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Hong Kong environmental issues
CommentHong Kong
Edwin Lau
Edwin Lau

Opinion | Hong Kong’s lack of ‘producer pays’ bill leaves city scrambling for recycling answers

  • The government’s plan for a new drinks carton recycler to be up and running in just a few months is unrealistic
  • Rather than piecemeal solutions, Hong Kong needs producer responsibility legislation that comes with an initial recycling target rate of 70 per cent

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A crushed block of drink cartons awaits recycling at the Mil Mill pulp plant in Yuen Long on September 22, 2022. Photo: K.Y. Cheng
Edwin Lau

The Environmental Protection Department (EPD) announced on February 14 that it would invite interested parties to submit tenders for the processing and recycling of drinks cartons collected from government-funded green community facilities from July 1. This move is meant to “maintain the current positive momentum of the public in recycling beverage cartons as well as the completeness and stability of the recycling chain”.

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The land lease of the city’s only drinks carton recycler, Mil Mill, will expire in June, while the new large-scale pulping facility at EcoPark in Tuen Mun is expected to begin operations in 2025. A day after the government’s announcement, Mil Mill said it had been in contact with its lessor, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, and several suitable sites had been identified so that its operations could continue beyond June.

Does this mean Hongkongers can continue recycling used drinks cartons without a hitch? Are there are companies other than Mil Mill in Hong Kong with the technological know-how and equipment to recycle cartons and which can build a new paper pulping plant in such a short time?

The tender seems to have been designed to bridge a gap of less than two years, from July 2023 to 2025, during which the pulping facility at EcoPark is under construction. The EPD announced last September that the EcoPark recycling facility would be able to process all drinks cartons collected locally. According to government data, the city threw away 67 tonnes of beverage cartons a day in 2022.

Mil Mill said took around nine months to build its paper pulping plant in Yuen Long. However, there are less than five months between the government’s announcement of tender offers and the scheduled start of operations of the new carton recycling facility.

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Even if the government can speed up the tendering procedure, it is likely to take at least three months for the EPD to award the contract to the successful bidder. Assuming the tender invitation is issued in March, the contractor will then be confirmed by June. That leaves just one month for the operator to put everything together, including labour and equipment for setting up the pulping plant on a new site.

This sounds unrealistic. Even if Mil Mill is the successful bidder, it would be almost impossible for it to set up a new plant in a month.

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