Letters | Hong Kong’s latest plastic bottle recycling plan could be more ambitious

Readers discuss the proposed producer responsibility legislative framework, and the transport concession for the elderly

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People buy drinks at a convenience store in Tsim Sha Tsui on February 18. Photo: Jelly Tse

Published: 11:30am, 21 Feb 2025

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Important new legislation to protect our precious environment will be discussed next week. Hong Kong is sending millions of plastic beverage bottles and drink cartons to landfills every day. As a local NGO working on plastic pollution education, we have collaborated with various stakeholders since 2017 to develop strategies for reducing waste from beverage packaging, with a strong focus on avoiding such packaging in the first place.

We are excited that a producer responsibility scheme for plastic beverage bottles and cartons will be discussed at the Legislative Council on February 24. Addressing the growing issue of waste from single-use beverage packaging is critical to protecting our land and marine environments.

The proposed scheme aims to incentivise recycling by offering a minimum rebate of 10 HK cents (1.3 US cents) per returned container, funded by beverage suppliers. While this amount may seem on the low side, it assigns a tangible value to packaging and encourages recycling. However, the legislation must include provisions for adjusting the rebate upwards, in case this incentive proves insufficient.

For the return scheme to succeed, collection points must be both convenient and accessible. The Green@Community network has rapidly expanded with recycling stores and pop-ups across the city, and the Green$ rewards system has helped change recycling behaviour in Hong Kong.

Reverse vending machines, already present in various locations, can also play a role in the collection infrastructure, although finding space to place them and their limited storage capacity are challenges. Retailers would be an obvious return location. We hope the government sticks to requiring all retailers selling packaged beverages with a minimum shop size of 200 square metres to be designated return points as this will greatly enhance public convenience.

While we wholeheartedly support this scheme, we find the government’s timeline and targets disappointing. The goal of achieving a 75 per cent recycling collection rate for plastic beverage bottles within six to eight years of the scheme’s implementation, with only a 30 per cent recovery rate in the first phase, falls short of urgency. Moreover, the implementation timeline remains vague, described in phases rather than concrete years.