Paper Trail
Even lap sap ladies are getting fired due to the recession.
Next to the Kwun Tong and Tsing Yi Public Cargo Working Areas, giant heaps of scrap metal and waste paper are piling up. The global economic downturn has led to the closing of many factories in China and the halting of infrastructure projects, which has in turn resulted in a drop in the demand for recyclable materials exported from Hong Kong such as waste paper, plastic and scrap iron, commonly used for packaging on the mainland.
Monthly statistics show exports of local waste paper falling from 113,767 tons in September to 87,842 tons in October; waste plastic from 100,000 tons in August to 76,739 tons in October; and scrap iron from 116,596 tons in August to nearly half as much in October.
Lo Yiu-chuen, chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Recycling Business (HKARB), calls this the “ice age” of the recycling industry. “The price of the recyclables has dropped so much. A regular recycling shop can now only take half the waste that they used to collect and make $700 per day, which barely covers operating costs. A lot of them are losing money now.”
Mr. Cheung, the owner of a recycling station in Wan Chai, confirms that there’s plenty of hardship these days. “We earned a dollar per kilogram of recyclables a few months ago, but now we can only make 45 cents,” he says. “We’re lucky to still be surviving.” Lo speculates that half of the recycling companies might go out of business after Chinese New Year.
While a drop in the export of recyclables might normally be expected to produce an extra burden on our already over-pressured landfills, data from the Environmental Protection Department for October shows no dramatic increase from previous months or the same period last year. Lo from the HKARB says this is because less waste in general is produced from the usual channels in winter. But Michelle Au, the Environmental Affairs Officer of Friends of the Earth, believes it is because big recycling companies have been stocking up on the waste, waiting until prices return to decent levels before they start selling again.
If one thing’s for sure, it’s that the downturn in the recycling business has struck the underprivileged particularly hard. Mrs. Lau, a 70-year-old cardboard collector in Sheung Wan, says the stuff she collects now is only worth 60 cents a kilogram, half of what she earned before, and she expects it to drop further.