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The Environment
Hong Kong has 13 restored landfills and some of them have been developed for public use. A Restored Landfill Revitalisation Funding Scheme funds the development of recreational facilities and other innovative proposals at the restored landfills. In 2017, the high-level Steering Committee on Climate Change shortlisted two non-profit-making organisations to draw up detailed revitalisation proposals for the Tseung Kwan O Stage I Landfill and Ma Yau Tong Central Landfill.
Planned Infrastructure
Hong Kong needs state-of-the-art, cost-effective facilities to deal with the large volume of non- recyclable waste and reduce the volume that requires landfill disposal. An Integrated Waste Management Facility, to be built on an artificial island near Shek Kwu Chau, will adopt advanced incineration as its core technology to cut waste volumes by 90 per cent and to turn waste into energy, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emission. It is scheduled for commissioning in 2024, The territory also plans to build a network of five or six organic waste treatment facilities that will use biological technologies to turn food waste separated at source into useful resources such as biogas, with compost as a byproduct. The first such facility, at Siu Ho Wan in North Lantau, is due to be commissioned in 2018.
These high-tech facilities do not eliminate the need for waste reduction at source. Landfills are still needed to hold residual waste. A study on planning future waste management and transfer facilities is under way to identify more strategic and regional facilities for handling solid waste.
Chemical, Clinical and Special Waste
All chemical waste producers are required to pack, label and store their chemical waste properly before disposal at licensed treatment facilities. A trip ticket system tracks the movement of chemical waste from its origin to the final disposal point. The Chemical Waste Treatment Centre on Tsing Yi Island, operated by a government contractor, treated a daily average of 34.9 tonnes of chemical waste and 6.6 tonnes of clinical waste in 2016. Waste producers using its services pay part of the treatment cost.
The government's policy is to return low-level radioactive waste to the original suppliers as far as possible, hence only some of the waste will be transferred for long-term storage to the Low- level Radioactive Waste Storage Facility at Siu A Chau, an uninhabited island southwest of Lantau. This facility is purpose-built to meet stringent international standards for the safe storage of low-level radioactive waste.
T⚫ Park, a sludge treatment facility at Tsang Tsui, Tuen Mun, employs an advanced treatment process to treat up to 2,000 tonnes per day of sewage sludge generated from sewage treatment works. It has waste-to-energy facilities to convert the incineration heat to electricity and export the surplus electricity generated to the public power grid. In 2016, 418,757 tonnes of sewage sludge were treated and 2.2 million kWh of electricity was exported. The many ingeniously designed facilities for environmental education and recreation attracted 79,785 visitors in 2017.
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