The Hong Kong government in August passed a long-delayed legislation aimed at keeping a lid on the city’s decades-old problem: rubbish.

Approved on Aug. 26, 2021, the municipal solid waste charging (MSW) scheme will require Hong Kong households to pay for every bag of trash in hopes of curbing the city’s massive waste problem. Under the new plan, households and street-level shops that use the refuse collection services must buy government-sold trash bags for their rubbish disposal.

The bags will come in either t-shirt or flat-top designs in nine sizes. The smallest bag, at three litres, will cost about HK$0.30, while the largest, at 100 litres, will cost HK$11, according to the Environmental Protection Department (EPD).

That means a household using the 15-litre bag thrice a week to throw out their trash would need to spend about HK$20.40 per month under the MSW. The government said it will subsidize low-income families with HK$10 per month.

Oversized trash that does not fit in any of the designated bags should be labeled separately, with a flat rate of HK$11 each.

The government plans to make the bags accessible across the city, with supermarkets, convenience stores, post offices, online stores, and even vending machines expected to sell them once the scheme kicks off.

Meanwhile, waste bags taken by private collectors from commercial and industrial buildings will be charged per weight, at a rate of HK$365 to HK$395 per tonne.

HK Lags Peers

This isn’t the first time that Hong Kong tried to curb waste production by passing the cost on to residents. In 2015, the city introduced a HK$0.50 charge on plastic shopping bags, an initiative that reportedly forced 80% to 90% of shoppers to bring their own bags.

But compared to peers, Hong Kong lags in Asia when it comes to the full adoption of the “polluter pays” concept, which hinges on the practice that “those who produce pollution should bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health or the environment,” as defined by the London of School of Economics and Political Science.

In South Korea, for example, the government adopted a volume-based waste disposal fees (VBWF) system, wherein the polluter should shoulder the waste treatment costs based on the amount of waste generated. That system has been in place since 1995 and, along with other government-led efforts to reduce rubbish, has contributed to making South Korea one of the leading nations with the best recycling programmes in the world. In the first year of implementation alone, South Korea saw a nearly 18% decline in municipal solid waste generation and a 21% rise in recyclable wastes.

Similar rules can also be seen in Taiwan, a nation once named a “Garbage Island.”

The Waiting Game

The Hong Kong government allotted roughly 18 months, longer than the 12-month period originally sought, to educate the public about the MSW scheme’s implementation, although no specific launch date has been announced. With Hong Kong’s waste problem continuing to pile up while the overflowing landfills remain a ticking timebomb, the timing of the programme is ever more important.

An EPD report in 2019 found that each Hong Konger’s municipal solid waste production averaged at about 3.37 pounds per day in 2018. Records show that it is the highest level of rubbish disposal per person since 1991 and comfortably above the government’s target of daily MSW disposal of 0.8 kilograms per person by 2022.

While the approval of the MSW scheme is a welcome development, many of the city’s sustainability organizations lament the extended 18-month transition period, as well as the lack of a specific date of implementation.

Friends of the Earth (FOE) Charity CEO Dr. Jeffrey Hung told The Beat Asia in an e-mail interview that several green groups “have called out the government for dragging their feet and not setting a clear implementation date.”

“Whether independently or with government support, various green groups have been educating the public and even running mock waste charging schemes for many years now, to help the city familiarise with the 20-plus-year-old concept. With only education however, Hong Kong’s waste disposal rates has not bucked but continued to rise,” Hung said.

He also urged the government to support waste charging by setting up a whistleblower system and implementing producer responsibility schemes to “encourage more sustainable product designs and accountability from manufacturers and retailers,” among other measures.

Gabrielle Ho, senior project manager at Green Sense, also called for more recycling facilities and less rubbish bins throughout the city, as well as additional teeth to the monitoring system to prevent illegal dumping.

“Lawmakers should be more supportive to local recycling developments. We cannot rely on exporting recycle materials,” Ho added.