Edwin Lau

Opinion | Hong Kong must up the stakes to stop recyclable plastic bottles from ending up in landfills

The city’s most advanced plastic recycling facility is struggling to maintain operations due to a lack of feedstock, while most PET bottles continue to be thrown away

The government must make producers responsible for their plastic waste and offer a deposit return high enough to change consumer behaviour

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Plastic bottled drinks at a supermarket in Sheung Wan on December 6, 2018. Hong Kong does not have a producer responsibility scheme that requires producers to recycle single-use drink containers. Photo: Sam Tsang

Edwin Lau

Published: 6:15am, 22 Jun 2023

Almost all of Hong Kong’s polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles continue to be thrown away, rather than recycled, despite plastic recovery schemes. Less than one per cent were recycled in 2019, the latest year for which discrete PET figures are available, with the bulk – about 121 tonnes a day – ending up in a landfill. Many such plastic bottles are simply dumped on our beaches and nature trails, polluting our environment.

Since 2020, the Environmental Protection Department has provided instead a combined figure for the disposal of all plastic bottles. Such a backward step in data transparency hinders the public monitoring of environmental issues in Hong Kong.

Given that PET bottles made up 63 per cent of plastic bottle waste in 2019, I estimate that 127 tonnes of PET bottles were thrown away every day in 2021, the latest year for which figures are available. Plastics constituted only about 6 per cent of all recyclables recovered from municipal solid waste; the specific rate for PET bottles is unknown.

Since the establishment of our environmental group, The Green Earth, in 2016, we have offered the authorities advice on effective strategies to tackle Hong Kong’s serious plastic waste problem, which includes single-use PET bottles and cartons.

It was recently reported that the city’s most advanced plastic recycling facility has been close to suspending operations since April due to insufficient feedstock. The large-scale plant only began operating at the EcoPark in January last year, and can produce food-grade recycled PET.

I remembered attending the groundbreaking ceremony in late 2019 at which then-environment minister Wong Kam-sing officiated. I was pleased to witness the recycling milestone, which was expected to be followed by a producer responsibility scheme to mandate producers to recycle single-use drink containers.