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 residents to dispose of garbage using designated bags that they will have to purchase.
The policy was designed to reduce the amount of rubbish Hongkongers send to landfill. In 2022, the disposal rate of municipal solid waste in Hong Kong was 1.51 kilograms per person, per day, according to the Environmental Protection Department. Some 30 per cent of that was food waste, with the Hongkongers disposing of 0.31 kilograms of domestic food waste per day on average in 2022.
Limited uptake
The charging scheme was postponed in January, with authorities citing public misunderstanding of the policy, and was pushed back to begin on August 1. A trial run was launched at 14 premises in the city last Monday.
Tse said that while most households were willing to register for the scheme, only 20 to 50 per cent were actually using the designated bags.
Participation was higher for households in private flats, but lower in public housing, at around 20 to 30 per cent, he said, attributing those figures to residents’ occupations or financial backgrounds.
Stores and restaurants, meanwhile, had seen a higher uptake, likely because staff received orders from their bosses to use the designated bags, Tse added.
Last week, one restaurant involved in the pilot phase said it expected to spend an additional HK$6,000 per month once the measure was officially introduced, while businesses and residents called for more support for recycling.
Residents participating in the pilot scheme have said that some of the designated bags did not fit properly in bins, or were hard to tie shut. Others have also complained that compost bins were inaccessible, saying that the 20-minute round trip to recycle food waste was too much of a hassle.
But Tse said it would not be technically practicable to shorten the trip by doubling the amount of bins citywide. “As for whether people will find [the arrangements] convenient, that’s clearly a question that we now need to consider,” he said.
A final review will be conducted for the trial run, he added.
Waste tax defended
Tse maintained that the government had not misjudged its decision to roll out the charging scheme, saying that authorities had “conducted extensive consultations.”
The government believed it was a good time to launch the charging scheme after the city’s borders reopened last year, believing that the economy would see a swift rebound, he said. “But there has been a real impact on businesses and restaurants.”
He added that the scheme’s impact on businesses and care homes and would have to be determined through the trial run.
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