Explainer | Does Hong Kong face another ‘paper jam’ environmental crisis as recycling woes return?
- Low rates for collectors may mean they abandon their jobs, as streets pile up again with discarded cardboard
- Major plant in mainland China has announced it will cut what it pays to exporters
As a restless city teeming with activity, Hong Kong produces a staggering amount of municipal solid waste every month, a sizeable chunk of which is paper.
Piles of waste paper mostly end up in landfills or find their way to local recycling firms, to be processed and shipped across the border. But as recycling prices tumbled to a two-decade low recently, fears have surfaced about a return to last year’s “paper jam crisis” that plagued the city’s streets.
Where does waste paper in Hong Kong go?
With no papermaking plant in Hong Kong, virtually all waste paper generated either goes to landfills, or is sold and exported abroad for recycling.
In 2017, a monthly total of 76,000 tonnes found its final resting place in Hong Kong’s landfills, accounting for 24 per cent of all municipal solid waste received by these areas. About 66,000 tonnes of waste paper was recycled each month, and almost all of it was exported, mostly to mainland China.