ENG-2009 — Page 347

The Environment 279

The poultry and pig schemes were introduced in 2005 and 2006 respectively and farmers had up to one year to decide whether or not to join them. The two schemes have effectively decreased the number of pig and poultry farms and reduced the pollution load on the environment. Through the buyout scheme launched in 2008 for the live poultry trade, the number of poultry farms has been further reduced.

Bathing Beaches

The Government has adopted strict standards for water quality control to protect the health of swimmers at bathing beaches. These standards indicate the pollution level measured in terms of E. coli (the bacterium that can indicate the presence of sewage). The following table shows how beaches were classified in 2009. Beaches in the 'good' and 'fair' categories meet the Government's water quality objective for bathing. In 2009, over 90 per cent of the bathing beaches met the water quality objective.

Beach water

Bathing season geometric mean of

quality ranking E. coli count per 100ml

Minor health risk cases per 1 000

Number of beaches

in 2009

swimmers

of beach water

Good

Up to 24

Undetectable

23

Fair

25 to 180

10 or less

15

181 to 610

11 to 15

3

More than 610

More than 15

0

Poor

Very Poor

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 recyclable materials for re-manufacturing outside Hong Kong. In all, about 3.15 million tonnes of recyclable materials were exported in 2009, generating export earnings of about $5.8 billion.