· 53 -
Reply:
Mr President,
The Government is aware that the environmental problems caused by the extensive use of plastic bags have been exacerbated by the increasingly common use of plastic envelopes in large quantities. Similar to other forms of consumer plastic waste, used plastic envelopes are disposed of mainly in landfills. A small proportion are incinerated. There is virtually no recovery of such waste because of its minimal recycling value.
On the average, the Post Office handles 200,000 plastic envelopes each day. Apart from adding to the volume of plastic waste to be disposed of, these plastic envelopes are also creating a serious operational problem to the Post Office because they cannot be processed by the Post Office's Mechanised Letter Sorting System and have to be sorted manually. To discourage their use, especially by large mailers, the Post Office is now considering removing the printed paper discount from items mailed in plastic envelopes.
End/Wednesday, February 22, 1995
Anti-drugs effort needs to be redoubled
Following is a question by the Hon Timothy Ha Wing-ho and a written reply by the Secretary for Security, Mr Peter Lai, in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday);
Question:
Juvenile involvement in drug offences and drug abuse has recently become a serious problem. According to some survey findings, there was a 35% increase in the number of young people who were involved in drug abuse in the 3rd quarter of 1994 as compared with that in the corresponding period in 1993, and the number of youngsters under 21 who were arrested for alleged involvement in drug offences had also risen by more than 30% over the past two years. In view of this, will the Government inform this Council whether it has formulated any long-term policy to tackle the worsening problem of juvenile involvement in drug offences and drug abuse; if so, what the details are; if not, why not?