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Author: Lao Minyi
2020-06-22 07:30
Last update date: 2020-06-22 07:30"Hong Kong 01" used GPS to track the whereabouts of the recovered plastic bottles, and found that more than 60% of the recovered plastic bottles were eventually transported to landfills or waste transfer stations. In this side, the housing estates are falsely recovered, and there is a recycling plant in that side that is facing the situation of insufficient plastic collection, and some waste plastics are imported from foreign fields to support the operation.
This year, the government will use the Eastern District, Kwun Tong and Shatin as pilot projects to implement the "Central Glue Collection", which is expected to increase the recovery of half of the non-industrial and commercial waste rubber in these three districts to about 1,300 metric tons per year. Some contractors rely on economic incentives to increase the amount of recycling, but when expanding the recycling point, they were rejected on the grounds of "epidemic situation" or "someone is making a tight decision". Even if there are recyclers serving more than 500 housing estates, they still face a long-term lack of glue collection, and only receive about 200 metric tons per month on average. However, in order to cope with factory operations, about 80% of the waste rubber processed depends on foreign imports, but the price of the incoming goods is one expensive Times, lamented that the public awareness of recycling is still insufficient.
One of the series "Where is the waste rubber"
"Where is the waste plastic" series
(1) Insufficient recovery manufacturers imported foreign rubber support operations, the central rubber collection started to hit the reef
(2) Rebirth of discarded bottles and expensive plastics is exported to Taiwan recyclers hope to be reused locally
(3) If the daily processing capacity rises, if the recovery is insufficient, the closed factory landfill will become the only destination
In 2018, the plastic recycling rate in Hong Kong fell to 7%, a record low in recent years. (Photo by Zeng Ziyang)
The housing estate declined the contractor's failure to meet the government's demand for recycling points
Waste paper recycling is "valuable", but waste rubber is not acceptable to everyone. In order to break the recycling dilemma, the EPD has implemented a two-year "Plastic Recyclable Material Recycling Service Pilot Program" and hires contractors to service the area in the form of service contracts. Public and private residences, schools, community recycling centers, etc. provide free rubber collection services, which are further processed into plastic pellet raw materials and recycled products, and then resold for export or supplied to the local market.
Liu Caiji Paper became the contractor of Shatian District and is expected to start service in the third quarter of this year. After more than 20 years of recycling plastics, Chairman Liu Yaocheng entered the housing estate for the first time to "glue", and some housing estates refused on the grounds that "someone has already made a tight (recycling)". They tried hard to lobby and did not reach half of the government's requirement of at least 70 recycling points.
Many people are worried that the recycled materials will be discarded as garbage. Liu Yaocheng emphasized the service pledge, emphasizing that "when there is a factory, you need glue, you will make an effort to collect it, and the amount will be profitable first." Improve recycling efficiency with a small economic return. Regarding the problem of indiscriminate abandonment, apart from strengthening publicity and education, he can only hope that the residents know that the recycler is "Liu Caiji" and rely on the company's image and word of mouth to restore the public's confidence in recycling.
Liu Yaocheng and a local investor invested 30 million yuan to introduce a fully automated machine from Taiwan to convert local PET bottles into food-grade sterile raw materials. (Photographed by O'Gallery)
Whether to cooperate with recycling shops
In addition to the collection in the district, he believes that cooperation with front-line recyclers is equally important, because these streets are equipped with small balers that can solve the storage problem. "Packing a piece of about 100 kilograms, there are already about 5,000 plastic bottles." Scavengers recover power. He originally planned to use the economic incentive of "one mosquito and one kilogram" to encourage waste collectors to recycle plastic bottles, together with the profit and freight of the recycling shop, and to control the recycling cost to less than 2,000 yuan per metric ton in order to be profitable, but the EPD asked him to prove from the street The recycled plastic is from the home. Otherwise, he hopes that the contractor will focus on the disposal of waste plastics in the housing estate.
The EPD explained that the pilot scheme did not include industrial and commercial premises and front-line recycling shops, but the other side also allowed contractors in the Eastern District and Kwun Tong District, Chun Shing Environmental Protection Co., Ltd., to cooperate with recycling shops to recycle plastic at 1.2 yuan per kilogram. Fang Wenjin, general manager of Juncheng, said that as long as there are classifications, street shops promise to provide plastics that are not from non-service areas and industrial and commercial premises, they can be included in the plan, mainly for trust, and the practice is also approved by the EPD. When making further enquiries on "Hong Kong 01", the department said that there was no supplement.
Juncheng launched the Eastern District service in January this year, and there are 85 recycling points so far. Fang Wenjin revealed that he started cooperation with two recycling shops last month, with a very small amount of recycling. As the epidemic eased slightly, Juncheng recycled about 17.5 metric tons of plastic last month. He said he was confident that he would meet the bid requirement for recycling at least 30 metric tons per month starting from the 10th month, and he also hoped to be in full bloom with other recyclers.
[Where to go to waste plastics] Discarded bottles become expensive and reborn. Taiwan recyclers hope to reuse them locally
[Where is the waste rubber] If the daily processing volume rises, if the recovery is insufficient, the closed factory landfill will become the only destination
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Relying on foreign suppliers to sigh Hong Kong people's environmental awareness
"Central glue collection" is still in its infancy, and the amount of recycling in the community is not satisfactory, and some people have to buy scrap rubber from foreign countries for processing. Hankang Renewable Resources Co., Ltd. collects more than 500 waste rubber in housing estates in Hong Kong, and also provides economic incentives for cleaners, but only an average of about 200 metric tons are recovered per month, which can only meet 20% of the needs of the factory operation. The rest Glue relies on foreign entrances.
Marketing Director Guo Zhiyuan explained that the public’s awareness of environmental protection and classification is still inadequate, and that the storage of plastic bottles requires more space. House cleaners would rather hold aluminum cans and paper sheets than plastic bottles; but even if they provide a little subsidy to the cleaners, Recycling volume is still limited. Take Baoda Village, Kwun Tong as an example. Recycling a few metric tons of plastic a month is already the best performing housing estate.
80% of the plastics processed by the factory come from Australia, Japan or Southeast Asia. Take the No. 1 and No. 2 rubber as examples. The incoming price is HK$1,700 per metric ton. Guo Zhiyuan said bluntly, "If Hong Kong has sufficient volume, of course, Hong Kong goods earn the most." , About 800 Hong Kong dollars a ton of "local goods" is twice as high as "foreign goods", but sighed "no incentives, asking the public to help you get a plastic bottle suddenly, it is really not possible."
Guo Zhiyuan said that even if he enters residential houses to collect rubber, the amount of plastic recycling in Hong Kong has been insufficient for many years, and he can only rely on waste plastics supplied by foreign countries for reprocessing. (Photo by Zeng Ziyang)
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