Alice Wu

Opinion | With a trial run this modest, can Hong Kong’s waste charging scheme succeed?

The pilot programme was supposed to show Hongkongers how the waste charging scheme works, but a tiny trial run and multiple delays inspire little confidence

This is bad for public perception and adds fuel to the fire of speculation whether the government will actually implement the scheme in full on August 1

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Why you can trust SCMP

Government-approved rubbish bags are on sale at Pricerite in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Bay district on January 26. Repeated delays in enacting the city’s waste charging scheme and the reduced number of buildings for its trial roll-out have damaged confidence in the government’s ability to successfully pull off the full scheme. Photo: Jelly Tse

Alice Wu

Published: 3:30pm, 31 Mar 2024

A trial run of the pay-as-you-throw waste charging scheme begins today, on April 1. Anyone unaware of it can be forgiven as the government is carrying out the pilot scheme in just 14 premises. There are about 50,000 buildings in Hong Kong, meaning that the government is running an incredibly small trial involving only 0.003 per cent of the buildings in the city.

Exactly how the trial run will tell the government how the public understands the policy, as Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has said, is anyone’s guess.

The government has scaled down the list of buildings designated for the trial run. That means it initially wanted to have more, which makes sense, but in the end decided against that, for reasons that are still unclear. The public and lawmakers are scratching their heads over the government’s lack of ambition, with Legislative Council environmental affairs panel chairman Edward Lau Kwok-fan calling the sample size “miserably small” and raising doubt over whether the data collected would even be useful.

Given the number of people expressing reservations about the scheme’s feasibility, it seems the third time is not the charm. It is rare to see this many open expressions of reservations in Hong Kong’s current political system.

The 14 designated premises include two public housing blocks with 750 households in Tsuen Wan and Chai Wan, three single-block private residential buildings in Kowloon City and Sham Shui Po, four eateries, two residential care homes in Tuen Mun, two shopping centres in Tuen Mun and Tai Po and the West Kowloon Government Offices, which house 2,500 employees from eight departments.

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SCMP Explains: How does Hong Kong handle its waste?

The pilot programme was supposed to help demonstrate to the wider public how the waste charging scheme works. To not have the office of the Environmental Protection Department or the Environment and Ecology Bureau included raises a few red flags.