Even lap sap ladies are getting fired due to the recession, writes June Ng.

Next to the Kwun Tong and Tsing Yi Public Cargo Working Areas, giant heaps of scrap metal and waste paper are piling up. The global economic downturn has led to the closing of many factories in China and the halting of infrastructure projects, which has in turn resulted in a drop in the demand for recyclable materials exported from Hong Kong such as waste paper, plastic and scrap iron, commonly used for packaging on the mainland.

Monthly statistics show exports of local waste paper falling from 113,767 tons in September to 87,842 tons in October; waste plastic from 100,000 tons in August to 76,739 tons in October; and scrap iron from 116,596 tons in August to nearly half as much in October.
Lo Yiu-chuen, chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Recycling Business (HKARB), calls this the “ice age” of the recycling industry. “The price of the recyclables has dropped so much. A regular recycling shop can now only take half the waste that they used to collect and make $700 per day, which barely covers operating costs. A lot of them are losing money now.”

Mr. Cheung, the owner of a recycling station in Wan Chai, confirms that there’s plenty of hardship these days. “We earned a dollar per kilogram of recyclables a few months ago, but now we can only make 45 cents,” he says. “We’re lucky to still be surviving.” Lo speculates that half of the recycling companies might go out of business after Chinese New Year.

While a drop in the export of recyclables might normally be expected to produce an extra burden on our already over-pressured landfills, data from the Environmental Protection Department for October shows no dramatic increase from previous months or the same period last year. Lo from the HKARB says this is because less waste in general is produced from the usual channels in winter. But Michelle Au, the Environmental Affairs Officer of Friends of the Earth, believes it is because big recycling companies have been stocking up on the waste, waiting until prices return to decent levels before they start selling again.

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that the downturn in the recycling business has struck the underprivileged particularly hard. Mrs. Lau, a 70-year-old cardboard collector in Sheung Wan, says the stuff she collects now is only worth 60 cents a kilogram, half of what she earned before, and she expects it to drop further.

Things are even tougher for those in more deprived areas such as Sham Shui Po. Ng Wai-tung of the Society for Communication Organization (SOCO) says competition for recyclables in the neighborhood has traditionally been intense. “Not just old people but many immigrants and the unemployed would fight for the waste,” he says. “In the past, if they worked for 10 hours, they could earn $20. Now they get about $10.” As a result, those who normally pick up scraps to subsidize their lives have been forced to give up and cut down on their already minimal expenses, turning to unwanted vegetables from the markets after they close. There are an estimated 100,000 people who survive by collecting and reselling scrap material.
In a Legco meeting this month, Secretary for the Environment Edward Yau said that in response to the economic downturn the government has amended the SME Loan Guarantee Scheme to help small- and medium-size enterprises with cash-flow problems. They are also considering measures to cater to the specific needs of the recycling industry, such as “identifying more short-term tenancy sites.”

Are these measures enough? Unionist Legislator Lee Cheuk-yan thinks that providing subsidies for the industry is acceptable for the time being. But Lo from HKARB thinks the government needs to have more concrete policies to help existing recycling companies. Either way, recycling advocates agree that we all still have a duty to use recycling collection bins and separate our waste into paper, plastic and metal. Regardless of how the industry is doing, the bins are still running and recycling firms are forbidden by contract from dumping the waste into landfills.