Hong Kong authorities have stressed there are no plans to simply incinerate waste in mainland China and are instead exploring a collaborative greener approach, after a minister’s remarks prompted concerns that the city planned to just export rubbish to the Greater Bay Area. The city government said on Wednesday evening that it was exploring collaboration opportunities with the bay area, as it sought to clarify Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan’s comments in a radio interview hours before. The minister said city authorities and their counterparts on the mainland were looking at how to integrate waste handling across the bay area and figure out how to achieve the “Zero Waste Bay Area” goal.
The bay area refers to Beijing’s ambitious initiative to link Hong Kong, Macau and nine mainland cities into an integrated hi-tech, economic powerhouse by 2035. Tse said funding and technology from Hong Kong investors could allow for some of the city’s waste to be incinerated and upcycled in the bay area. But concerns were raised over whether Wednesday’s proposal went against the mainland’s ban since 2018 against taking in waste paper, plastics, textiles or slag – a by-product of separating metal from ore.
The policy, which also covers Hong Kong, imposed stricter limits on the level of contaminants allowed in imported materials. The mainland was a major destination for Hong Kong’s plastic waste before the ban, receiving almost half of the 14 million tonne.
