The Environment || 271
Legislation and Pollution Control
Hong Kong has seven ordinances on pollution control. They are the Waste Disposal Ordinance, the Water Pollution Control Ordinance, the Air Pollution Control Ordinance, the Noise Control Ordinance, the Ozone Layer Protection Ordinance, the Dumping at Sea Ordinance and the Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance. Most of them have subsidiary regulations and other statutory provisions such as technical memoranda.
The Government follows a set of environmental quality objectives to better protect public health and to preserve a natural ecosystem. The cost of imposing limits. on polluting emissions is not higher than is needed to achieve conservation goals. These goals include making maximum use of the environment's natural capacity to absorb and recycle waste.
In 2007, EPD inspectors made about 50 000 visits to different places around Hong Kong to enforce controls on air, noise, waste and water pollution and to deal with complaints about pollution. This resulted in some 484 prosecutions and nearly $4.5 million in fines.
The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (the Stockholm Convention), was officially extended to Hong Kong in July 2007, and the Hazardous Chemicals Control Ordinance was enacted in the same month to regulate the import, export, manufacture and use of non-pesticide hazardous chemicals, including those subject to the regulation of the Stockholm Convention and the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous
Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade.
The EPD also works with the construction industry, the catering industry, the vehicle repair industry, the property management sector and other trades to promote good environmental practices and compliance with pollution control regulations.
The department runs a Compliance Assistance Centre (CAC) where different businesses may obtain updated information and advice on environmental compliance, pollution prevention and environmental management.
Air Pollution
Like most modern cities, Hong Kong's air is affected by pollutants emitted from different sectors, such as transport, power generating and construction. The Government has been implementing different measures to improve air quality. Between 1990 and 2006, emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides (NOx), respirable suspended particulates (RSP) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) have dropped by 32 per cent to 53 per cent.
The EPD operates a range of controls under the Air Pollution Control Ordinance (APCO) and its subsidiary regulations, including licensing of some large industrial facilities and specific controls on furnace and chimney installations, dark smoke emissions, fuel quality, open burning, dust emissions from construction works, emissions from petrol filling stations and perchloroethylene emissions from dry-
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