ENG-2008 — Page 345

The Environment | 277

Bathing season

Minor health risk

geometric mean of

Beach water

quality ranking E. coli count per 100ml

cases per 1 000

Number of beaches

in 2008

swimmers

of beach water

Good

Up to 24

Undetectable

24

Fair

25 to 180

10 or less

10

Poor

181 to 610

11 to 15

7

Very Poor

More than 610

More than 15

0

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 waste materials for re-manufacturing outside Hong Kong. In all, about 3.12 million tonnes of waste materials, including paper, metals and plastic, were exported in 2008, generating export earnings of about $7 billion.

The Government is also promoting local recycling, with the development of a 20-hectare EcoPark in Tuen Mun Area 38 for exclusive use by the recycling and environmental industry. The EcoPark is being developed in two phases on 8 and 12 hectares of land respectively. Lots in Phase I have been let in batches to waste recyclers since April 2007. Phase II will be commissioned in 2009.

To encourage waste reduction, recovery and recycling, the Government launched a territory-wide Source Separation of Domestic Waste Programme in January 2005, following which domestic waste requiring disposal fell by 4 per cent in 2008 compared to 2007. On the other hand, waste requiring disposal from the commercial and industrial sector continued to increase, rising by 11 per cent in 2008 when compared to 2007. As a result, the Government rolled out a similar programme for the commercial and industrial sectors in October 2007.

In line with the polluter-pays principle, the Government aims to create economic incentives for waste reduction, recovery and recycling by introducing producer responsibility schemes (PRS) and a charging scheme for municipal solid waste. In this

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