Reported back on February 8th 2013 by Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP), the Hong Kong government is planning to introduce a HK$1 levy on all glass bottles of alcohol to assist with the recycling of glass – something that this city is notoriously bad at and something that comes as second nature to most in the western world.
The thing is, this levy is not on
all glass or all glass bottles and it seems, once again (as with liquor
licenses as reported by Wine Times earlier this year) that the government seems
to “have it in” for the booze business. I say this as glass bottles such as
ketchup and salad cream are not going to be levied, neither is the beauty
business which uses thousands of glass bottles annually, nor will there be a
levy on glass items such as light bulbs (you may have noticed we have a lot of
lights, especially neon here in the city).
However, recently the government
extended this levy to glass bottles of water and fruit juice – not just beer,
wine and liquor – which is a good thing for the environment, but with water and
fruit juice, means that they will soon be found only in plastic bottles, something
which is not levied here.
The proposal is still under public
consultation but, according to the SCMP, “the levy would raise tens of millions
of dollars per year which would go towards hiring a contractor to set up a
glass-waste recovery network and handle collection logistics”.
As a fairly large consumer of
wine, I have no issue with recycling and think that this eco-drive should have
happened years ago. I do however think that the target of the levy should not
be, as proposed, the importers of the products as they are only answering to consumer
demand and that the levy should be placed to the consumer and there should be a
fair system for encouraging recycling within the community without having to
charge people to be environmentally friendly. Most of you must have seen bottle
banks in the UK and I see no reason why they would not work here - and collection could be privatized, supported
and subsidised by the government who recently announced a budget surplus of
HK$64.9 billion.
The Hong Kong Wine Merchants
Chamber of Commerce released its response to the public consultation recently
saying, “The HKWMCC fully supports the Environment Bureau’s idea of bearing the
recycling effort together as a whole. However (referring to point 3.5 of the
consultation document), we posses strong doubts about the implementing of the
levy on the importers and wholesalers level”.
They go on to say: “The HKWMCC
believes that the Environment Bureau has not fulfilled the “polluters pay”
principle in their proposal. Different from the catering industry it is
difficult for importers, distributors or retailers to determine how used wine
bottles are handled after being sold”.
“If the levy is implemented and integrated
into the retail price, the consumer will not be aware of the existence of the
levy, which in turn has no incentive to raise environmental awareness or change
existing waste disposal habits”.
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It does go on to say however that
they too believe that it SHOULD be implemented into the retail price much in
the same way that the plastic bag levy (of HK$0.50) has been successfully integrated
into our shopping habits in the city.
They say: “The HKWMCC suggests
that that the levy should be implemented on the retail to all wine consumers
and the revenue collected thus should be in a way to promote the wine bottle
recycling industry. A wine bottle deposit scheme could be introduced to induce
larger incentives for wine bottle recycling, which would help educate the public
on this matter, reducing glass waste and maximising the desired results of the
levy”.
I personally find it hard to imagine
how a beer or wine importer that imports hundreds of thousands (and in some
cases millions) of bottles per year will be able to afford this levy or how the
government can justify the levy on each bottle as it would significantly increase
the expenditure of the importer creating potential financial difficulties to
them – especially as Hong Kong is a major port for the re-export of beer and
wine as it’s a tax free haven for these items.
I certainly feel that something
should be done about glass waste but the owness needs to be placed on the
consumer to recycle each and every glass bottle they use in their home. Bars
and restaurants should be encouraged, not charged for serving glass wine and
beer bottles to their customer and the addition of HK$1 in this instance is
open to abuse as there is a very low likelihood that honesty would prevail – or
that bars and restaurants are ever going to be willing to disclose to the government
how much of each item they actually sell.
According to the SCMP,
Environment Secretary Wong Kam-sing said “he hoped the levy would help recover
70 per cent of the glass in the city”.
Henry Ho, President of the HKWMCC
said that the planned levy would do little to motivate consumers to return
their bottles for recycling, while Mr. Chin of the Bar and Club Association
noted that he “wants the government to provide businesses with incentives to
separate glass waste”.
The debate will rage on until the
public consultation period is over and then we will see what the government proposes.
Until then, I propose that we, the consumer and the people of Hong Kong start
realising that the environment and recycling is good for our city and that it
should not take fees, levies and charges to motivate us to recycle. We are
terrible at it here and seemingly, most of us just do not care at all, believing
it’s not our problem and someone else’s to fix. We need to stop being so
arrogant and ignorant and start thinking about the future of Hong Kong and its
surrounding area. Granted, there are very few recycling facilities in the city,
something the government needs to work on much faster. Maybe, instead of us
protesting about what the government does do wrong, how about protesting about
what it does not do right – especially when it comes to the future of our environment
here. Just a thought!
The original story from the SCMP
can be read here: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1145512/government-unveils-plan-hk1-recycling-levy-glass-bottles
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