Letters | Tackle Hong Kong’s single-use plastic problem by taxing disposable lunchboxes and tableware

While having a meal at a local Chinese restaurant, I noticed a mountain of disposable plastic lunchboxes to one side awaiting use. We are no doubt all aware of the problems, both for the environment and health, posed by such single-use plastic items.

Intrigued, I wondered what the Hong Kong government’s position and intentions were with regard to the problem. This very question, among others, I discovered had been asked by Paul Tse Wai-chun in the Legislative Council earlier in the year.

A written reply was made by the Secretary for the Environment, Wong Kam-sing, after consulting the various concerned government bureaus and departments.

“The government has been striving to promote green lunch in schools,” Wong stated, adding that the Environmental Protection Department “engages the catering sector from time to time to encourage restaurants to phase in green measures, such as providing dine-in customers with only reusable food containers and tableware, avoiding the use of styrofoam food containers for takeaway food and welcoming customers to bring their own food containers for takeaway food.”

Couldn’t our government follow this success and launch a similar scheme for disposable plastic lunchboxes? This would really affirm Hong Kong’s intention to become a world-class city.