Recycling

January 15, 2014

Qi Luo

The Democratic Party is hoping that today’s policy address will include the setting up of a HK$5 billion fund to help promote recycling.

Democratic lawmaker Wu Chi-wai said 60 percent of respondents in a poll conducted by the party recently supported such a move.

“We want competition in the recycling industry, not monopoly,” he added. “The number of recycling agents should not be limited.”

Wu said that sections of the Public Cleansing and Prevention of Nuisances Regulation needed to be amended along with arrangements covering contractors for the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department to allow cleaners to collect materials that can be recycled.

The survey also showed that 61 percent of 859 respondents supported waste charges being levied according to volume.

“We believe this is the best way to push residents to change their habits,” Wu said.

He went on to urge officials to look at charging individual flats for garbage rather than a building.

Backing that plea, Wu said 58 percent of respondents said charging for waste would make them more active in recycling. And nearly 60 percent said a reward for recycling would help.

Another survey by the party showed 53 percent of public housing residents back charges for waste.

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=4&art_id=141502&sid=41324105&con_type=1&d_str=20140115&fc=4

https://www.foeeurope.org/preventing-waste-090315

The many social, environmental and economic benefits that would result from robust resource policies have been recognised by both the European Union and the governments of its member states. For example, by boosting re-use and repair of products, jobs are created while the impacts from mineral and metal extraction, incineration and landfill are avoided. But ambitions for encouraging re-use and repair, and the broader vision of a more resource-efficient and lowerconsuming Europe, appear to be at risk of being abandoned by policy-makers.

This briefing documents a series of community-led projects that are helping Europe to reduce its resource use and waste, and makes policy recommendations that would enable these best-practices to become the norm. The case studies show that it is often local, under-resourced communities, guided by principles of sustainability, that are at the forefront of improving resource use and waste prevention.

Without adequate political and financial support however, these activities will remain a scattered minority, and often risk fizzling out due to a lack of resources or infrastructure. The EU and its member states have strong policy options at their disposal to encourage such projects, boosting economies in a way that has clear social and environmental co-benefits. The policy recommendations in this briefing are designed to bridge the gap between Europe’s unfulfilled policy goals and the lower-consuming and resource-efficient Europe that the EU can – and must – become.

The Slovenian capital and three other municipalities, Vrhnika, Borovnica and Log Dragomer join the European network of Zero Waste municipalities

September 8, 2014

The mayor of Ljubljana, Mr. Zoran Janković announced today the commitment of his city to move towards Zero Waste.

In a press conference which took place in the Town Hall of the Slovenian capital the mayor of Ljubljana together with the mayor of Vrhnika, Stojan Jakin, the president of Zero Waste Europe, Rossano Ercolini and the chair of the Scientific Committee of ZWE, Enzo Favoino, confirmed the adhesion of Ljubljana and three other municipalities to the European network of Zero Waste communities. With this move Ljubljana becomes the first capital in the EU to adopt the Zero Waste goal.

Currently, Ljubljana is already the EU capital with best performance regarding waste separation and waste avoidance; it separately collects 60 % of municipal waste and generates less than 150kg of residual waste –what is not recycled or composted- per person yearly. Until 2025 they commit to increase separate collection to 78 % and decrease the amount of residual waste to 60 kg per person per year. With this commitment for zero waste, Ljubljana officially rules out building any incinerator in order to have the flexibility to continue reducing the non-recyclable waste and push for prevention and recycling.

Mr Janković, Mayor of Ljubljana said “In August residents of Ljubljana separately collected over 60% of their waste. They adopted responsible waste management as their own project. I am therefore specially proud that today Ljubljana became the first European Zero Waste capital.”

The other Slovenian towns to join the network of Zero Waste municipalities are Vrhnika, Borovnica and Log Dragomer. Today they collect and recycle over 76 % of its waste and on the average each resident creates 80 kg of residuals per year. By 2020, those municipalities will increase separate collection to 80 % and decrease residuals to 70 kg per person per year. To read the case study of Vhrnika click here.

