Political situation
Written by: Zhai Ruimin
2021-02-20 10:48
The last update date: 2021-02-20 10:48
The Bills Committee of the "Waste Disposal (Municipal Solid Waste Charges) (Amendment) Bill" passed the re-examination of the draft earlier. With the Legislative Council remaining for half a year, it remains uncertain whether the garbage levy can be successfully introduced.
Huang Huan-chung, head of the Department of Biology at HKBU, said on a radio program that to achieve real source waste reduction, we need the help of policies and regulations, and Hong Kong’s municipal solid waste charging has been discussed and consulted for more than 15 years.
He also criticized that the waste charging draft submitted by the Environment Bureau to the Legislative Council in 18 years ended up being a political bargaining chip for the current Legislative Council members to obtain votes. The draft was temporarily shelved, which put the garbage problem in Hong Kong into an extreme dilemma.
Regarding the unfreezing of the legislative council's renewal order, Huang Huan-chung urged incumbent members to use their votes to support the passage of the draft so that Hong Kong's urgent waste disposal problem can be resolved.
Huang Huanzhong mentioned in the Hong Kong and Taiwan program "Hong Kong Family Letters" that garbage siege is an imminent social problem. Although the Hong Kong government has spent a lot of effort to promote waste reduction in the past ten years, the waste reduction target has not risen but fallen. The targets set in the "Hong Kong Resource Cycle Blueprint 2013-2022" have all failed.
The "Hong Kong Resource Recycling Blueprint 2035" recently launched by the Environmental Protection Agency proposes "universal waste reduction, resource recycling, and zero-waste landfill", and set a medium-term waste reduction target of 40-45% and recycling of 55%. Huang Huanzhong believes that basically The goal is the same as the previous blueprint.
But he said that this new blueprint has two more aggressive directions, showing the government's determination and attitude change.
The first is that the government will increase its investment in waste reduction and recycling, and recognize and seriously face the operational problems faced by the recycling industry in Hong Kong.
Huang Huanzhong pointed out that Hong Kong’s recycling costs are expensive and must be borne by recyclers. The government should reconsider the polluter pays principle, use the producer responsibility system, and use the collected levies to establish a resource recovery fund to pay for infrastructure. And recovery processing costs.
Huang Huanzhong criticized that the waste charging draft submitted by the Environment Bureau to the Legislative Council in 18 years ended up becoming a political bargaining chip for the current Legislative Council members to win votes. The draft was temporarily shelved, which put the garbage problem in Hong Kong into an extreme dilemma.
(Profile picture / Photo by Gong Jiasheng)
The second direction is zero-waste landfill. Huang Huanzhong pointed out that Hong Kong needs to process about 6,000 tons of unsorted garbage every day. Even if the government is building incineration facilities capable of processing 3,000 tons of waste in Shek Kwu Chau, if it is to achieve zero landfill If it is buried, one more needs to be built, or to achieve the real source of waste reduction.
He believes that there must be policies and regulations to help all people work together to reduce waste generation at home.
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