80% of Hong Kong retailers and hotels have already ditched single-use plastics, but smaller catering industry outlets lag behind
- Simon Wong of restaurants federation says bigger operations better equipped for fast change over to green alternatives
- Environmental Protection Department says survey in first week of ban shows that about half of restaurants overall had changed over to greener alternatives
More than 80 per cent of Hong Kong retailers and hotels inspected by the government have complied with the new ban on the sale or distribution of throwaway plastics, but the catering industry said only about half of the sector’s smaller operators had managed to fall into line with the rules.
Simon Wong Ka-wo, the president of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades, said on Sunday that bigger operations were better equipped to make the change.
“Large-scale restaurants complied with the rule quickly as the government has already implemented the ban,” Wong added. “They do not wish to affect their image given their big names.”
He said that some in the catering sector would charge customers for eco-friendly utensils and that some customers would opt to use their own cutlery instead.
Wong was speaking after the Environmental Protection Department told the Post that more than half of the restaurants it visited in the first week of the ban had already switched to non-plastic single-use cutlery.