The Environment 279
The poultry and pig schemes were introduced in 2005 and 2006 respectively and farmers had up to one year to decide whether or not to join them. The two schemes have effectively decreased the number of pig and poultry farms and reduced the pollution load on the environment. Through the buyout scheme launched in 2008 for the live poultry trade, the number of poultry farms has been further reduced.
Bathing Beaches
The Government has adopted strict standards for water quality control to protect the health of swimmers at bathing beaches. These standards indicate the pollution level measured in terms of E. coli (the bacterium that can indicate the presence of sewage). The following table shows how beaches were classified in 2009. Beaches in the 'good' and 'fair' categories meet the Government's water quality objective for bathing. In 2009, over 90 per cent of the bathing beaches met the water quality objective.
Beach water
Bathing season geometric mean of
quality ranking E. coli count per 100ml
Minor health risk cases per 1 000
Number of beaches
in 2009
swimmers
of beach water
Good
Up to 24
Undetectable
23
Fair
25 to 180
10 or less
15
181 to 610
11 to 15
3
More than 610
More than 15
0
Poor
Very Poor
Beach water quality gradings for open beaches are available on the EPD's home page, hotline and weekly press releases.
Waste Management
Waste Reduction
The Policy Framework for the Management of Municipal Solid Waste (2005- 2014), published in 2005, sets out the strategy and measures to address the municipal solid waste problem in Hong Kong over the next decade and proposes simple yet effective economic tools that will create incentives for the community to recycle more and discard less.
Waste reduction and recovery have always played an important role in waste management, resulting in the export of substantial quantities of recovered recyclable materials for re-manufacturing outside Hong Kong. In all, about 3.15 million tonnes of recyclable materials were exported in 2009, generating export earnings of about $5.8 billion.