When it comes to managing our waste, Hong Kong has been a bit of a muddled mess for the past decade, and it looks likely to get worse in the coming months.
Look at Germany, a global leader in managing waste, and the contrast with Hong Kong is striking. Germany creates more municipal waste per person than Hong Kong – 632kg per person compared with 551kg here – but the amount it dumps in landfills is negligible. Around 50 per cent is recycled, around 30 per cent incinerated and less than 1 per cent ends up in landfills.
It has succeeded not because it has dramatically slashed the levels of per-capita waste. Rather, progress has come because the government has got to grips with the waste chain, from effective separation of waste before it leaves a consumer’s home to creating an easy-to-understand waste disposal infrastructure that successfully diverts waste before it needs to reach a landfill.
Here in Asia, South Korea also puts us to shame. Per-capita waste has been brought down to 400kg per year. With about 60 per cent now recycled and 20 per cent incinerated, only about 11 per cent of their waste reaches the landfill.
With waste management, we appear to have been left to drift in an obscure middle ground where the excellence and integrity of the infrastructure are not ensured and performance obligations are invisible.
Hong Kong food waste recycling drive trips over lack of bins, rules confusion
Hong Kong food waste recycling drive trips over lack of bins, rules confusion
David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific over the past four decades