Beginning of the End of Single-Use Plastic in 2025

Beaches have a lot of single-use plastic wash up on shore

 

The Hong Kong government is finally going to tackle single-use plastic -- but not until 2025. So while green groups are pleased the authorities are doing something about the serious problem, it's not fast enough.

Starting in 2025 restaurants need to offer more eco-friendly tableware for takeaway, and customers will need to bring their own food containers. The government will start by banning the sale of expanded polystyrene tableware, including disposable cups, cup lids and food containers to dine-in customers.

Many people have eaten from takeaway boxes

Catering premises would also be prohibited from offering throwaway cutlery, as well as disposable plastic straws, stirrers, cutlery or plates.

In the second phase, no restaurants can use single-use plastic for takeaway.

"Countless waste plastic enters the natural environment, including the ocean each year, Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing wrote in the consultation document. "They will eventually be fragmented into microplastics and enter the human food chain."

According to figures from 2019, Hong Kong is estimated to be responsible for throwing away about 14.6 billion pieces of plastic cutlery annually, or about 1,940 pieces per person.

While officials wanted to cover all types of single-use plastic, pre-packaged food like drink boxes that come with straws will be exempted.

Ban on single-use plastics to start 2025

Environmental groups like Green Earth said the government's schedule ignored the immediacy and scale of the environmental threat posed by takeaway public cutlery, the volume of which had risen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The NGO noted mainland China banned the production and sale of single-use EPS tableweare this year, while the European Union has required all member states to prohibit the use of food containers and cups made from the same materials in the catering industry by this year.

Greenpeace agreed with Green Earth's criticism and urged officials to speed up the implementation of the scheme. But World Green Organization felt the timeline was reasonable.

Regardless the environmental issues Hong Kong has needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Lots of education is needed to teach residents the importance of cutting down single-use plastics and begin to encourage customers to bring their own containers. Charging them HK$1 or HK$2 is not enough of an incentive.

The market has eco-friendly boxes, but are costly

The same goes for plastic shopping bags. It's mostly men who don't bring shopping bags with them, and don't mind paying HK$0.50 for a plastic bag to carry their things in.

Pushing restaurants to use alternative takeaway boxes will be a relief. Many small shops use polystyrene packaging which is shocking in this day and age, but they are purely looking at it from a cost perspective.

Because of the pandemic people are becoming more aware of how much garbage is being thrown away, though for others, as long as single-use plastics are disposed off, it's out of sight, out of mind.

In any event why is the government waiting four years for this change to happen? Why can't this be happening in a year or two the most? 

It is time to protect the environment. Now.

Number of the Day: 14 Million Umbrella Bags

When it rains, umbrella bags are quickly distributed and end up in the trash

All this rain in Hong Kong this summer has led to green groups to estimate how many of those plastic umbrella sleeves are distributed everyday, and they have come up with the number of 14 million from June to September.

According to Greeners Action, around 90 percent of the 53 shopping malls, commercial buildings, and government facilities around town distributed the plastic covers during the rain because they wanted to keep the floors dry and prevent people from slipping.

The environmental group calculated on average 288 of these long narrow plastic bags were given out every 45 minutes. Around 7 percent of the venues had staff specifically handing out the bags even if tenants or shoppers didn't want them.

"People use these bags only when they enter the property and discard them when they leave. Time of use is short but the waste they generate is serious," says Greeners Action assistant project manager Yip Chui-man.

"Whether it's the property [management] or the public, both sides need to take a further step and reduce the use of these bags."

Yip said the buildings could either have umbrella racks, floor mats, or recycling bins available, or even use a different floor material to prevent slipping.

The last point is definitely true. Landlords like to have shiny floors, but they are the hardest to maintain. A lot of manpower is used to clean them, especially marble floors and polish them. Why not be practical and safe by using alternative floor materials?

When it comes to these umbrella covers, there is pretty much no choice but to use them especially when building staff are standing by and expecting you to use them. In this case I use them and keep the bag until I get home... but then what? It still ends up in the trash.

There has to be another way to deal with this situation -- to balance out the need to keep floors relatively dry and concerns about the environment...

Bagging More Confusion

Get ready for more plastic bag restrictions from April 1

On April 1, Hong Kong will start implementing further restrictions on the use of plastic bags in the city. All retail stores selling goods that are not food-related must charge HK$0.50 for a plastic bag, though wet markets are still safe because of hygiene issues.

However, we can already imagine supermarket cashier staff will have arguments with customers over what can and cannot be charged for a plastic bag. Apparently staff are freaking out because they are worried they will get into trouble with their employers if they don't enforce this new regulation properly.

From 2009 until now, a levy was imposed on major outlets to charge HK$0.50 for a plastic bag. While the government claims this cut down 90 percent of the plastic bags in the city, there still seemed to be a lot of them around.

Wet market stalls only have small bags available, and so you always need more than one bag, and even then the seller will put those small bags into one big bag... what a waste!

And then in supermarkets, there are people who refuse to pay HK$0.50 at the checkout and use those flat-top plastic bags for fruits and vegetables to put their items in there. Many use it to carry small milk cartons and yogurt. But from Wednesday onwards they will be charged HK$.050.

Items that are not vacuum sealed or in its own packaging, will not be charged for those thin see-through plastic bags. Things like toilet paper in its own plastic packaging will not be subject to the HK$0.50 either.

So it's kind of confusing really -- unless you just remember that anything not vacuum sealed and edible will mean a free plastic bag.

All this confusion, say local green groups, is because of legislative councillors dragging their feet on this issue and stipulating a number of exemptions before passing the bill over a year ago.

And then it's taken this long to finally put it into action, though not everyone is sure what is going on.

Basically the best rule of thumb is whenever you walk out the door of your home, carry a cloth bag with you because you never know if you'll need to buy something. The local stationary store won't be able to give a free plastic bag anymore, nor the shoe store or electronics shop.

Will these new restrictions further cut down on the use of plastic bags? Probably only slightly, and the use of paper bags will jump. And that HK$0.50 -- who gets to keep that? In the first phase, the money went to the government, but now apparently shopkeepers big and small get to keep the extra money. Why is that?

This means tycoons like Li Ka-shing will make even more money from those people who forgot or didn't bother to bring a plastic bag with them while they shop at Park 'n' Shop, Fusion, International, Great...

Perhaps that alone would be a good incentive to bring a cloth bag to prevent the 17th richest man according to Forbes from earning an extra HK$0.50...