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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for the Environment, Mr Wong Kam-sing, on food waste reduction and municipal solid waste charging after attending an engagement session on waste management issues this afternoon (December 3):?
Secretary for the Environment: Today's public engagement is very positive. People are looking for a blueprint on managing the solid waste in Hong Kong, involving hardware and software, and also carrots and sticks. In particular, including the waste charging proposal that people are thinking it would be very effective for Hong Kong to minimise waste at source. And today, we are very happy to announce the "Food Wise Hong Kong Campaign" which is a kind of territory-wide campaign that we like to embrace the private sector and together with the public sector partnership to reduce food waste at source. Overseas experience is that it could be pretty successful to reduce about 10 per cent of food waste in Hong Kong.?
Reporter: Will the Government offer any incentive to people and stakeholders to take part in the recommendations to be come up with the Food Wise Steering Committee??
Secretary for the Environment: We are pretty open-minded on this because we would like to work with the community and the business sector so that we can work out the so-called effective incentive to accelerate the change. We are talking with the retail sector, hotel sector, catering sector and even schools to universities. Each sector is different, so we would like to work with them and ask them what would be the effective way or what kind of government support they would like us to render so that we can make the change. So we are pretty open-minded.?
Reporter: For the waste disposal charging, the Friends of the Earth called for a second consultation. Will the Government do that??
Secretary for the Environment : As mentioned earlier, we would work with the Council for Sustainable Development in the coming year. We will work out the engagement details so that we can work out what would be the appropriate level of charging later.?
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, December 3, 2012
Issued at HKT 21:12
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