Hong Kong library books dumped on pavement shows just how wasteful city’s officials are
About 10,000 volumes – some still in their original wrappers – were discarded without a thought being given to recycling
Our officials have not reached the stage where they order the burning of books. But they do throw them away – a lot of them.
The Ombudsman has launched a probe into an incident in which 300 boxes – containing more than 10,000 books from the Central Library in Causeway Bay – were disposed of on a pavement in Ap Lei Chau, Aberdeen. They weren’t even sent for recycling.
Many books were brand new: some were still in their original wrapping, while others barely had any check-out records. The incident happened two years ago. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department only now says it will cooperate with the Ombudsman.
Presumably, that means the department was still throwing away library books even after that embarrassing incident was exposed by the local media. We wonder how many there were.
“The LCSD was thus criticised for being wasteful and not environmentally friendly,” a spokesman for the Ombudsman said in a statement.