Hong Kong zero-COVID policies create mountains of plastic waste

By Aleksander Solum

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong arrivals meet plastic in every single place in quarantine motels: Distant controls are wrapped in cellophane, pillows are encased in plastic baggage, meals comes with plastic cutlery. 

    Hong Kong’s strict quarantine insurance policies – meant to halt COVID-19 on the border and in the neighborhood – have been criticised for damaging the financial system and psychological well being. Environmentalists say the insurance policies are additionally hurting the surroundings by producing extra waste.

“Each single one of many employees members right here wears full PPE … the robes, the gloves, the booties, the hats, and that is each employees member and on each flooring,” stated Hong Kong-based skincare entrepreneur Clementine Vaughan, who flew into town on April 4.

    “The telephones, you realize, the distant controllers, all the pieces’s been cellophane-wrapped,” she stated, chatting with Reuters from her quarantine resort. 

    Hong Kong disposes of over 2,300 tonnes of plastic waste a day, and with a recycling charge of simply 11%, in response to authorities figures, most of it goes into landfills.

    A authorities spokesperson stated officers had been conscious of a surge in disposable waste since COVID started, urging individuals to undertake a inexperienced way of life so far as potential.

Edwin Lau, with native environmental group The Inexperienced Earth, stated Hong Kong’s method to COVID mirrored its lack of environmental consciousness.

“Folks residing in quarantine motels, they don’t seem to be confirmed instances,” Lau stated, urging the federal government to permit the recycling or reuse of plastics from quarantine services.

Hong Kong, one of many few locations that holds to a zero-COVID coverage, has quarantined tens of hundreds of individuals this yr in services for the COVID-positive and close to contacts. 

The services add to the waste drawback, with residents confirming to Reuters all meals got here in plastic baggage.

    Paul Zimmerman, an elected district councillor, stated the services are additionally wasteful as a result of they cannot be used long-term, resembling for public housing.

“They have been constructed in a short time … (and do not) adjust to any specific constructing requirements we’ve got in Hong Kong.”

(Reporting by Aleksander Solum; Enhancing By Tom Hogue)