Incinerators needed to curb plastic scourge

One theme of a recent China Daily Asia Weekly issue was “Green Gold”. The subtitle of the feature story reads: “China’s push for quality air and water, and innovative ways of dealing with waste, means new business opportunities”. The cover story also reported that China has won accolades as a green leader. In testimony of this effort to improve the quality of air, one foreigner who just moved into Hong Kong a few months ago with his family — after living in Beijing for well over 10 years — told me air quality in the capital has improved a lot. Traffic congestion is still bad, he said, but he added authorities are acting to deal with the problem by introducing a licensing system similar to the “certificate of eligibility” in Singapore.

Amid this good news, however, I read of a pilot whale found vomiting plastic bags in Thailand which eventually died after rescuers made various attempts to save it. An autopsy found it had swallowed 80 plastic bags. I searched the internet for more details and, to my grief, discovered that this was not at all an isolated incident. A marine biologist said that in Thai waters alone, at least 300 marine animals die from plastic ingestion each year.

Then I recalled the Chinese mainland’s recent ban on the import of 24 types of waste as from January. That includes in particular plastics. The mainland had been a dumping ground for more than half the world’s trash before the ban and, at its peak, was importing almost 9 million tons of plastic scrap a year, according to Greenpeace. Erik Solheim, head of United Nations Environment Program, has called for action on the “plastic pandemic” that is plaguing not only marine life, but in the end hurting ourselves.

There is obviously a great need to cut down our use of plastics. I personally have stopped buying plastic bottled water and tried my best to reduce the use of plastic bottled water in conferences and meetings, where bottles are often given free. I understand, however, that some use of plastics is unavoidable because it is cheap and has various desirable properties. Thus, unless they are effectively recycled in an environmentally friendly manner, they should be turned into harmless substances before being returned to the environment. Otherwise, plastics will only accumulate, and the long-term effects will be unbearable.

For this reason, if recycling cannot take care of all our plastic waste, incineration seems the only way out. Today the technology of incineration has so advanced that the extremely high temperatures inside incinerators break down harmful material into entirely harmless substances. Singapore has been particularly successful in this regard. Singapore has been known to use the ash from the incineration for reclamation, and this has not caused any adverse effects on marine life. The incineration projects have been so successful that next year, the largest and the sixth incinerator will be ready for use. The previous, fifth one was approved as late as 2013. In comparison, Hong Kong has struggled to find a location for its first garbage incinerator using modern technology. The proposal to build one was made in 2012 but it was initially blocked by a judicial review and took several years before the project went to the tendering stage. The tendering process was finally completed as late as Nov 30 last year and now the incinerator is expected to open in 2024.

One incinerator is clearly and certainly inadequate for Hong Kong. Singapore has a population of 5.8 million, much less than our 7.4 million, but it already has five modern incinerators and its sixth and the largest ever will be completed next year. We have to wait till 2024 to have the first and much smaller incinerator. Singapore’s TuasOne Plant is designed to process 3,600 tons of waste a day and generate 120 megawatts of energy. The Hong Kong plant in Shek Kwu Chau can process 3,000 tons of waste per day, only about 83 percent of Singapore’s sixth plant’s capacity.

The figures show that we are not doing our part to protect the environment. It seems clear to me that as an advanced economy and consuming much more than our fair share of the world’s resources we need to be more proactive in protecting the environment. Incineration is no longer causing pollution as it once was. Hong Kong people need to start looking for places to build more incinerators.

Actually Hong Kong people have become much keener on preserving nature than most cities. In Singapore less than one tenth of the land has been preserved for conservation. In Hong Kong we have 40 percent of our land locked up in our country parks and a further 30 percent preserved as green belts or agricultural land. We have developed just about 25 percent of our land area. But we are not shouldering the responsibility that we should.

Since one incinerator can take more than 10 years to build, I truly hope that we should start working on the next three or four, if not more.