January, 2013:

Old trucks face scrapheap to curb air pollution

Jan 17th, 2013

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Old trucks face scrapheap to curb air pollution

Submitted by admin on Jan 17th 2013, 12:00am

News›Hong Kong

POLICY ADDRESS

Cheung Chi-fai and Keith Wallis

Cash incentives to take worst-polluting vehicles out of use; law to make ships burn cleaner fuel

Lau Wai-kei spends his days driving a blue dump truck – the very colour everyone wants Hong Kong’s sky to be. It is the first and only truck Lau has bought and has helped fund his wedding, home and feed his two children.

But the truck, registered in 1995, is deemed to be among the city’s most polluting vehicles, emitting 34 times as many particles as the latest model. The continued use of trucks like Lau’s could even threaten lives.

That is why Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying yesterday pledged to introduce a HK$10 billion package to remove tens of thousands of the dirtiest vehicles from the streets in phases between now and 2019. It is the largest and most expensive measure ever to clean up the city’s air.

As well as offering larger cash incentives for owners to scrap their vehicles than previous, unsuccessful schemes, the vehicle replacement plan will also limit the lifespan of newly registered trucks to a maximum of 15 years.

Officials say a new law would be needed to impose the lifespan limit before they seek lawmakers’ approval for the funding.

Besides addressing the problem of what he called “carcinogenic” roadside pollution, Leung also pledged to introduce legislation next year to require all oceangoing vessels to use fuel with lower sulphur content when berthed in the city, a move think tank Civic Exchange called a “major breakthrough” that could reduce the sulphur emissions by up to a third.

Leung also plans to force all 15,000 vessels operating in local waters to use cleaner fuel.

Officials hope these policies can improve air quality, helping to extend the lives of the 3,000 people estimated to die prematurely each year due to air pollution and reduce annual economic losses of HK$39 billion attributed by experts to the pollution. But the measures are set to prompt a battle with the transport industry, which says the package goes too far, and green groups like Friends of the Earth and Clean Air Network which say the old vehicles are not being phased out quickly enough.

Under the plan, about 88,000 commercial diesel vehicles which pre-date the Euro IV emission standard introduced in the city in 2006 would be removed from the streets in phases. These vehicles account for about half of all nitrogen oxides emissions and 88 per cent of particles at the roadside.

From 2016, no new licences would be allowed for vehicles that pre-date the Euro and Euro I emissions standards. Pre-Euro II vehicles will not be licensed from 2017, pre-Euro III vehicles from 2019. By the deadlines, these vehicles would be at least 13 years old. Some would have been running for more than 18 years.

Ex-gratia payments based on the age of the vehicle and representing a percentage of the cost of replacement would be offered to affected owners. Those who scrap and replace old vehicles could receive between 18 per cent and 30 per cent of the cost of the replacement, up from 10 per cent to 12 per cent in past schemes.

Unlike previous schemes, owners who scrap their vehicle without replacement would also receive cash, at a rate of between 10 per cent and 18 per cent of a new vehicle’s cost.

But Lau, the truck owner, said a payment of just HK$200,000 would not be enough for him to buy a new truck, which would cost HK$1 million. “It is going to rob me of my living,” he said, adding he would drive his vehicle until the 2016 deadline.

Leung Kun-kuen, chairman of the Kowloon Trucks Merchants Association, said the package was far from satisfactory, adding: “Are [the officials] going to force the operators out of business and prompt them to take to the streets?”

Leung said the compensation for owners who did not buy a new vehicle remained unattractive, and questioned whether even a 30 per cent payment would be enough to encourage owners to scrap Euro III vehicles, as the sum would be similar to what they would receive for selling their used vehicle.

But Chow Yu-lung, 60, who has suffered from asthma for 23 years and avoids walking in urban areas, wants the plan introduced as soon as possible.

“If these vehicles are removed, I could hit the streets again, rather than hiding at home with an air purifier,” he said, adding that he sympathised with those who might lose their job because of the plan.

Professor Anthony Hedley of the University of Hong Kong’s community medicine department said there were limits to Leung’s plan, but it remained a “defining moment”.

“I certainly think the owners should accept responsibility for their vehicles,” he said. “We would not allow the driving of vehicles with no brakes or defective steering, and we shouldn’t allow vehicles with dirty emissions which are killing people.”

Tim Smith, chairman of the Hong Kong Liner Shipping Association said his group was “pleased to see the chief executive’s support in the policy address for action”.

Smith is also North Asia chief executive for Maersk Line, one of 18 shipping companies that signed the Fair Winds Charter, a voluntary programme in which the firms agreed to use low-sulphur fuel from January 2011 while urging government regulation.

