Government could provide jobs with a beach clean-up unit

While I was reading the letter (online) from Yue On-ching, science adviser of the Innovation and Technology Commission ('Coal has large carbon footprint', September 26), I noticed the pop-up adverts related to the Hong Kong Coastal Clean-up Organisation.

This reminded me late last month, while in Causeway Bay, I noticed a huge banner seeking volunteers for a coastal clean-up.

Although the global organisation behind these clean-ups has done wonders in the past 25 years or so educating people all over the world on how to be more eco-friendly, I don't think that a partial beach clean-up is really going to help much, especially in Hong Kong where there are hundreds of beaches that will miss out on this exclusive event.

Surely the government can afford to create a permanent clean-up department within the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, for instance, with custom-made machinery that could do this job more efficiently in a fraction of the time and with much more visual and environmental impact virtually all year round, then there would be no need for us to advertise that we too have beaches full of trash (most of the time).

A dedicated effort would also provide jobs and who knows, the trash collected could be recycled and the revenue earned from this then fed back into the organisation to support its running costs. Currently, once the detritus is collected by the volunteers and bagged, who takes it to the landfill, or does it get recycled?

There is no doubt that there is a seemingly endless supply of discarded rubbish available still in the country parks and on our beaches, which gives me the impression that people still feel that it's okay to toss their trash overboard or into bushes on a country park trail.