Opinion | How Hong Kong can become an environmentally responsible, carbon-neutral city

Name: Maglev train for air rail rolls off assembly line in China
Uploaded: 2022-02-09T22:45:15.000Z
Duration: 51 s
Description: Maglev train for air rail rolls off assembly line in China

Hong Kong should revolutionise its building codes, to enable owners and developers to innovate

Beyond that, we should be investing 2 per cent of our annual GDP to achieve a net-zero carbon economy, generating returns from green initiatives to attract developers and investors

Reading Time:3 minutes

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A customer service representative points to a solar panel at Hong Kong’s first zero carbon building, at 8 Sheung Yuet Road in Kowloon Bay, on its first day open to the public on December 17, 2012. Photo: Dickson Lee

Dennis Lee

Published: 6:45am, 10 Feb 2022

It is good civic behaviour to use fewer plastic bags or recycle used cans and bottles, as producing less plastic waste and recycling is the right thing to do. But is such responsible behaviour helping to “save the environment”, as some slogans suggest, or is it just a feel-good deed with limited positive impact?

The idea of environmental consciousness has been around for the past four decades since the World Commission on Environment and Development introduced the concept of “sustainability” in 1987. Thirty-five years later, the world is still tiptoeing around creating environmentally friendly societies.

The challenge always hinges on the state of social development and available resources. Developing countries’ highest priorities are providing food, clean water and reliable transport and civic infrastructure, much less worrying about being sustainable.

For developed countries, transformation often involves doing away with the old. Stakeholders need to justify the value in destroying what is already functional and profitable.

If any developed city could achieve such a monumental task, it should be Hong Kong. Our city is famous for its collective knowledge, skills and efficiency, not to mention being the gateway to mainland China, which is advancing rapidly in technological and infrastructure development from 5G and digital payment systems to solar panels and maglev railways.

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Maglev train for air rail rolls off assembly line in China

The transformations on the mainland have been vast, but what has Hong Kong achieved in the same period? Other than some promotional rhetoric, it has done practically nothing, other than asking shops to charge 50 cents for a plastic bag and proposing various commercial and domestic waste disposal charging schemes, with the implementation of the latter still unrealised.

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