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CY Leung policy address 2013

Air Pollution

Source URL (retrieved on Jan 17th 2013, 5:50am): http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1129717/old-trucks-face-scrapheap-curb-air-pollution

HK$1 glass recycling levy welcomed by most, SCMP.com poll finds

Jan 17th, 2013

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Submitted by admin on Jan 17th 2013, 12:00am

News›Hong Kong

ENVIRONMENT

Phila Siu phila.siu@scmp.com

Eight out of 10 South China Morning Post readers polled in an online survey do not mind paying extra for a bottled drink if it helps pay for recycling the glass in Hong Kong.

The Post reported on Tuesday that environmental officials were considering putting a HK$1 levy on bottles of beer, wine and spirits to defray the cost of recycling the empties.

Only 10 per cent polled in the SCMP.com [1] survey rejected the extra surcharge.

In an interview with the Post, a 55-year-old man who enjoyed drinking beer with friends expressed support for the scheme, even if it would make a round of drinks more expensive.

“It’s always a good thing to support environmental protection. I won’t drink less even if I have to pay more,” he said.

Han Li-ching, 79, who seldom drinks beer or wine, praised the recycling scheme and did not agree that the government should bear the cost.

“Why should taxpayers subsidise drinkers?” he asked.

Recyclers also welcome the idea as it would help pay to process the 70,000 tonnes of glass waste every year.

The food and beverage industry said it would be unfair to single out glass, which accounts for only 3 per cent of total waste.

Topics:

Environment

glass recycling levy

Scmp.Com

Source URL (retrieved on Jan 17th 2013, 5:34am): http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1129619/hk1-glass-recycling-levy-welcomed-most-scmpcom-poll-finds

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Chief executive declares his priorities for helping an overcrowded city

Jan 17th, 2013

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Submitted by admin on Jan 17th 2013, 12:00am

News›Hong Kong

POLICY ADDRESS

Olga Wong olga.wong@scmp.com

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying pledges a raft of measures to ease the plight of an overcrowded city beset by poverty and pollution

Embattled Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying yesterday laid out ambitious plans in his maiden policy address to boost land supply and address the city’s acute housing problems.

A blueprint that will set policy direction in the next five years, Leung’s plan contains few surprises but sticks to a pragmatic approach, with plenty of measures to tackle economic, environmental and social issues. He also declared that it was the government’s main concern to ensure an adequate and steady supply of land and homes.

“The top priority of the current […] government is to tackle the housing problem,” the 58-year-old chief executive told the Legislative Council, acknowledging the sharp rise in property prices and an outcry over the cramped living conditions of tens of thousands of people.

“We recognise that problems stemming from property prices and rental, cage homes, cubicle apartments and subdivided units cannot be solved overnight. But we must acknowledge these problems, understand the gravity of the situation, and take the first step forward to resolve them,” Leung said. He highlighted the need to improve Hongkongers’ living space, citing his personal encounters with people living in subdivided flats.

He appealed to the young generation to consider the “overall interests of the community” when deciding whether to oppose new town developments.

Among controversial plans to build up a land reserve are proposals to reclaim large tracts of land amounting to 3,000 hectares, including building artificial islands east of Lantau. Other measures include lifting 40-year-old development restrictions in Mid-Levels and Pok Fu Lam, asking private developers to provide public housing in former quarry sites and building a new town for 260,000 people in the Northern New Territories.

In the short to medium term, the amount of land designated for housing will grow to 300 hectares – almost eight times the size of the West Kowloon arts hub – providing 128,700 flats by 2020.

He admitted there would be a time lag before these measures took effect and, to the dismay of some, the supply of public flats would rise from 15,000 units a year to 20,000 only from 2018.

A government source said the supply of 75,000 public housing flats over the five yeas from this year and the provision of another 100,000 units in five years from 2018 was the minimum target, adding that “the government will revise the target upwards after getting more concrete figures”.

On the economic front, Leung said the government must be “appropriately proactive” to safeguard Hongkongers’ interests, a point underpinned by earlier policies. These include restrictions on non-permanent residents buying property, such as the 15 per cent buyer’s stamp duty, and banning mainland women from giving birth in Hong Kong. This “zero delivery quota” policy, for mainlanders whose husbands are not Hong Kong residents, would be maintained.

Leung did not go into detail about relief measures for the poor. A government source said Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah would announce more relief measures in his budget speech on February 27.

To clean up the environment, the government will phase out old diesel commercial vehicles and give owners HK$10 billion in subsidies to replace 80,000 heavily polluting ones.

