Vanishing rubbish bins and rotten attitudes: Hong Kong’s struggle to stay clean

“My kingdom for a bin!” a friend of mine exclaimed in mock-Shakespearean despair, as we walked down the length of a popular street in Mong Kok, looking for a receptacle to dump a leaking coffee cup she was desperate to get rid of.

We finally found a rubbish bin after walking quite a distance, dripping java on the pavement all the way. And it presented another unnecessary dilemma, because the bin was chock-full of rubbish, and people had dumped all kinds of filth around it.

All this because the government, with the backing of environmental groups, has decided there are too many rubbish bins in Hong Kong. The logic being applied here is that if there’s no place to throw your trash, the streets will be cleaner because you’ll be forced to take it home.

Next week, the government will deploy the first batch of newly designed bins that have smaller openings for depositing waste. The idea is to dissuade people from cramming them with oversized packages. The new bins will feature bigger notices warning the public “not to discard refuse at the side or on top of litter containers and to dispose of bagged refuse properly at refuse collection points”.

What’s more, the government may further reduce the number of rubbish bins across the city, having already removed 15 per cent of them over the past 1½ years. That amounts to 3,100 bins, which is the equivalent of Taipei’s entire arsenal of bins. Singapore and Seoul also make us look like we have a bin fetish.