Mathias Woo

Opinion | Hong Kong should stop agonising over waste charging and focus on recycling

To cut waste, recycling reforms are needed to centralise processes, stop outsourcing waste management and start making officials accountable

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Mathias Woo

Published: 9:30am, 21 Jun 2024

Hong Kong is right to postpone its scheme to charge for waste disposal. Pay-as-you-throw fees are simply not as effective in reducing waste as recycling. Effective recycling, however, is an institutional challenge and for it to work, the city’s waste management system must be reformed.

Waste management in Hong Kong involves several government departments, including obviously the Environmental Protection Department, but also the Drainage Services Department, Marine Department, Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, and even the Highways Department. At the core of this is the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, which is responsible for street cleanliness, household waste collection and waste recycling.

This fragmented structure hinders efficiency. In particular, the separation between the Environmental Protection Department and the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department must be addressed if any waste management scheme is to be successful – Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu should seriously consider merging the two departments.

For a start, it would put the environmental hygiene department’s public refuse collection points under one centralised authority, making it easier to upgrade and integrate the lot into the citywide community recycling network currently managed by the Environmental Protection Department.

By integrating the roughly 170 public refuse collection points in the urban areas with the 220 recycling points, Hong Kong would have a scaled-up network of waste collection and recycling for its community.

Meanwhile, the Housing Department, responsible for managing the 258 public rental housing estates that accommodate about 2.1 million residents, should also play a role in waste management.