Letter to the Editor of SCMP - Response to a letter on waste recycling

 
Letter to the Editor of SCMP – Response to a letter on waste recycling

I refer to Ms Tina Denmark's letter to the Editor which was published on 2 April 2010. She reported that workers loaded the contents of recycling bins into one refuse truck together with waste.

To promote and enlist community participation in waste recovery and recycling, the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) launched a territory-wide Programme on Source Separation of Waste (SSW) in January 2005. As at the end of 2009, there were about 1 250 housing estates participating in the Programme. Under the Programme, the management parties of housing estates would make arrangement to consign the recovered recyclables to recycling firms. If a housing estate has any difficulty in finding a proper outlet for the recyclables collected from the residents, EPD would offer assistance to ensure that the residents' effort in recycling would not end up as waste in landfills.

For recycling bins in public area, a designated contractor of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department would collect the recyclables regularly. The contractor is bound by contract to deliver the recovered recyclables to local recyclers for recycling and dumping recyclables as waste is strictly forbidden.

We would like to request Ms Denmark to call the EPD’s hotline at 2838-3111 and furnish us with more information so that we can investigate this specific case further.


WONG Chuen-fai
Officer-in-Charge
Waste Reduction & EcoPark Group
Environmental Protection Department