Letters | Instead of number of Covid-19 cases in Hong Kong, focus on amount of waste created by pandemic measures

Readers discuss how Covid-prevention measures have contributed to Hong Kong being unable to meet a waste-reduction target set in 2013, and the urgency of the need to drop pandemic restrictions like the rest of the world

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Bags full of waste are piled up for disposal at the Tsing Yi community isolation facility on March 9. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Published: 11:30am, 1 Sep 2022

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Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau recently said the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the city should be “upsetting” us all. While I, of course, do not wish ill on anyone, I am upset about a related issue the government never highlights: the unfathomable amount of plastic waste Hong Kong’s approach to the pandemic has generated.

It may surprise some readers to learn of a 2013 document titled “Blueprint for Sustainable Use of Resources” in which the government laid down the target of reducing per-capita municipal solid waste by 40 per cent from 2011’s 1.27kg levels to 0.8kg by this very year, 2022. Few would, however, be surprised to learn that we are likely to completely miss the target. This would have been the case regardless of the pandemic.

The intervening years saw the government standing idly by as our municipal solid waste disposal rate shot up year after year until 2018, when it peaked at 1.53kg. The figure stood at 1.44kg in 2020.

Having miserably failed, the government in 2021 came up with its “Waste Blueprint for Hong Kong 2035”, in which it rehashes a 40-45 per cent reduction target (from the 2020 figure of 1.44kg per person per day) over a 14-year period without specifying a clear target amount, while promoting a “plastic-free” lifestyle.

This while medical workers at outdoor stations don unnecessary full-body personal protective equipment, everyone must wear masks outdoors, “anti-epidemic kits” to every household come in plastic bags, and cleaning staff in full-body PPE regularly disinfect premises where an infected person has been, apparently still believing the long-debunked myth that infection can easily occur by surface transmission.