ClimateCrisis
Hong Kong’s ban on single-use plastics is going smoothly, Chief Executive John Lee has said, despite confusion surrounding how the rules are being implemented and poor compliance. Speaking at his weekly press briefing on Tuesday, the city’s leader said more people were purchasing reusable alternatives, suggesting that Hongkongers were beginning to change their daily habits. See also: Restaurants slow to adopt eco-friendly alternatives as Hong Kong’s ban on single-use plastics takes effect “Generally speaking, from what I can see, [the single-use plastics ban] has been smooth and orderly,” he s...
Hong Kong Free Press
Hong Kong restaurants have been slow to switch to eco-friendly alternatives following the single-use plastics ban enacted on Monday, with many still using disposables. Single-use plastics including straws and utensils are forbidden under the ban. Restaurants have a six-month grace period to comply with the new rules, under which the government will not take enforcement actions. As the transition began on Monday, coinciding with Earth Day, chain eateries have been quicker to make the transition than smaller restaurants. Of the eight eateries visited by HKFP, only two had started using paper con...
Hong Kong Free Press
Hong Kong’s Environment and Ecology Bureau is not participating in a trial of the city’s waste charging scheme, saying that the way rubbish was collected from its location in the Central Government Offices made it “not a suitable location.” First suggested by the government in 2005 before becoming law in 2021, the waste charging scheme was in January postponed from its April 1 launch date until August. Environment chief Tse Chin-wan cited public misunderstanding of the policy as the reason. At the time, Tse added that the scheme would be trialled by government offices from April, saying “then ...
Hong Kong Free Press
Hong Kong’s ban on single-use plastics began on Monday, coinciding with Earth Day. A variety of disposable plastic tableware and other plastic products are now prohibited from being sold or taken away. The first six months following the roll-out will be an “adaptation period,” which means the government will not take enforcement action against non-compliant businesses. The Environmental Protection Department (EPD) said in an April briefing session that it will focus on “promotion and education” during this period, and send staff to inspect around 20,000 restaurants and 20,000 retail stores as ...
Hong Kong Free Press
Once again our government appears lost as it contemplates how to manage Hong Kong’s growing mountain of garbage. The logic of the endlessly postponed solid waste charging scheme is clear: if you charge residents to throw rubbish away, they will seek to minimise the charge by sorting it for recycling. Behaviour change. However, critical infrastructure and incentives are missing from the solid waste management scheme. Political leadership that prioritises the issue is also apparently absent. Rather, the government hasembarked on yet another trial to better understand the problems. In Hong Kong s...
Hong Kong Free Press
Only between 20 and 50 per cent of the households participating in a trial of Hong Kong’s new pay-as-you-throw waste tax were using the designated bags to dispose of rubbish, environment minister Tse Chin-wan has said, a week after the pilot scheme began. Residents had complained about the size of the bags and the inconvenience of recycling food waste, Tse told a TVB programme on Sunday, as he defended the government’s decision to implement the charging scheme amid a flailing economy. The Municipal Solid Waste Charging scheme, which was originally meant to take effect this month, requires resi...
Hong Kong Free Press
April in Hong Kong has got off to an unseasonably hot start, with highs of 31 degrees Celsius forecast for Thursday. The temperature on Monday, the final day of the long Easter weekend, reached 29.1 degrees, while the mean temperature was 27.3 degrees, well above the monthly mean of 23 degrees Celsius, according to the Hong Kong Observatory. The highest temperature ever recorded in April was in 1965, when the Observatory logged 33.4 degrees Celsius. Last month, the city saw its hottest March day since records began in 1884, when the maximum temperature measured at the Observatory hit 31.5 degr...
Hong Kong Free Press
An artist created a multicoloured temporary land-art installation from marine plastic waste on Sunday, as part of a clean-up of Lantau’s Fan Lau beach. German artist Liina Klauss led six volunteers in collecting 17 50-litre rubbish bags of refuse. The items were arranged in circles – measuring 20 metres in diameter – and photographed as part of Klauss’s international “curating the beach” series. The project took five hours and involved 600 pieces of broken styrofoam, 356 PET bottles, 425 cosmetics containers, 132 flip-flops, 23 plastic toys, five styrofoam boxes, five fishing buoys, two oil ba...
Hong Kong Free Press
Between five and eight tropical storms may come within 500 kilometres of Hong Kong this year, with higher than average temperatures expected, according to Observatory Director Chan Pak-wai. “Extreme weather can become more frequent because of the climate change,” Chan said at a Thursday press briefing. “So Hong Kong citizens are reminded to get prepared for extreme weather, especially pay close attention to the weather forecast and warnings issued by the Observatory and get earlier prepared.” According to the government forecaster, 2024 may be one of Hong Kong’s hottest years on record, with t...
Hong Kong Free Press
Hikers, trail runners and nature lovers are petitioning the government to halt a “disastrous” use of plastic in the construction of countryside trails. The authorities, in turn, have insisted that wood plastic composite (WPC) is environmentally-friendly. Petition signatories stated they were “astonished” to see that a plan for Lantau Island’s new, 100 kilometre round-the-island trail, involved the use of “massive amounts” of WPC for step frames and railings. “Plastic wood is a synthetic composite material made of plastic and wood chips. It is by no means environmentally friendly and applying i...
Hong Kong Free Press
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