Opinion | Hong Kong’s cutting-edge treatment plants aren’t enough: reduced waste should be on all of our Christmas lists
- Christine Loh says all Hongkongers must get behind the new waste charging bill and commit to reducing the amount of rubbish they produce if they want a cleaner future
The new law will touch each and every one of us, at work and at home each and every day, and also when we shop and eat out. You will be charged less if you separate your waste for recycling. This is the incentive for households and businesses. At the same time, we all have to reorganise to separate recyclables.
Most people in Hong Kong live and work in high-rise buildings. Space needs to be made somewhere in the building to hold the recyclables for collection. Building managers, property owners and tenants have to cooperate for waste separation, and arrangements have to be made for the recyclables to be taken away. Buildings without management and rural villages need some other arrangements.
Waste charging changes the markets for recyclables. When the public does not have to share the cost of dealing with waste, apart from taking it to the landfills, as has been the case all these years, the economic incentive is for efficient disposal.
During the final years of colonial rule, under then-governor Chris Patten, waste management policy focused on landfilling, which was why Hong Kong constructed three giant landfills in what was then far-flung corners of the New Territories.