WHEN IT comes to the environment, one of Hong Kong's biggest problems is a load of garbage. Literally. With each passing year, the mountain of muck mounts. The Environmental Protection Department (EPD) says we will run out of landfill between 2015 and 2019. Which makes waste disposal a pressing issue, unless you happen to be a cockroach, a rat or a total slob.
The Government claims it has the matter in hand, with its Waste Reduction Framework Plan: a collection of initiatives aimed at boosting recycling, cutting down the amount of rubbish dumped in landfills, exploring methods of turning waste into energy and making polluters pay for their sins. Green groups generally are unimpressed by the plan and believe firmer action is necessary.
One thing on which both Greens and Government agree, however, is that we urgently need to slow the rate at which we are ...
Filling the landfills Every soft-drink can we toss in the trash, each foam lunchbox we hurl in the bin, and just about any other item of waste you care to name end up as companions on a long and smelly journey to their final resting place in Hong Kong's three landfills.
According to the EPD, the average piece of rubbish travels more than 50 kilometres on an epic voyage that includes trucks, crushers and ships. The city's bins are emptied, usually once a day, into the lumbering orange trucks operated by the Urban Services Department and the Regional Services Department. Each truck in the fleet of about 400 can carry about five tonnes. When the trucks are full, they deposit their load at one of the seven Refuse Transfer Stations, two of which are on Hong Kong Island, the rest scattered around Kowloon and the New Territories.
At the transfer stations, the garbage is dumped into a container, soaked with water to cut down on dust and crushed to reduce its volume. The stations employ powerful fans to suck away the smells and ease the nostril-searing aroma that plagues those unlucky enough to live within whiffing distance.
Once compacted, each container holds 15 tonnes of rubbish. Most of the Refuse Transfer Stations, which usually work to capacity, can process about 1,000 tonnes a day although the newest - and biggest - at the West Kowloon reclamation area, which opened in August at a cost of $627 million, crunches through a whopping 2,500 tonnes of trash daily. The capacity of this plant removed 'hundreds of waste-delivery trips from the highways every day,' according to the EPD's deputy director, Mike Stokoe.
