A Greenpeace campaigner on Thursday said Hong Kong saw a drop in the volume of rubbish dumped at landfills last year, but the improvement is marginal and far from satisfactory. According to statistics published by the Environmental Protection Department last week, the city's municipal solid waste dropped by 2.2 percent to 10,111 tonnes per day in 2023. Speaking on an RTHK programme, Leanne Tam said the data showed little progress was made on waste reduction over the past decade. "Looking at the data, the reduction is not significant. Ten years ago, the government set many different waste reduction targets, such as increasing recycling rates to around 50 percent," she said. "Compared to 10 years ago, our current daily municipal solid waste volume remains high at nearly 11,000 tonnes, which really isn't much of a difference." Tam added that while recycling rates increased, the improvement was minimal. She pointed out that the volume of recycled plastics went up by 7,300 tonnes last year, which is equivalent to only three days' worth of plastic waste generated. "The increase in recycling is actually not significant. And in recent years, recycling has cost hundreds of millions in public funds annually for community recycling facilities, but this only resulted in a one percent increase this year. We believe this shows poor cost-effectiveness and efficiency," she said. The advocate said the focus should shift more towards reducing waste at source rather than just recycling, including implementing reusable tableware systems and encouraging people to bring their own containers through incentives.
