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| Environmental Levy on Plastic Shopping Bags |
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Overview
The indiscriminate use of plastic shopping bags is a major and visible environmental problem in Hong Kong. Our landfill survey indicates that some eight billion plastic shopping bags are disposed of at landfills every year. This translates into more than three plastic shopping bags per person per day, which apparently go beyond our needs.
Environmental Levy on Plastic Shopping Bag
To address the problem of indiscriminate use, we proposed to introduce an environmental levy of 50 cents on each plastic shopping bag at the retail level, with the first phase covering chain or large supermarkets, convenience stores and personal healthy and beauty product stores. A two-month public consultation was conducted between May and July 2007 to solicit views from the public and the stakeholders on the proposal. The results of the public consultation indicated overwhelming public support.
Product Eco-responsibility Ordinance (Cap. 603)
Riding on the broad-based public support, the Product Eco-responsibility Ordinance (PERO) (Cap. 603) was enacted in July 2008. The Ordinance provides a legal basis for introducing producer responsibility schemes, with the environmental levy on plastic shopping bags as the first scheme under the Ordinance.
The Product Eco-responsibility (Plastic Shopping Bags) Regulation (Regulation) which further sets out the implementation details of the environmental levy scheme, was approved by the Legislative Council in April 2009. The actual charging of the environmental levy has commenced on 7 July 2009. For implementation details, please click here.
Reference Materials
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