**********************************************

There is no single simple solution to the problem of waste in Hong Kong, Deputy Secretary for the Environment and Food, Mr Kim Salkeld said today (March 25).

Speaking after a luncheon talk at a seminar on "Our Urban Environment: Energy and Waste Management", Mr Salkeld pointed out that the Hong Kong Government had not been just focusing on one way of dealing with waste.

"In the past, the Government had been focusing on trying to make sure that our waste management facilities are adequate in terms of capacity and they are hygienic that the workers operating on them are not exposed to the risk themselves," he said.

"The priorities we are working on at the moment is trying to reach out to the community."

Mr Salkeld said the Government would get the community involved in the two key elements of the programme one of which was reducing the waste - not using plastic bags, not to buy things with lots of packaging materials if there is a choice and think about the durability of things in purchase.

For the construction industry, he hoped that they could make buildings that could last longer so as to reduce the construction waste.

For the household, he said the Government was working on getting a waste separation system that worked well with ordinary housewives whose kitchens were small and to put in facilities that were easy for them to use.

On waste-to-energy incineration, Mr Salkeld said the Government was trying to come up with a process that would recover some valuable materials for the community.

"Good modern waste-to-energy recovery facilities as part of the process of managing waste make a great deal of success. They make the problem of managing waste in HK more easier to handle," he said.

The Deputy Secretary also noted that if Hong Kong just continue to use landfill, the amount of land that had to be taken was going to be enormous.

As to concern about dioxin, Mr Salkeld said the strategy was to make sure that materials that at the end of the process might give rise to risk were being separated as had been done in the management of chemical waste.

He stressed that if the Administration proposed to introduce energy recovery facilities, it would have to have efficient control to prevent dioxin coming out.

End/Saturday, March 25, 2000

NNNN