After a year's delay, Hong Kong is ready to roll out waste charging
shelved its plan to charge households for the waste they produce. Are we any closer to introducing waste charging?
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Earlier this month, the Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan said the government has been assessing the situation and would report its findings soon to the Legislative Council's Panel on Environmental Affairs. He noted that many conditions had to be in place before the scheme could be rolled out.
We believe the time is right. Over the past year, the government has enhanced its support for recycling and public education. This is a key improvement, given that low recycling rates and low public awareness were the main reasons for the botched roll-out last year.
Tse highlighted significant progress made, including an 80 per cent increase in visits to the
Green@Community recycling network and a nearly 60 per cent rise in recyclables collected in 2024. The government has installed 1,200
smart collection bins for food waste in housing estates across the city, with the aim of increasing the number to 1,600 this year. Meanwhile, the daily per capita municipal solid waste disposal rate dropped from 1.44kg in 2023 to 1.4kg in 2024.
Besides, waste charging would benefit the economy, as South Korea's experience shows. South Korea introduced waste charging in 1995. By 2004, it saw a 24 per cent reduction in waste volume and gained an estimated 8 trillion won (US$5.6 billion) in economic benefits, in terms of avoided waste treatment costs and the market value of increased recycling products, according to a case study by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
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Waste charging could yield similar benefits for Hong Kong. Our Hong Kong Foundation researcher Peter Lam Kung-shing has found that every tonne in waste reduction generates a net benefit of HK$955.50, while every tonne of waste recycling yields HK$125.60. The estimated net benefit of waste charging is HK$637.3 million per year.
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