Plastic bags and cutlery take 10 to 1,000 years to decompose into microplastics, which flow through groundwater into the sea. They return via the marine food chain to people. Shadow Li flags the urgency of reducing plastic waste. LegCo has a waste charging bill to approve.

Lifetime of the takeout waste

TAKEOUT PACKAGING MANUFACTURE

ONLINE FOOD DELIVERYResturant to consumer / Platform to consumer

TAKEOUT WASTE PYRAMID DECOMPOSITION TIME

WASTE SORTING & RECYCLING

WASTE DISPOSAL

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an international green group, plastic dining cutlery makes up around 10 percent of disposal plastic in Hong Kong, destined for landfills or the ocean. Single-use tableware, including cutlery, containers, and straws, are among the top 10 sources of marine litter in Hong Kong, according to the Coastal Watch Report of WWF-Hong Kong.

Since January 2019, plastic straws and polyfoam food utensils have been banned in government canteens. A two-phase campaign, “Plastic-Free Takeaway, Use Reusable Tableware” by the government and the Environmental Campaign Committee, has voided about 2.4 million sets of disposable tableware, with some 700 eateries participating.

The Environmental Protection Department will complete a study on the control of disposable plastic cutlery in late 2020, with recommendations. The WWF urged the government to set a phaseout of all single-use plastic cultery by 2022.

Plastic discarded at landfills finds its way into the ocean through groundwater after it decomposes into microplastics, said Laurence McCook, head of Oceans Conservation of WWF-Hong Kong. WWF research shows that one person each week consumes 5 grams of microplastics, which are invisible to the naked eye.

Plan a circular economy

“The situation of waste sorting is depressing. We should be doing much more. We should change the products we use into a circular economy. We should use products that never need to go to the landfill,” McCook said. A circular economy uses materials that can re-enter the biosphere safely or circulate in reuse without entering the biosphere.

Discarded plastic dining ware at landfills has increased about 30 percent in four years, from 131 to 169 metric tonnes per day. However, polyfoam dining ware, a long-term independent variable on government radar — mostly in takeout orders picked up by customers or delivered by restaurant staff — has moderated since 2015, from 48 tonnes per day to 41 tonnes per day in 2018, by 14.6 percent over four years. Citing an “increasing concern” over the years, the Hong Kong government in 2015 isolated plastic tableware as a distinct category within its broad plastic-waste monitoring.

The booming food delivery services in the city have made the situation worse. Deliveroo Hong Kong, which dominates the sector with over 50 percent of the city’s food delivery market, said the sector has burgeoned about 100 times over the past five years. Brian Lo, general manager of Deliveroo Hong Kong, which started here in 2015, said business tripled annually for the past two years.

Lo noted the market penetration for food delivery is low. Four years ago, a client ordered takeout two to three times per month. This has increased to five times now. But in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, the average client orders 15 to 30 times a month. Lo said he sees high growth potential for Hong Kong. Currently, Deliveroo HK has about 6,500 diners on its apps, serving about 35 percent of the restaurants.

COVID-19 boosts food delivery

While the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted most sectors of the economy, the food delivery business has gained. Deliveroo raised its target of partner restaurants for the end of 2020 from 9,000 to 11,000. “Many restaurants approached us recently as people work from home or lunch inside offices,” Lo said.

The food delivery companies know that plastics used in their packaging damage the environment and are unsustainable. Deliveroo claims it is the first to introduce an opt-in function via its apps. Customers have to indicate if they prefer plastic ware with their food, or food delivered without straws, spoons, or chopsticks.

Lo said Deliveroo will adopt sustainable packaging, such as plant-based sources, and certified recycled paper products in 2020, as it has done in the UK, France and Dubai — three of its 13 global markets.

Ironically, many restaurants put plastic cutlery into their food packages for clients, countering the education and communication efforts of Deliveroo. “With over 35 percent of partner restaurants, we can change the landscape for sustainable packages, to lower the cost for diners to use them,” Lo said. He feels the general public needs incentives to cooperate in environmental protection, even though they are already aware of it.

Deliveroo and Foodpanda represent over 90 percent of the food delivery sector in Hong Kong. On March 9, they signed a pact with the WWF to abandon the use of plastic cutlery by 2025. The two companies reduced 60 tonnes of plastic in 2019, and intend by March 2021 to reach the reduction goal of 130 tonnes, less than the average daily volume of plastic tableware dumped at landfills in 2018.

Arun Makhija, CEO of Foodpanda Hong Kong, said the “hyper-growth” of food delivery can help sway the food and beverage industry and their customers to be environmentally responsible.

Producer responsibility

Plastic is not the only waste dumped at the landfills, which are heavily relied on by the city for its waste management. Municipal solid waste (MSW) per person disposed at the landfills has increased 20 percent, from 1.27 kilograms in 2011 to 1.53 kilograms in 2018. It renders the government’s goal of reducing the MSW per person to 0.8 kilograms in 2020 unrealistic.

Jonathan Wong, head of the Department of Biology at Hong Kong Baptist University, sees the problem as a lack of a waste-charging and mandatory waste-sorting policy, coupled with a malfunctioning recycling industry. Wong said these related policies are essential where waste reduction has worked, as in Taiwan and South Korea.

Hong Kong’s waste-charging initiative has floundered for 15 years. The bill was finally introduced in the Legislative Council in November 2018 and debated on March 17 this year. If it is not passed on the third reading by the close of the legislative year in July, it will have to restart with a reshuffled legislature after elections in September.

The government estimates the waste-charging policy will reduce waste disposal by 20 percent once implemented. Wong said that if the bill is not passed this session, another two to three years will be wasted. Mandatory waste-sorting is still not being initiated by the government, to work in-tandem with charging.

Wong believes getting the waste-charging bill through LegCo was so fraught with problems, the administration hesitated to introduce mandatory waste-sorting. But waste reduction success depends on the twin policies working together.

The city of Taipei in Taiwan has reduced 60 to 70 percent of its solid waste in 2000, following its policy of quantity-based waste-charging. Many first-tier cities on the Chinese mainland have started rolling out mandatory charging and sorting policies. Shanghai is an oft-cited international case.

Proposed waste charging bill

• Two proposed charging models: by designated garbage bags and by weight (gate fee).

• Bags and labels with anti-counterfeit features can be bought at 4,000 sales points, including supermarkets, convenience stores, gas stations, vending machines, etc.

Recyclers adrift

The mainland, along with many other countries and regions, has stopped accepting waste, especially plastic and paper, dumped from advanced countries and regions. Local profit-driven recycling agents don’t have incentives to keep such rubbish away from our landfills, while Taiwan’s recycling fund subsidizes recyclers when prices fall below the their costs, Wong said.

The lack of mandatory waste sorting and upgraded import standard for processed waste from other places rendered the recycling business in Hong Kong unprofitable in the wake of the waste import ban. Many small recyclers closed their business despite the government’s offer of subsidies from the HK$1 billion ($129 million) Recycling Fund, Wong said. That increased the quantity of waste plastic at landfills by 10.3 percent in 2018, and the plastic recovery rate fell from 13 percent in 2017 to 7 percent in 2018.

Plastics recycling locally has increased three-fold in the last two years, but the recycling industry for plastic waste is unable to absorb the volume generated in the city, leaving most of it for the city’s landfills. Wong said that waste is a product of social behavior, requiring the government to intervene and lead.

Wong sees value in local recyclers cooperating with their counterparts in the nine Guangdong cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, with their better manufacturing capacity and technology, for high-volume recycling.

Contact the writer at stushadow@chinadailyhk.com