Hong Kong’s environment chief admits government has not done enough to explain delayed waste-charging plan
- Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan pledges to arrange 660-litre mobile bins near some old buildings to ease residents into scheme
- ‘If we want to introduce the scheme, we have to find ways to allow residents to understand it easily,’ he says
Hong Kong’s environment chief has admitted that the government has not done enough to explain a delayed waste-charging plan, pledging to arrange more demonstrations showing how the scheme works to raise public awareness.
Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan on Saturday also pledged to install 660-litre (174-gallon) mobile bins near some old buildings which did not have owners’ corporations, residents’ organisations or property management companies to collect rubbish.
He said it would take time for residents to understand the charging scheme, despite a lot of promotion work and hundreds of thousands of people downloading a new mobile phone app for it.
“I don’t mean our work is sufficient, but I want to say we have done lots of work,” he told a radio programme. “Only relying on our work has obviously not been enough. If we want to introduce the scheme, we have to find ways to allow residents to understand it easily.”
Hong Kong leader John Lee Ka-chiu on Tuesday last week told Tse to devise “sharper and clearer” strategies to promote awareness of the plan. Three days later, Tse announced that the scheme’s implementation would be pushed back from April 1 to August 1.
Authorities said the public needed better education on the scheme amid widespread confusion, with a trial set to begin on April 1 at government offices.
The scheme aims to encourage people to recycle more and cut down on the amount of rubbish they throw out by requiring them to buy government-approved garbage bags, available in nine sizes, for 11 HK cents (1 US cent) per litre. Bag sizes range from three litres up to 100 litres.