Leung said little about universal suffrage and did not give a timetable for the consultation on the chief executive election in 2017 and the Legislative Council election in 2016, saying only that these would be conducted at an “appropriate juncture”.

Political scientist Dr Li Pang-kwong, of Lingnan University, said the chief executive “could have given more details on how the consultation would be done. It is also disappointing to hear that Leung did not touch on any governance issues.”

Chung Kim-wah, director of the Centre for Social Policy Studies at Polytechnic University, said Leung had only taken further land measures initiated by the previous administration. “The key is how to deliver it amid diverse interests and opposition. But Leung didn’t tell us.”

KEY POINTS OF LEUNG’S BLUEPRINT

HK$10 billion in subsidies to get polluting commercial vehicles off the road

Consider scrapping a policy that restricts property development in Pok Fu Lam and Mid-Levels.

Develop a new town the size of Fanling or Sheung Shui

Reclaim 2,000 to 3,000 hectares outside Victoria Harbour

Abolish HK$400 monthly levy on employers of foreign domestic helpers.

Explore feasibility of incorporating nursing homes for elderly into redevelopment projects

Set up committee on standard working hours

Unify fees on sports facilities

[1]

Topics:

CY Leung policy address 2013

Poverty

Pollution

Health Burdens: Pollution related Premature deaths in Hong Kong during the term of office of Donald Tsang as Chief Executive

Jan 16th, 2013

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download PDF : TsangYauBuckstopshere

Black Carbon Second Only to CO2 in Heating the Planet

Jan 16th, 2013

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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/black-carbon-second-only-to-co2-in-heating-the-planet-new-study-15465

Michael D. Lemonick

No discussion of climate change can get very far without focusing on greenhouse gases — pollutants including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides and more, which are trapping heat and driving the planet’s temperature upward.

But according to a report published Tuesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, the second most important heat-trapping pollutant isn’t a gas at all: it’s black carbon, more commonly known as plain old soot, generated mostly from the burning of diesel fuel, coal and woody plant material. “There’s a relatively small amount in the atmosphere,” said the study’s lead author, Tami Bond, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in an interview. “But it’s very powerful.”

New research says the second most important heat-trapping pollutant isn’t a gas at all: it’s black carbon, generated mostly from the burning of diesel fuel, coal and woody plant material.
Credit: A6U571N/flickr.

This isn’t the first hint that black carbon might have an outsize effect on climate. Research published in 2008, for example, concluded that black carbon’s global-warming effect was about twice as great as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s major report in 2007 had estimated — the same conclusion reached in the new study — but that conclusion wasn’t considered definitive.

Even so, scientists and policymakers understood that reducing emissions of black carbon could be a relatively quick and easy way to slow the pace of global warming, and a number of initiatives including one created by the U.S. and another by the United Nations have been created to try and deal with the problem. The particles can also cause or aggravate lung disease, so there’s a public-health benefit to reducing emissions as well.

But without a true sense of how big an issue black carbon really was, scientists and policymakers couldn’t make truly informed decisions about how to attack it. So Bond and 30 other scientists launched a truly comprehensive assessment, coordinated by the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project, of how much black carbon there really is in the atmosphere, where it comes from and how much it warms the planet.

According to the lead author of the study, reducing emissions from diesel engines is the biggest priority, followed by some kinds of wood and coal burning in homes — for cooking, and maybe for heating.
Credit: wmshc_kiwi/flickr.

In the end, the study took four years. “It wasn’t supposed to take that long, but the science isn’t entirely straightforward,” Bond said. On the most basic level, black carbon contributes to global warming simply because it’s black. “The particles absorb just about every ray of light that hits them,” she said, heating up like dark clothing on a sunny summer day and warming the air around them. In the Arctic, black carbon particles eventually settle onto ice and snow, where they help speed melting.

Particles of black carbon come in different sizes, however, and in some cases they’re small enough that they can affect cloud formation — in some cases, at least, helping to create clouds that reflect sunlight. Some sources of black carbon, moreover, such as the open burning of plant waste, generate other kinds of particles that tend to cool the planet. “If we shut those sources off, you could actually make the warming worse,” Bond said.

The new report tries to take all of these complexities into account. “It’s clear that reducing emissions from diesel engines is the biggest priority, followed by some kinds of wood and coal burning in homes — for cooking, and maybe for heating,” Bond said.

Emissions from some kinds of small industry might also be a target, but not from all. “We tried to estimate the net effect of each source, along with the uncertainties in our estimates,” Bond said. “In some cases, the uncertainty is so large that it’s clear we need more understanding.”

