Govt Urged To Do More To Encourage Recycling

The Consumer Council has called on the government and businesses to do more to encourage sustainable consumption, after a survey it did found that consumers are not recycling more – despite being “willing to do more".

The survey last year found that 77 percent of respondents said they were willing to do more on sustainable consumption – including recycling, buying organic food, avoiding buying single-use products and so on. This was a three percent increase from their baseline survey in 2015.

However, only 63 percent of those surveyed said they often recycle, unchanged from 2015.

The survey also found that around 30 percent of respondents either seldom or never recycle plastic and paper, a slight increase from the 2015 survey.

Reasons cited by some respondents for not recycling more include recycling facilities being too far away, or not knowing how to separate or recycle waste.

The council's chief executive, Gilly Wong, said consumers also cited negative news reports from the past few years that recyclables are separated end up being dumped together with other refuse in landfills, and that some said that it was "not worth the effort".

Wong told RTHK: "We believe it is very important to rebuild the confidence of Hong Kong people in recycling to properly manage our waste in our city."

Council chairman Paul Lam, meanwhile, said the Covid-19 pandemic has posed some challenges to sustainable consumption.

“Many of us are stuck at home because of Covid-19, we spend quite a lot of time browsing on the internet and very often we will be attracted by advertisements to buy things which turn out to be not quite necessary. So that’s a danger of over-consumption and that obviously poses a challenge to the concept of sustainable consumption.”

The council called on the government to do more to encourage sustainable consumption, including investing more in studies and technologies, regulating the use of single-use plastics, combat "green washing" or mislabelling of products, and provide incentives for adopting more sustainable consumption habits.

They also called on businesses to set sustainability targets and strategies.