules, along with mercury and cadmium. And chemicals not emitted to the air are trapped in chimney ash so toxic it can qualify as hazardous waste.
So incineration looks unwise, even irresponsible. But doing nothing is not an option. We're among the world's most throwaway societies, with landfills soon to reach capacity.
This profligacy means there is immense scope for reduction, reuse and recycling. Though the government claims a high, 52 per cent recycling rate, this figure is well below the 70 per cent rate achieved in Germany, and we set our sights low compared to San Francisco, which aims for zero waste to landfills by 2020. Currently, Hong Kong's recycling efforts are prone to being so passive as to verge on being useless.