Hong Kong throws away 5.2 million bottles every single day – is it time to ban sale of the plastic disposables?
With landfills under pressure, beaches awash with litter and many residents oblivious to the problem, experts say Hongkongers need to wise up
When Typhoon Hato hit Hong Kong in August, an ugly side of the city surfaced. Huge amounts of plastic – bottles included – were carried by the strong winds and high tides from the ocean to beaches and harbourfronts, shedding light on the city’s dependence on plastic and its shameful recycling efforts.
Environmentalists called for a citywide ban on the sale of disposable plastic bottled water, warning that if Hongkongers continued to throw away millions of these items every day, landfills would quickly fill up and harmful pollutants would seriously affect public health.
“Hong Kong’s marine litter problem is quite serious, especially at remote beaches which people seldom visit and clean up, ” said Patrick Yeung Chung-wing, a project manager for ocean conservation at WWF Hong Kong.
“The worst case recorded in Hong Kong was at Lap Sap Wan where we estimated 185 tonnes of marine litter was gathered on the pebble beach in 2015,” he said. “About 80 per cent of our marine litter is plastic, especially disposable products such as plastic bottles, plastic bags and packaging material.”
Yeung pointed out that most of this waste was from local sources such as household and marine recreational activities.
In the past few years the problem has been “getting very serious around July and August,” said Edwin Lau Che-feng, the founder and executive director of local environmental group Green Earth, as waste is carried in from the Pearl River Delta.