Erika Oblak, coordinator of Zero Waste Slovenia said “No reuse or recycling system will be successful without the participation of the residents. Today we celebrate with all who separately collect our waste and those who support sharing our resources with future generations”.

On September 9, a conference will take place in the National Council of Slovenia –low chamber of the national parliament- to present the best practices from Zero Waste Europe and discuss the plans for zero waste implementation in Slovenia.

http://www.zerowasteeurope.eu/2014/09/ljubljana-first-eu-capital-to-adopt-a-zero-waste-strategy/

Rachelle Strauss

Wednesday 27 August 2014

“Pass to all emergency services. This is a major incident. I repeat; this is a major incident. We require all standby aircraft available, and all available land-based emergency crews as we are in danger of losing Boscastle and all the people in it.”

That was the message to RAF Kinloss Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre (ARCC) from Capt Pete McLelland (Royal Marines) flying above Boscastle, on 16 August 2004. On that day one of Britain’s worst rainstorms was unleashed on the hills above Boscastle, and I was standing in the village holding my three-year-old daughter in my arms. It’s a strange thing when you wonder whether you’ll ever see your husband alive again. Weird thoughts go through your head. My thoughts seemed quite logical – I believed, rightly or wrongly, that everything I’d read about climate change was happening. Not in 50 years’ time, but now. And in that moment, I decided to be part of the solution – for my daughter’s sake.

Emergency workers search a house in Boscastle, two days after the flood caused devastation, sweeping away cars and buildings. Photograph: John D McHugh/AP

According to The Story of Stuff, only 1% of the items we buy are still in use six months after they are bought. All the latest gadgets we can’t live without, the tools that promise to make our lives easier, the so-called must-have thing that guarantees us to be more popular/sexy/healthy – the majority of them end up in landfill in under a year.

We generate around 177m tons of waste every year in England alone. This poor use of resources costs businesses and households money and causes environmental damage.

And while it can be a depressing picture if we dwell there too long; I’m all about being part of the solution. A few years after the Boscastle floods, I decided to reduce the amount of waste I send to landfill. I’d seen people’s livelihoods washed out to sea and it made me realise that I wanted to make better use of the resources I had. I started a blog about reducing my waste to keep myself accountable. But every day, people from across the world tuned in to see what I’d found in the back of my fridge or hiding in the attic. And most importantly – what I was going to do about it.

A few months after I started blogging, a fellow waste geek, Karen Cannard from the Rubbish Diet, challenged me to have my own zero waste week. I asked my readers to join in to keep me company and 100 people signed up. At the end of the week I was inundated with emails telling me what fun people had, and now that it was over they intended to keep new habits in place – and so the annual Zero Waste Week campaign was born.

This year’s Zero Waste Week asks you what ‘one more thing’ can you do to reduce your household waste. Photograph: Claire Holgate

The growth of the campaign over the past seven years has been beyond amazing. What started off as a few individual householders has now grown into several thousand, with small and large businesses signing up, local authorities and large corporations all pledging to make a difference.

Zero Waste Week (1-7 September 2014) is predominantly a social media campaign. People sign up to the mailing list with their email address and pledge. Every year has a theme and this year’s is “One More Thing” in answer to the question: “What one more thing could you do to reduce landfill waste?” If you’re new to this, perhaps you’ll say no to disposable carrier bags and start using a reusable one. If you’ve been reducing waste for a while maybe it’s time to swap a disposable product for a reusable one. And if you’re a bit of a rubbish geek already, you could have your very own zero waste week with the aim of sending nothing at all to landfill. It’s an intense week. I like to think of it as a boot camp for bins – where size zero is acceptable.

I spent a year showing that you could send almost nothing to landfill – we filled just one old fashioned dustbin in 2009 – and now I just do my best, working in more of an advisory role and encouraging others to grab the zero waste baton. After all, it has much more impact if every household and business reduces their waste by a tenth than one household who go to the nth degree. Zero Waste Week applies to me the same way as to others – it gives me the opportunity to stop and think about my choices over the past year and make a commitment to get good habits back in place.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/27/zero-waste-week-challenge-send-nothing-to-landfill