- Environment minister Wong Kam-sing reveals decision during Facebook live chat
- Wong also discusses climate change and city’s long-delayed waste charging scheme
Glass bottle recycling services will resume soon in Hong Kong, two months after collection was stopped because of anti-government protests in the city.
Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing revealed the decision during a Facebook live chat session on Friday, in which the minister took questions from the public about a range of issues including recycling, the city's climate change strategy, and a long-delayed waste charging scheme.
"Now that the situation is relatively calm, we have asked our contractors to resume collection in safe areas such as housing estates and at government community green stations," Wong said.
"Throughout the social unrest, many glass recycling bins were damaged. If the bins filled with glass were poured out into public spaces, it would have posed a danger to both residents and protesters."
Glass bottles, mainly for beer and other alcoholic drinks, were used by protesters to make petrol bombs to throw at police. The unrest was triggered by a now-withdrawn extradition bill, but later morphed into a wider anti-government movement.
Rubbish and recycling bins have been regularly used to block roads during the more than seven months of protests.
Wong added the government was working to ensure there were enough uses for recycled glass, such as in eco-pavements and construction. Over the past two to three years, its efforts had improved the recycling rate for glass bottles from one out of every 10 bottles, to three out of 10, and Wong urged residents to continue to recycle glass.
Edwin Lau Che-feng, executive director of The Green Earth, hoped the government could speed up the resumption of glass collection. The group has previously criticised the glass recycling ban, and said it would have caused tonnes of bottles to be dumped in landfills.
"Taking away the collection bins was never going to stop people who wanted to use glass bottles for any illegal activities in the first place. People could just go to any back alley behind a bar and collect the bottles there," Lau said.
The removal of the bins would have just deterred residents' will to recycle glass, while at the same time businesses that had already trained employees to separate glass from other waste would have to relearn how to handle glass without recycling services, he said.
Wong's live chat session, which he promoted on Facebook as "conversation is better than opposition", has since been viewed almost 5,000 times.
While Wong mostly took questions related to environmental policies, many commenters demanded to know how tear gas, which has been heavily used by police to disperse protesters, had affected the environment.
Others simply commented, "five demands, not one less", the main rallying cry of the protest movement. Only the first demand, the withdrawal of the extradition bill, has been met. Protesters have also called for universal suffrage in the city, and an inquiry into police use of force.
"While Wong is a relatively low profile in terms of politics, it would be difficult to shift people's focus away from what they consider the most pressing matters, namely police brutality and the government's inaction throughout the protests," said Chung Kim-wah, assistant professor at Polytechnic University's department of applied social sciences.
When will Hongkongers stop treating recycling like it's someone else's problem?
Meanwhile, Wong also urged legislators to pass a long-delayed bill on municipal waste charging, which was submitted to the Legislative Council in 2018. The process has been stalled in the legislature and two bills committee meetings last year had to be cancelled because of the unrest.
Results from a public engagement project on the city's long-term decarbonisation plan were also expected by the first half of this year, and Wong said he would use the data to improve the city's climate change strategy.
He also defended the Environmental Protection Department's suggestion on Thursday to limit the use of commercial diesel vehicles to 15 years, which many commenters said was an unreasonably short time.
The government had previously provided subsidies to diesel vehicle owners to switch from the less efficient pre-Euro IV type diesel engines to the cleaner versions. About 80,000 diesel vehicles had already been phased out under the existing policies, which led to a significant improvement in roadside air quality and Wong hoped people could understand the importance of phasing out diesel cars.
"I think we need to balance the fight against climate change and roadside pollution with the time limit on diesel cars," Wong said.
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