‘Hong Kong is destroying itself’: residents urged to clean up their act as city faces unprecedented waste deluge

Environmentalists have renewed their calls for Hongkongers to reduce their household waste in the wake of an unprecedented amount of rubbish that has washed up on the city’s beaches in recent weeks.

Residents produce more waste per capita than any other city in Asia and were responsible for 3.5 million tonnes in 2014, according to the latest government figures.

Officials have blamed the unusually high levels of rubbish recently polluting the city’s beaches on mainland cities, suggesting waste has been carried down the Pearl River following heavy rain and flooding.

Cleaners and volunteers collected 78,000kg of marine refuse along Hong Kong’s coastline during the first week of July.

But environmental activists insist a large proportion of the waste is being created by the city’s own residents.

Hong Kong’s huge ecological deficit – the difference between its resources and its capacity to generate them – means that if everyone in the world consumed at the same rate as Hongkongers, they would need three planet earths to sustain them, according to a previous study by the World Wildlife Fund.