Edwin Lau

Opinion | What Hong Kong’s 2023 waste data tells us, and what it doesn’t

The good news of less waste generated is tempered by the lack of clarity on plastic waste statistics and officials’ mistaken faith in incineration as a solution

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Greenpeace campaigners calling for a cut in plastic production at the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal on October 19. Its survey found that 97 per cent of the waste collected from two ecologically important riverbanks is plastic. Photo: Dickson Lee

Edwin Lau

Published: 4:30pm, 25 Dec 2024

Hong Kong finally published last year’s waste statistics on December 19, nearly a month after Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan shared some of the more positive developments in his blog on November 24. Why hold up the release of the full monitoring report until almost the end of the year? The sooner lawmakers and stakeholders have a full picture of the city’s waste situation, the quicker they can come up with the needed solutions.

One positive finding is that the quantity of municipal solid waste going to landfill has fallen – by 2.2 per cent to a daily average of 10,884 tonnes, from 11,128 tonnes in 2022. Easing the pressure to expand Hong Kong’s landfill capacity is one of the government’s main waste management objectives.

On a daily average, the quantity of solid waste we threw away last year fell by 10.5 per cent for plastics, 3.2 per cent for paper and 3.4 per cent for food. But given that food makes up the largest part of solid waste at nearly a third, we still need to urgently find ways to handle the 3,191 tonnes of food discarded every day. Hong Kong’s existing food waste treatment facilities can only handle 600 tonnes a day.

The city’s first waste-to-energy incinerator, I·PARK1, is due to begin operations next year but sending thousands of tonnes of food waste to it every day is counterproductive if Hong Kong’s aim is to reduce carbon emissions. Fossil fuels would still be needed to dehydrate the food waste before combustion.

Households have done well in cutting their food waste, which went down by 291 tonnes a day last year – but the same went up by 179 tonnes for the commercial sector. Clearly, the authorities need to put in more effort and resources to help businesses slash their food waste.

When it comes to disposable plastic tableware, despite years of government efforts to discourage their use, the city threw away 243 tonnes of it last year, an increase of 7 per cent. With hope, Hong Kong’s ban on single-use plastics, introduced in April, will reverse the trend – although the worry is that businesses will simply switch to using non-plastic disposables, rather than reusables.

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Testing out eco-friendly utensils for takeaway food under Hong Kong’s single-use plastic ban