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Following are the remarks by the Secretary for the Environment, Mr Wong Kam-sing, at the signing ceremony of the Addendum to the Hong Kong-Malmö Sustainability Charter held today (March 21):
Nick, friends from the media,
My warmest welcome to the Lady Mayor for visiting Hong Kong for the first time in your capacity as the Mayor of Malmö. It is our great pleasure that we could take advantage of this visit to celebrate the formal inclusion of the Science Park in this collaboration framework between the two cities.
After the conclusion of the Charter in 2011, exchange and collaboration between the two cities have been building up ever since with the support of the Science Park. Our collaboration has unfolded on various environmental fronts. The visit of a Green Tech mission from Hong Kong to Malmö in 2012 provided opportunities for green tech experts from Hong Kong to learn from Malmö about the latest development and business opportunities there. The visit of Malmö delegations to Hong Kong in 2011 and 2013 provided a useful platform for us to introduce our latest developments to our Malmö friends. And more importantly, through the exchange sessions during these visits, government officials and environmental experts of both cities focused discussion on the challenges and opportunities for the two cities.
I will leave it to Nick to talk about the outcome of collaboration on the innovation front. And I wish to talk about how our collaboration on waste management benefitted Hong Kong, in particular. Malmö, as one of the greenest cities in Europe, is advanced even by Europe's standard in its waste management system. From waste reduction, recycling, source separation, to planning of waste infrastructure and choice of technology, we have everything to learn from Malmö for improving our own waste management system.
About two weeks ago, we visited Malmö with a delegation from Hong Kong, including Legislative Council members, as the last stop of our Europe trip on waste management strategy. Not only did we learn a lot from the visit to the waste-to-energy plant located in the city centre of Malmö, the briefing on the evolution of its waste management strategies over the past few decades, as well as the communication and control systems on waste infrastructure were particularly useful to Hong Kong given our current state of development.
I was most touched on two occasions during my Malmö visit. Firstly, their landfilling capacity of about 30 years rings an alarm bell for every one of us in Hong Kong. Malmö currently only landfills about 2 per cent of its waste, the rest being recovered in either energy or materials. A city with such a low reliance on landfill still cares to have sufficient landfilling capacity for several decades. How could I not be worried for Hong Kong, which relies so much on landfill yet has only a few years of capacity, more exactly, about five years, so I am wondering, are we on the verge of a crisis?
Second, Malmö's Environment Department had attempted to recruit NGOs to join the meeting with us, for sharing views on incineration among other things. Yet finally, no NGO turned up. Part of the reason is that incineration is no longer a concern in the local community. Malmö's community had gone through the development stages of deliberation and acceptance of incineration as an integral part of its waste management, and also an integral part of the community. I look forward to similar developments in Hong Kong, with an increasing acceptance and understanding of advanced technology in waste management.
Today's signing ceremony is a new milestone in Malmö-Hong Kong collaboration. The inclusion of the Science Park in the Charter will definitely give a new momentum and vigour. I would like to express my sincere gratitude again to Malmö city government and the Science Park, and for our joint efforts in the past years that have been fruitful to both cities. Last but not least, I look forward to closer collaboration in the years to come, that will bring our partnership to a new height.
Thank you.
Ends/Friday, March 21, 2014
Issued at HKT 18:25
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