A local politician coined the slogan now on the banner slung from the Zim Sydney container vessel with its alleged cargo of hazardous scrap shipped from Australia. Exactly a year ago, Dr John Tse used the phrase 'Hong Kong: first asylum port for foreign garbage' when complaining about the amount of toxic waste sent here and the lack of adequate legislation to stop it.
Dr Tse was referring to rotting household rubbish from the United States. At about the same time, a vessel carrying 700 tonnes of illegal, unrecyclable waste from Holland and Germany was moored in the harbour for nine months while the governments involved argued about which of them should take it back.
The latest arrival in our waters is, it is thought, merely the tip of a toxic iceberg, illegally despatched here but uncovered due to the vigilance of Greenpeace, which says it tracked the waste from its Australian source. The same company responsible for this shipment tried dumping a similar cargo on the Philippines in 1995, breaching Australian laws which say hazardous waste can only be exported if the transshipment port and recipient country agree to accept it.
As Hong Kong is the major transshipment centre for the region, handling an enormous amount of containers, most of the waste goes on to other destinations. Many of these countries' economies are not so developed as ours. They may have stringent laws against the import of toxic waste, but lack resources to police and impose them. Or, like Hong Kong, they value trade above safety, allowing toxic substances to be handled by poor labourers unaware of the risks they face.
According to Greenpeace, the waste carried by the Zim Sydney contains a variety of highly poisonous metals and equipment from computer scrap which, if burned, can release dioxin, one of the most deadly of all substances. It is not something we want in our waters, and nor should we play any part in sending it elsewhere.
Last September laws were enacted to fine or jail those who unlawfully import or export hazardous waste to Hong Kong. So if this shipment does turn out to be an illegal consignment, wrongly labelled, the full force of the legislation should be applied. We must spread the message abroad that Hong Kong is no longer a dumping ground for this kind of material. And we must amend the law so that we do not handle any toxic substances. We are doing the region no favours by passing on such waste to less prosperous neighbours.