Nevertheless, Bond said reducing the most clearly harmful sources of emissions is something we already know how to do. “Black carbon was really high in the U.S. in the early 1900s,” she said. “Since then, we’ve increased our use of fossil fuels dramatically without increasing those emissions. This is not rocket science.”

The black carbon study may not have all the details nailed down, and it doesn’t do away with the thornier, longer-term issue of carbon dioxide emissions. But it does point to a way to slow the pace global warming significantly and quickly. Given that the dire effects of warming are showing everywhere — as a new report makes clearer than ever — this could prove invaluable as a guide to effective policy.

Please, delay no more in clearing the air

Jan 16th, 2013

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Submitted by admin on Jan 16th 2013, 12:00am

Business

LAI SEE

Howard Winn

Chief Executive C.Y. Leung is expected to announce measures today to start the process of improving the quality of Hong Kong’s noxious air, at least at the roadside. Much of the pollution in the atmosphere comes from the mainland, and that is a more complicated matter to resolve. But at the roadside in urban centres, the pollution is home-grown and can be managed. To its considerable credit, the government brought in Christine Loh Kung-wai, who knows this subject inside out, having written extensively about it during her tenure at the think tank she founded, Civic Exchange. The hope has always been that she wouldn’t have joined without getting some assurances from Leung that she would be able to get on with the job of clearing the air. So the weight of expectations on her is considerable. It will be disappointing if this afternoon we hear that the government needs more time to consider how to deal with this situation. People will be looking for proposals to get old diesel-engined vehicles off the road within a short time. Looking further ahead, it would be good to see plans for lowering the level of traffic in urban areas and thus reducing the “canyon effect” whereby toxic emissions are trapped by the city’s tall buildings. To its everlasting shame, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen’s government and Edward Yau Tang-wah, the then secretary for the environment, did little to address the problem and pretended it did not exist or that there was nothing they could do about it. There is considerable low-hanging fruit here for the government to score easy political points. It is worth reflecting that according to the Hedley Environmental Index, there were an average of 3,200 avoidable deaths a year over the past five years as a result of Hong Kong’s pollution. This is way more than the number of people that died from Sars, bird flu, swine flu and a lot more besides. If we were told that there would be 3,200 deaths from bird flu this year, then there would be panic. But for some reason, there is relatively little concern at the prospect of 3,200 deaths as a result of air pollution, which will happen. In addition to the deaths, there is the damage that is being done to respiratory systems, particularly those of children, which can be permanent. The Hedley index is peer-reviewed and its figures are not disputed. In addition, it calculates that the economic cost to Hong Kong last year due to pollution, which arose from the cost of dealing with pollution-related diseases and lost productivity, was about HK$40 billion. Yesterday evening, the average hourly concentration level of the 2.5 particulate matter was 53 micrograms per cubic metre in Central, 62 in Causeway Bay and 44 in Mong Kok. These levels were considerably higher than 25, which the World Health Organisation considers safe. The government has a duty of care to the community to act on this in a meaningful way.

Have you got any stories that Lai See should know about? E-mail them to howard.winn@scmp.com [1]

Topics:

Air Pollution

Source URL (retrieved on Jan 16th 2013, 5:47am): http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1128880/please-delay-no-more-clearing-air

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Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system: A scientific assessment

Jan 15th, 2013

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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50171/abstract

T. C. Bond^1,*,
S. J. Doherty²,
D. W. Fahey³,
P. M. Forster⁴,
T. Berntsen⁵,
B. J. DeAngelo⁶,
M. G. Flanner⁷,
S. Ghan⁸,
B. Kärcher⁹,
D. Koch¹⁰,
S. Kinne¹¹,
Y. Kondo¹²,
P. K. Quinn¹³,
M. C. Sarofim⁶,
M. G. Schultz¹⁴,
M. Schulz¹⁵,
C. Venkataraman¹⁶,
H. Zhang¹⁷,
S. Zhang¹⁸,
N. Bellouin¹⁹,
S. K. Guttikunda²⁰,
P. K. Hopke²¹,
M. Z. Jacobson²²,
J. W. Kaiser^23,24,25,
Z. Klimont²⁶,
U. Lohmann²⁷,
J. P. Schwarz³,
D. Shindell²⁸,
T. Storelvmo²⁹,
S. G. Warren³⁰,
C. S. Zender³¹

DOI: 10.1002/jgrd.50171

Issue

Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

Accepted Article (Accepted, unedited articles published online and citable. The final edited and typeset version of record will appear in future.)

