The mysterious waves of garbage
Trash on beaches is an unwelcome reality for people in Hong Kong, as it is in many places in the world. In recent days, however, the city’s shores have been inundated by an overwhelming amount of debris, prompting public complaints and a search for the source.
Hong Kong’s top official, chief executive Leung Chun-ying, said that mainland China was partly to blame.
“We’ve seen an unusual phenomenon in recent weeks that lots of domestic garbage from the mainland has washed up in Hong Kong, which we estimate could be related to heavy rainfall and flooding,” he said as he and a dozen high-ranking officials picked up trash on Lantau Island.
The group of officials, joined by cleanup crews, picked up 1,350 kilograms of debris. In the first nine days of July, government departments collected more than 85 tons of debris from Hong Kong’s shores, it said.
Leung said the Hong Kong government would coordinate with the authorities in neighbouring Guangdong province to reduce the flow of marine debris. Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous Chinese city that sits at the mouth of the Pearl River, a major waterway that flows past several large Guangdong cities.
Gary Stokes, the Hong Kong-based Asia director for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an environmental group, said he first noticed the abnormally large amount of debris in mid-June.
As residents began reporting more polluted beaches, environmentalists combed through the collected material. Information on wrappers and packaging points to a mainland source.
“The trash we have on the beaches here is just horrendous,” Stokes said in an interview. “At the moment, a large amount of it is mainland debris.”
One possible culprit is the island of Wailingding, which is south of Hong Kong but administered by the Guangdong city of Zhuhai. Stokes posted a series of photos on Facebook that he received from sailors showing debris spilling from a large dump on Wailingding that abuts the coast.
But he cautions that the dump site is unlikely to be the sole source of Hong Kong’s marine trash problems, and the city, which produces a large amount of waste, is also responsible for the mess. The increased public awareness could help bolster recycling initiatives in Hong Kong, such as the introduction of a deposit for plastic bottles, he said.
Some Hong Kong residents criticized Leung’s trashpicking trip as a political show.
Paul Zimmerman, a district councillor, complained on Facebook that the chief executive did not separate the debris for recycling or attempt to identify the source. However, Stokes said that he thought the officials’ cleanup was an important acknowledgment of the magnitude of the problem.
“For me, the important fact is they cannot deny it. When we approach them in the future to talk about this we can say, ‘Remember that day on the beach?’ ”