Sheepish on Charging for Garbage in HK

Residents will be charged for their garbage in August now

Hong Kong was going to finally implement its municipal waste-charging scheme on April 1, but apparently the public is still unsure about how it all works and so it will be delayed by another four months to August.

The public's lack of understanding is apparently the fault of the Environment Bureau and Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has asked the bureau to work harder on how to educate people on how to dispose of their waste properly.

Shouldn't that have been done ages ago? Or did the bureau -- and by extension the government -- assume everyone knows what they're supposed to do?

There are nine different sized garbage bags

From August, Hong Kong residents can't just throw their garbage into random plastic bags -- they must use designated ones that they can buy at supermarkets, convenience stores and pharmacies. They come in nine different sizes and the cost of these bags will pay for handling the trash in the landfill.

The scheme is in the hopes that people will find it expensive to pay for their trash to be processed so they will be incentivised to reduce their waste by recycling paper, plastic, and glass, or even do the dirty deed of separating their food waste and disposing of it in a special food waste bin.

But does the government have enough capacity to handle so much recycling? And does the general public know what can and cannot be recycled? 

The current state of awareness of separating waste is horrendous just by looking at the garbage boxes on the street with several different slots for paper, plastic and metal. Many people just randomly throw their garbage into any slot! More education should have been done ages ago.

Do people even know how to use this properly?

Nevertheless the fact that the new garbage scheme will be delayed another four months is pathetic -- why not start it anyway in residential areas because there is a six-month grace period? People will learn very quickly on how to use the bags and reduce their waste by recycling. There will be growing pains, but people learn by doing.

For restaurants there has to be a way for them to collect and dispose of it efficiently. Simon Wong is the honorary chairman of the Institute of Dining Professionals and says sorting out food waste means restaurants will have to hire more staff to do this when it's already hard enough to find dishwashers.

There is also the valid concern about preventing mosquitoes and food odours when dealing with food waste.

Restaurants don't have the time or energy to take out food waste and dispose of it elsewhere. The government has to make it easy for them to do this.

Sadly it seems the officials who thought of this waste-charging scheme don't have any idea how to put this in practice because they don't even do this at home! Someone else takes out the garbage for them so they have no inkling of what is involved. Have they ever separated their garbage and taken it to recycling spots? If only they knew... 

Saving Donuts from the Dumpster

Colourful and saccharine donuts from Punk Rock Pastries

A friend of mine has a relatively new hobby -- picking up food for cheap that would otherwise go into the garbage.

He is constantly checking a Danish-based app called Too Good To Go, which promotes businesses that have leftover food items that can be purchased at a cheaper price and picked up the same day.

I asked if the deals were mostly towards the end of the business day, but he said they were posted all the time and even snapped up quickly if your fingers aren't fast enough to secure the deal.

With the price of food up 10 percent in Vancouver, people are looking out for deals to fill their stomachs.

The other day my friend picked up two boxes of donuts from Punk Rock Pastries in Burnaby (he lives in East Vancouver). I don't know how much they cost, but they were definitely a colourful (and very sweet) treat.

The toppings were saccharine, while the donuts were fluffy, they were quite sweet too. 

Although my friend likes the concept of not wasting food, he also looks at it as an opportunity to sample something new relatively cheaply, and if he likes it he'll go back and maybe pay full price for it.

Perhaps the most ironic thing is that he has been picking up mostly cakes and donuts when his previous mantra was to invest his calories in alcohol than desserts...