Overview of Solid Waste as a Key Environmental Issue for Hong Kong, and Sustainable Production and Consumption as a Social Imperative
Dr Andrew Thomson, Chief Executive Officer, Business Environment Council
Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would first like to thank Robert for inviting me to speak this evening alongside Christine, as indeed it has been my honour and pleasure on many occasions.
I have agreed to provide an overview of two critical pieces of the environmental cum sustainable development jigsaw puzzle, and will be speaking on the issue of solid waste and on the philosophy cum societal imperative of sustainable consumption and production.
I will speak for about 11 minutes on the former, and 3 minutes on the latter just to provide a flavour.
Solid Waste
The issue of solid waste management has been with us for a long as mankind has existed – it was probably felt by the first cave dwellers, and will probably always exist if not as a problem, as a management challenge. Indeed, waste management is increasingly couched in terms of resource management and sustainable solutions.
It is important to give you a brief overview of the situation in HK from historical, current and future perspective – the core data that I will convey can be found on the EPD website, so I do not claim ownership of this information - related views that I express however are my own and are not attributable to the government or to the Business Environment Council.
Waste management has been an issue in HK since the earliest times, but the modern waste management era started in the late 1980’s.
Since 1990 over 11 billion dollars has been spent building waste management facilities including 3 strategic landfills, 7 Major refuse transfer stations and a number of dedicated facilities for special wastes such as chemical waste. In addition to this capital expenditure it costs our community over 1bn/annum to operate all of our waste facilities. Clearly this is a major issue.
On the surface everything is working well – the streets are clean and garbage is taken away from our homes and offices on a daily basis. However, the underlying truth is that our strategic landfills are filling up faster than predicted, and whilst expected to provide capacity until 2025-2030 are now likely to be full between 2012 and 2015.
Now there is a lot to say about waste but I will let some simple statistics do the talking and save the rest to the Q&A session
Every day we send about 15,000 tonnes or 5.5 million tonnes per year of waste to our three strategic landfills. This is includes of Municipal Solid Waste, Construction and Demolition Waste and other Special Waste. Municipal Solid Waste includes waste from both our homes and our businesses.
The breakdown of waste from each source can be found on the EPD website, but again I will give you a few statistics to set the scene. In 2006 Domestic waste represented 44% of the total daily waste of Hong Kong, Commercial and Industrial waste 18%, Special wastes 11% and construction waste 27% - the latter has reduced significantly in the last year because of the demolition and construction waste charging scheme.
This leads me nicely back onto the complex issue of - waste and money.
Disposal of waste from our homes is currently free of charge – however the Government will be consulting us soon on its plans to introduce a charging scheme – a pilot programme has already been completed, which deduced that between 60-80% of our household waste can be recovered for recycling or related purposes. Incidentally, the current domestic waste recovery rate is around 15%.
If I can make a quick break out of my presentation here…
Test this out in your home –Try segregating a days waste and see what is recyclable and what is not – in some cases you may find 100% recyclability.
If you can weigh the waste, so much the better - as a reference point on average we each generate about 1.35 kg waste per day per person and 0.9 kg of this is at home – the rest being in Starbucks coffee cups, uneaten lunches, etc.
If you are generating more than your average weight a day then you can ask your self why, and if you are not segregating your waste – once again you have a simple question to ask yourself. Also think about how much you should or are willing to pay to dispose of the non – recyclable portion, and whether you would be more or less inclined to segregate your waste if you were to be charged by weight or volume.
… Back onto the money issue – it's an urban myth that no waste recovery occurs in Hong Kong, and that there is no recycling. In fact a whopping 2.8 million tonnes were recovered in 2006 (this is equivalent to 50% all the waste disposed of at landfill). However, local recycling of this recovered waste was minimal, in fact only 4% was recycled locally, and the rest was exported - mainly to Mainland China. From this export companies in the private sector earned 5.3 billion in revenue.
Once again – big money – however much of this was derived through low value adding collection methods and processing, and none of this revenue found its way back into the development of enhanced recovery systems or sustainable waste management systems.
Time is running short so I must move onto what is coming – you can expect:
- More consultation on Waste to Energy Facilities to reduce the volume of our waste – loud NIMBY related campaigns, cost concerns, calls to ship our waste overseas, suggestions to drain reservoirs to use as landfills and eventual acceptance as part of a balanced solution
- Landfill extensions – into country parks
- More waste recovery programs – and there are a lot on-going again look at the EPD website to see WEEE, battery recycling, Moon Kick action, Source separation of household waste
- Domestic waste charging – more concerns – social issues ability to pay etc, and
- Eco-park Expansion and circular economy – Small scale value added re-processing of waste in Hong Kong – More could and should be done – Land allocation issue and also down to market instruments and incentives
- Producer responsibility Schemes – starting with batteries and moving on to beverage containers, electronic and electrical equipment, car tyres and plastic bags – which leads me very neatly on the philosophy of Sustainable Consumption and Production
Sustainable Consumption and Production (SC&P)
Well yes a philosophy, but much more than that, a key agenda item of Agenda 21 – the UN action plan from the 1992 Earth Summit, which was refined at the 2002 Word Summit on Sustainable Development.
SC&P encompasses a wide range of systematic thinking and tools to deliver sustainability including:
- Cleaner Production, Pollution Prevention, Waste Management and Energy Efficiency
- Supply chain management, environmental and social standards – CSR issues
- Life Cycle Analysis and Eco-labelling, D for E, Low Carbon, Energy Efficient etc
- Green Procurement, Legal, trade and environment issues – China trade barrier issues
- Global resource pricing strategies and so much more.
It is a societal imperative for us to adopt sustainable consumption and production practices – but these will only come about through shifts in market practices driven by green consumer behaviour, extended producer responsibility, new legislation and green market incentives, certainty in carbon prices, taxes on un-sustainable goods and services and tax breaks on sustainable ones.
There is a whole lot more to say on this issue including the details on producer and consumer responsibilities, on future legislation, marketing and green-wash, on green product pricing, environmental trade barriers, uneven global standards, and Mainland China's role as the world's manufacturing entrepote and in particular its role in local and global SC&P. I also sadly had no time to address over-consumption a pattern of behavior which has been well defined as an, 'Affluenza', that infects affluent westernized societies……. but I believe my time is up, so I will conclude with my thanks for your kind attention.