An upside to Hong Kong protests scaring away tourists and the economy shrinking last year? Residents threw out less rubbish
- On average, each resident sent 1.47kg of solid waste to landfills every day in 2019, down 3.2 per cent from the year before, official data shows
- But Green Earth group warns that city will miss its waste reduction target for 2022 and urges passage of disposal charge bill
However, environment groups warned the slight reduction was not enough to meet the city’s 2022 waste reduction target and the sustained decline in the recycling rate of paper and plastic showed a failure of waste policies.
On average, each Hongkonger sent 1.47kg of municipal solid waste, which includes domestic, commercial and industrial debris, to landfills every day last year, according to the figures released by the Environmental Protection Department on Monday. In 2018, that figure stood at 1.53kg. Recycling rates, meanwhile, fell to 29 per cent from the 30 per cent in 2018.
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“In contrast with the government’s ‘Blueprint for Sustainable Use of Resources 2013-2022’, which aims to lower the per capita disposal rate to 0.8kg per person by 2022, each person would have to dump 45 per cent less rubbish to achieve this goal,” Green Earth said. “We can almost certainly say there is no hope of reaching this target.”
Environmental authorities had credited the slight decrease in waste disposal to last year’s social unrest which scared off tourists, particularly those from mainland China, and the economy shrank by 1.2 per cent in 2019.
The contraction was especially reflected in the disposal rate of commercial and industrial waste, which decreased by 4.5 per cent to 4,503 tonnes per day.
The economy has continued to be battered by the coronavirus pandemic this year and reduced consumption could lead to a decrease in food waste, the largest component of municipal solid waste, according to Green Earth’s founder and executive director Edwin Lau Che-feng. But the amount of plastics such as single-use dining utensils and disinfectant wipes would increase, he said.