The Environment | 291
Hazardous Chemicals Control Ordinance, the Product Eco-responsibility Ordinance; and the Motor Vehicle Idling (Fixed Penalty) Ordinance. Most of them have subsidiary regulations and other statutory provisions such as technical memoranda.
The Government follows a set of environmental quality objectives for better protection of public health and to preserve a natural ecosystem. The cost of imposing limits on polluting emissions is not higher than that needed to achieve conservation goals. These goals include making maximum use of the environment's natural capacity to absorb and recycle waste.
In 2011, EPD inspectors made about 59 500 visits to different locations around Hong Kong to enforce controls on air, noise, waste and water pollution and to deal with complaints about pollution. This resulted in 309 prosecutions and nearly $1.9 million in fines.
The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (the Stockholm Convention) and the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (the Rotterdam Convention) are effective in Hong Kong. The Hazardous Chemicals Control Ordinance regulates via a permit system, 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.
The EPD also works with the construction, catering, and vehicle repair industries, the property management sector and other trades to promote good practices and compliance with environmental regulations.
The EPD runs a Compliance Assistance Centre where 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 a multitude of sectors, including transport, power generating and construction. The Government has been implementing various measures to improve air quality. Between 1990 and 2009, emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), respirable suspended particulates (RSP) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) have dropped by 51 per cent to 64 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 fuel quality, furnace and chimney installations, dark. smoke emissions, open burning, dust emissions from construction works, emissions. from petrol filling stations, perchloroethylene emissions from dry-cleaning facilities, and VOC emissions from printing machines and the VOC contents in selected products.
The APCO also bans the import and sale of the more dangerous types of asbestos, amosite and crocidolite. Moreover, anyone intending to remove asbestos
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