What’s happening to the stuff in the city’s recycling bins? It’s not being recycled, that’s for sure. By John Roberston

Traveling on the Mid-Levels escalator two months ago, reader Andy Knight was dismayed by what he saw. Along the stretch just above Wyndham Street, a trash man was emptying the recycling bins into the same receptacle as the regular trash. Anyone with the slightest concern for the environment would have been peeved by the sight, and Knight was no exception. “What’s the point of the recycle points if rubbish is just being thrown into the trash?” he asks. “What’s the point of us taking the time to split, organize and recycle our rubbish?”

More recently, Sheung Wan resident Sarah Chan came across a similar example of negligence near her flat. Stopping to drop off some recyclables at the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department’s (FEHD) colored bins near Lower Lascar Row, she found them overflowing with waste. A female FEHD employee there told her not to bother using them, as they hadn’t been emptied in several weeks.

Both incidents suggest the public is being misled on the issue of recycling in Hong Kong. Moreover, local efforts to promote a “circular economy” (an economy in which waste from one sector is re-used in another) have a long way to go. Indeed, the most basic precedent for such an economy—a functioning recycling circuit for domestic waste—still doesn’t exist.

That Hong Kong has an “imminent waste problem” is clear from none other than the Government’s own web page on recycling (www.gov.hk/en/residents/environment/waste). Our pressured landfills, it says, are expected to fill up by the early to mid 2010s. In response, the public is called upon to take action by reusing and recycling. “Whilst the Government takes the lead,” the site reads, “it is essential to involve the whole community in reducing waste.”

But the reports above suggest that the city’s authorities have hardly taken up that self-proclaimed lead. When asked about the recycling bins in Sheung Wan, an FEHD spokesperson responded simply by citing their policy that all the department’s bins in Central and Western District are emptied once to thrice weekly, depending on their usage rate, with a private contractor hired to do so. This contractor, she said, is monitored by the FEHD through “surprise field checks” and “inspection of records.” Yet when we spoke to the employee encountered by Chan, she told us that the bins—which were full when we checked them—had not been emptied in at least a month. Clearly there is a disconnect between what the FEHD claims and what is happening in reality.

Meanwhile, the Mid-Levels escalator bins are maintained by a private company, which generates revenues by selling advertisements on the bins, and by selling their waste on to recycling companies. But this shouldn’t free them from the same regulations that govern collections at public recycling bins, believes Edwin Lau, director of environmental concern group Friends of the Earth. Private or not, if the containers are promoted as recycling bins, the government ought to require that their contents be recycled. According to Lau, this seems particularly apt considering that the bins occupy public space: “If you want to put a box in public space, that box should be for the good of the community. A contractual arrangement should exist between the bin company and the relevant government authorities [in this case either the Lands Department or the FEHD] to ensure that the bins are used for recycling as claimed.”

So why aren’t the contents being recycled? Lau says it comes down to a much wider problem regarding recycling in Hong Kong as a whole. In this respect, we lag far behind other developed countries such as those in Europe, or even Taiwan. There, legislation exists requiring producers to collect a certain portion of recyclable waste generated by their products. “Here, we’re so slow in pushing for producer responsibility so we lack such regulation,” Lau says. Consequently, recycling occurs only when the market value for recyclable materials is high enough. As one might expect, the value of recyclables is now at a low due to the recession and its effect on manufacturing in China.

That said, there were encouraging signs of a step in the right direction back in 2005. The then Secretary for the Environment, Sarah Liao, pushed for a “Policy Framework for the Management of Municipal Solid Waste,” one which included provisions for producer responsibility. Yet legislation has been slow in coming, with the levy on plastic bags implemented just this month being the only visible result so far.

Until substantive legislation comes about, Hong Kong can’t claim to have a successful record on recycling, let alone a circular economy. In the meantime, when it comes to domestic waste and recycling, the government might want to clean up its own mess before telling residents how to sort out theirs.

If you witness a similar problem with recycling bins, call the government hotline at 1823.