ENG-2003 — Page 351

THE ENVIRONMENT

Bathing Beaches

Bathing beaches are an important recreational resource. To protect the health of swimmers, the Government has adopted strict standards for water quality control at bathing beaches. These standards relate to pollution measured as E.coli (the bacteria that can indicate the presence of sewage) and were devised after a thorough study of the health risk facing local bathers. The following table shows how beaches were classified in 2002 and 2003. Beaches in the 'good' and 'fair' categories meet the Government's water quality objective for bathing.

Beach water quality ranking

Bathing season geometric means of E.coli count per 100ml of beach

water

Minor health risk cases per 1 000 swimmers

Number of beaches

2002

2003

Good

Up to 24

Undetectable

23

23

Fair

25 to 180

10 or less

10

11

Poor

181 to 610

11 or 15

2

1

Very Poor

More than 610

More than 15

6

6

Since 1998, beach water quality gradings for open beaches have been made available weekly through the mass media and the EPD's home page.

Waste Management

Waste Reduction

In November 1998, the Government launched a 10-year Waste Reduction Framework Plan. This was a response to the rapid growth in the amount of waste being dumped in the landfills, leading to a significant reduction in their expected lifespan. Given the shortage of land in Hong Kong and the keen competition for any available space, it will be difficult to find sites for any new landfills. The plan aims to reduce the amount of waste produced, to encourage re-use and recycling, to promote greater efficiency and economy in the management of waste, and to prolong the usable life of Hong Kong's landfills.

Waste recovery continues to play an important role in waste management, resulting in the export of substantial quantities of recovered waste materials for re-manufacturing outside Hong Kong. In all, more than 2.1 million tonnes of waste materials including waste paper, metals and plastic - were exported in 2003, generating export earnings of about $2.5 billion.

Waste prevention and recovery has been the Government's main focus in tackling the waste problem. The Government introduced a package of initiatives in 2001 to

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