80% of Hong Kong’s small and medium-sized restaurants not ready for disposable plastics ban in April, lawmakers told
- Lawmakers told check of 20,000 small and medium-sized restaurants finds most not prepared to ditch plastic
- News comes after criticism that not enough being done to get trade and public up to speed on ban
Most of Hong Kong’s small and medium-sized restaurants are not prepared for next month’s ban on throwaway plastics, lawmakers have been told.
The environment chief said on Wednesday a check on thousands of members of the trade found that more than three-quarters were not ready for the ban, which will come into force on April 22.
“We visited around 20,000 small and medium-sized restaurants to explain the new regulation and found that 80 per cent of them are not getting non-plastic products ready for the ban,” Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan told lawmakers.
He provided the update after some hit out at the lack of public education on the ban in the run-up to the implementation of the first phase of the two-stage process.
Tse promised that more work would be done to help the trade get up to speed and said that penalties would only be imposed on restaurateurs who refused to fall into line with the rules.