Eat-in Ban Has Led To Pollution, Group Warns

Conservationists said the government’s ill-advised measures aimed at containing the coronavirus outbreak have taken a toll on the city’s environment.

They pointed out that a few months ago, used surgical masks started washing up on beaches and polluted its hiking trails.

And now, social-distancing requirements at restaurants have led to more reliance on takeaway and delivery services – producing an abundance of disposable plastic packaging.

Edwin Lau, executive director of the Green Earth Organisation, said the group has been keeping an eye on the rubbish created by the ban on dining in.

“In a normal rubbish bin, it is full of – not the normal garbage – but white plastic bags wrapped with lunch box and noodle cups and disposable cups, [which] not just fill the whole rubbish bins, but they are left around the rubbish bin and put on top of rubbish bin,” he told RTHK’s Richard Pyne.

He said the government hasn’t thought through the possible consequences carefully before introducing the eat-in ban, thus creating new environmental and hygiene problems.

“They need to really publicise and educate the public, and also to encourage the restaurants to allow or to facilitate more customers to use their reusable food containers or cups to buy takeaway food.”

Although the government has now reversed the ban on eating-in at breakfast and lunch hours, Lau said the problem will not go away, as a lot of people will still be getting takeaway food to avoid eating at crowded places.

“The government still needs to come out and do the encouragement and promotion, and to really talk to [food and beverage] industry and chain restaurants, to encourage them to have discounts to facilitate the customers to have reusable containers for buying takeaways,” he said.

“We have to consider environmental protection, reducing waste at the same time while we are to ending the health risk,” he said. “The government should not be so short-sighted, just to take care of the health issues due to Covid-19 and forget about the long-term environmental sustainability.”

“Protecting the environment and protecting public health can co-exist,” Lau said.