A study of potential impacts of municipal solid waste charging scheme to private residetnial housing estate in Hong Kong

Abstract

The concept of Municipal Solid Waste Charging is not new to many Asian countries for long. Yet, the Hong Kong Government had a lengthy discussion over the years for the execution of this mandatory charging scheme. Hong Kong as a metropolitan city was surprisingly steps behind other Asian countries like Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Singapore. Until 2017, it is a critical time to announce and introduce the charging scheme to the general public. This charging scheme taken initiatives to reduce the solid waste produced by sectors such as household, commercial and industrial. Private residential housing estate is one of the largest portions to create household solid waste in Hong Kong. The landfills are now overloading and will be completely filled very soon. With strong competition on land use, there is no area for the landfills to further expand. Unlike the other Asian countries, the proportion of solid waste process by incineration is extremely low in Hong Kong. Government only relied on the landfills over the past 30 years. Since there is no past research study focusing on the impacts of Municipal Solid Waste Charging to private residential housing estates, this research aims to examine how and why the charging scheme is significant for the household waste reduction. The evaluation of the role of property management companies as well as the potential challenges for the implementation of the charging scheme may help to explore the possible area for improvement and the way for the program sustainability development. This research is consisted of both quantitative and qualitative data collection with three selected large-scale residential housing estates through in-depth interview with property managers and surveys to the residents accordingly. Followed by the data analysis and discussion, it is concluded that the Municipal Solid Waste Charging had both direct and indirect contributions to the waste reduction and sustainability development on private residential housing estates. However, it was found that there is big variation on the green efforts from these three housing estates due to the budget constraints, residents’ awareness, demographic differences as well as the estate design. It is definitely not a good phenomenon for the sustainability development of Municipal Solid Waste Charging and also the waste reduction. To tackle this problem, it is recommended that the Hong Kong Government should put extra efforts and resources to enhance the public engagement, to improve the recycling facilities, to review the green policies, to strengthen the green policies promotion, to involve actively in environmentally friendly education. Meanwhile, the property management companies should provide sufficient support to the residents for the execution of Municipal Solid Waste Charging.