My Take | Hong Kong now the dumping ground for waste from world’s two largest economies
No more excuses: city’s environmental authorities have to get a grip on e-waste being shipped here from the US and debris flowing in from Guangdong
Officials are always dreaming of turning Hong Kong into a hi-tech hub for this and that. Well, we have certainly become a real hub – for garbage, both regional and international.
Give us your junk, your e-waste and your debris, we take all of it in. Our environmental watchdog is asleep at the wheel, and our government is too timid to demand action from across the border.
Since the start of summer, the city’s shorelines have been deluged with massive amounts of debris, most likely coming from Guangdong.
Meanwhile, Americans have turned the New Territories, especially Yuen Long, into a big junkyard for their electronic waste. We are being buried in waste produced by the world’s two greatest economies. In just the first nine days of this month, government cleaners have collected more than 85 tonnes of garbage washed up on our shores. Simplified Chinese words and quality-control symbols used on the mainland give a pretty good idea where a lot of the debris came from.
