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The Environment

Community participation is encouraged through district-based education and promotion on waste reduction and recycling. A clean recycling campaign is conducted to promote community awareness and thereby improve the recyclability and value of recyclables.

The network of community green stations is being expanded to strengthen support for community-level recycling. In 2018, the stations in Tuen Mun and Kwai Tsing were. commissioned, bringing the number of operating stations to seven.

In 2018, the department formed new outreach teams to step up public education efforts with on-site guidance and hands-on demonstration, and to disseminate updated and key green messages in the community through regular visits. These efforts enhance support to waste reduction at source and clean recycling on the ground, and prepares the public for the implementation of municipal solid waste charging at the community level.

Between 2013 and 2017, an annual average of 53 per cent of paper and 91 per cent of metal in municipal solid waste was recovered. The annual average recovery rate of plastics was

15 per cent.

During the same period, an average of 82 per cent of solid waste, including municipal solid waste and overall construction waste, was recovered each year, working out to an annual average of 23 million tonnes recovered. This annual average was 27 per cent higher than the 18 million tonnes recovered between 2008 and 2012.

EcoPark

More than 90 per cent of recyclable municipal solid waste is exported for recycling every year, with plastics, paper and metals contributing about 95 per cent of the recovered waste. The 20-hectare EcoPark in Tuen Mun promotes development of the recycling industry by providing long-term land at affordable rents so as to encourage investment in advanced technologies and value-added recycling processes. As at December, 12 lots were leased to private recyclers to recycle cooking oil, scrap metal, wood, WEEE, plastics, construction materials, glass, rubber tyres, food, batteries and paper.

Recycling Fund

A $1 billion Recycling Fund, launched in 2015, is open for applications for five years to support projects that raise the quantity and quality of recyclables recovered, as well as projects that promote markets for recycled products and enhance the recycling industry's capability and capacity. As at end-December, 170 projects were either in progress or ready to start, involving total funding of about $130 million. In view of the Mainland's tightening of requirements on imported recyclables in early 2018, the Recycling Fund rolled out new measures to help local recyclers process recyclables, particularly waste paper and plastics.

Waste Treatment and Disposal

Refuse Transfer Stations

Municipal solid waste is collected and delivered to refuse transfer stations by refuse collection vehicles, packed into containers and then taken to landfills in bulk by sea or land. A network of

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