Laying waste
With Hong Kong's landfills due to be full by 2018 and alternatives being thwarted by bureaucratic navel gazing, the time for trash talk has long passed. Stuart Heaver reports
Last year more than 13,458 tonnes of waste were dumped into three large holes in the ground every day in Hong Kong.
Of that total, according to statistics published in October by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD), 8,996 tonnes were municipal solid waste (MSW) – the common-or-garden type produced by households and businesses. That’s equivalent to 1.27kg produced by each and every man woman and child in Hong Kong every day. More than the weight of the Eiffel Tower in Paris is buried in the city every 24 hours; and, not surprisingly, those enormous holes are going to start overflowing very soon.
The fact is that Hongkongers produce a lot more rubbish than our neighbours and the EPD estimates that the first landfill site will be full in 2014, the other two by 2018, at the latest. But those who assume there is already a comprehensive government plan in place to address the issue and avoid the risk of Hongkongers having to wade through a sea of stinking black bags on their way to work are sadly mistaken.
It is a crisis that no one wants to deal with. No wonder many green and recycling groups are hopping mad and urging the government to do something radical to solve the problem.
“Oh yes, it’s a crisis alright,” says Ellen Chan Ying-lung, assistant director of the EPD’s environmental infrastructure division, which is responsible for waste management. Dr Trash, as she is sometimes unflatteringly referred to, is urbane, erudite and eloquent. “This concern is not exclusive to green groups, many of whom think we are cold-blooded bureaucrats who don’t know what we are doing,” she adds.
“We must always talk about waste reduction first. We are trying hard to promote this message and we do engage with green groups and NGOs [to achieve this] but it is idealistic to say recycling will solve the problem.
We need infrastructure, too.”
By infrastructure, Chan means the controversial incinerator plant – or Integrated Waste Management Facility, to give it its formal title – that is planned for a new artificial island at Shek Kwu Chau, off the southern coast of Lantau. The project is embroiled in a lengthy judicial review, and beset by concern over the technology involved and the location.