of
HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
香港立法局 一九八九年七月十九日
19 July 1989
128
of one kind or another which may cause a problem to our environment. Thus everybody has a responsibility to help solve our pollution problem. And it is of course a truism that unless we have the fullest support of the public we are not going to be able to keep Hong Kong clean. For years the Government has done next to nothing about our pollution problem. Now that we have got this White Paper, we must ensure that the public will not think that the problem will therefore be contained. Quite frankly, Sir, I am worried; for I can see no sense urgency at all in our community and the general public does not seem to be aware of the nature or extent of the problem. How many people in Hong Kong, including Members in this Chamber, will know that everybody in Hong Kong has the use of an average of three plastic bags per day? Plastic bags are of course neat and convenient, but unfortunately they take a long time to disintegrate. The point is: do we need really so many plastic bags per day? I recently took my young boy into a bakery corner of a department store where there were lovely breads of all kinds and shapes onion bread, chocolate bread, butter bread and you name it, they have it. It is a self-help corner where one takes up a tray and picks loaves off the shelf. My boy picked up seven small loaves and then it was time to pay. The young lady at the check-out counter put each of the loaves into a little bag. So there were seven little bags which all found their way into a large bag. And when I thought of the pollution problem my boy had caused, my appetite left me.
Sir, there was a report last week of the failure of a pilot scheme to collect plastic waste in Sha Kok Estate in Sha Tin for recycling purposes. The original aim was to collect 14 000 kg of plastic waste but they only managed to collect 139 kg, just short of 1%. The conclusion was that the residents there were most apathetic. But is it right that we should blame them for the apathy when they may not even know what the problem was? What can be done? I suggest we must bring the urgent message to our people through practical means and we must be able to give incentives. First of all, we need better public relation to sell the White Paper. I have suggested engaging a public relations consultancy firm from the private sector to come up with some bright ideas for this very dull topic. We must be prepared to spend more money to promote the aims set out in the White Paper. The $1 million allotted for this purpose, with a lot of help from you, Sir, I understand, is still grossly inadequate.
As to recycling which is the unanimous objective of Members of the OMELCO Standing Panel on Environmental Affairs, I suggest we must introduce a system which is both simple to implement and attractive to the public. My thoughts are these: we should separate refuse into two categories those that can be recycled, like newspaper, other forms of paper, plastic