Advertisement
Opinion | Hong Kong can’t wait any longer for a waste charging scheme
- Hong Kong is more than a decade late in confronting the problems of its municipal waste, whose growth has far outstripped the city’s population
- We simply don’t have any wiggle room now; for the future sustainability of Hong Kong, lawmakers must agree and vote for the scheme
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
“Do you know where your trash goes?” This is a question I enjoyed asking friends and colleagues while I was chairman of the Sustainable Development Council and working on the issue of municipal solid waste in Hong Kong. Unsurprisingly, most people had no idea.
It’s all too easy to stick our heads in the sand when it comes to the waste we produce. However, we are more than a decade late in confronting this critical issue in Hong Kong. The amount of municipal solid waste our city produces has increased 80 per cent in the past 30 years, outstripping its population growth of 36 per cent. In 2018, the average Hongkonger generated 1.53kg of waste daily. That’s more than a half tonne of waste per person per year.
To say we are facing a crisis is a profound understatement. At the end of 2014, when the Sustainable Development Council released its report and recommendations for controlling municipal solid waste, Hong Kong already lagged well behind the efforts of other cities in dealing with this global problem.
Now, one of the key measures we recommended in 2014 to help stem our waste crisis – the charging scheme – has only just reached the Legislative Council in the form of a proposed bill amendment.
The scheme was always going to be a hard sell in Hong Kong, but it is particularly so in this year of Covid-19 and economic crisis. Like anything that costs people money, there will be resistance from vested interests. Earlier this year, despite 34 hours of discussion and 15 committee hearings, Legco was not able to get the amendment to the table.
Advertisement