Additional Information(Show All)

Author Information Publication History

Author Information

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA

Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado, USA and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA

University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Center for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo and Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington, USA

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt Oberpfaffenhofen, Wessling, Germany

¹⁰

US Department of Energy, Washington, DC, USA

¹¹

Max Planck Institute, Hamburg, Germany

¹²

University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

¹³

NOAA Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory, Seattle, Washington, USA

¹⁴

Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany

¹⁵

Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway

¹⁶

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India

¹⁷

China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China

¹⁸

Peking University, Beijing, China

¹⁹

Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK

²⁰

Division of Atmospheric Sciences, Desert Research Institute, Reno, Nevada, USA

²¹

Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York, USA

²²

Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

²³

European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK

²⁴

King’s College London, London, UK

²⁵

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany

²⁶

International Institute for Applied System Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

²⁷

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

²⁸

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA

²⁹

Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

³⁰

University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

³¹

University of California, Irvine, California, USA

^{*Corresponding author: T. C. Bond, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA. (yark@uiuc.edu)}

^†

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1002/jgrd.50171

Publication History

Abstract

[1] Black carbon aerosol plays a unique and important role in Earth’s climate system. Black carbon is a type of carbonaceous material with a unique combination of physical properties. This assessment provides an evaluation of black-carbon climate forcing that is comprehensive in its inclusion of all known and relevant processes and that is quantitative in providing best estimates and uncertainties of the main forcing terms: direct solar absorption, influence on liquid, mixed-phase, and ice clouds, and deposition on snow and ice. These effects are calculated with climate models, but when possible, they are evaluated with both microphysical measurements and field observations. Predominant sources are combustion related; namely, fossil fuels for transportation, solid fuels for industrial and residential uses, and open burning of biomass. Total global emissions of black carbon using bottom-up inventory methods are 7500 Gg yr^-1 in the year 2000 with an uncertainty range of 2000 to 29000. However, global atmospheric absorption attributable to black carbon is too low in many models, and should be increased by a factor of almost three. After this scaling, the best estimate for the industrial-era (1750 to 2005) direct radiative forcing of atmospheric black carbon is +0.71 W m^-2 with 90% uncertainty bounds of (+0.08, +1.27) W m^-2. Total direct forcing by all black carbon sources, without subtracting the pre-industrial background, is estimated as +0.88 (+0.17, +1.48) W m^-2. Direct radiative forcing alone does not capture important rapid adjustment mechanisms. A framework is described and used for quantifying climate forcings, including rapid adjustments. The best estimate of industrial-era climate forcing of black carbon through all forcing mechanisms, including clouds and cryosphere forcing, is +1.1 W m^-2 with 90% uncertainty bounds of +0.17 to +2.1 W m^-2. Thus, there is a very high probability that black carbon emissions, independent of co-emitted species, have a positive forcing and warm the climate. We estimate that black carbon, with a total climate forcing of +1.1 W m^-2, is the second most important human emission in terms of its climate-forcing in the present-day atmosphere; only carbon dioxide is estimated to have a greater forcing. Sources that emit black carbon also emit other short-lived species that may either cool or warm climate. Climate forcings from co-emitted species are estimated and used in the framework described herein. When the principal effects of co-emissions, including cooling agents such as sulfur dioxide, are included in net forcing, energy-related sources (fossil-fuel and biofuel) have an industrial-era climate forcing of +0.22 (-0.50 to +1.08) W m^-2 during the first year after emission. For a few of these sources, such as diesel engines and possibly residential biofuels, warming is strong enough that eliminating all emissions from these sources would reduce net climate forcing (i.e., produce cooling). When open burning emissions, which emit high levels of organic matter, are included in the total, the best estimate of net industrial-era climate forcing by all black-carbon-rich sources becomes slightly negative (-0.06 W m^-2 with 90% uncertainty bounds of -1.45 to +1.29 W m^-2). The uncertainties in net climate forcing from black-carbon-rich sources are substantial, largely due to lack of knowledge about cloud interactions with both black carbon and co-emitted organic carbon. In prioritizing potential black-carbon mitigation actions, non-science factors, such as technical feasibility, costs, policy design, and implementation feasibility play important roles. The major sources of black carbon are presently in different stages with regard to the feasibility for near-term mitigation. This assessment, by evaluating the large number and complexity of the associated physical and radiative processes in black-carbon climate forcing, sets a baseline from which to improve future climate forcing estimates.

Pollution: Until it hurts business, it won’t clear up

Jan 15th, 2013

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By Lara Wozniak | 15 January 2013

Images of China’s pollution graced the front pages of international newspapers this past weekend, but will all the attention force change? Probably not.

Much ado was made of Beijing’s toxic pollution this past weekend — with photos of smog splashed across international newspaper fronts and broadcast journalists spewing that the end of the world was almost upon us.

The damning news behind the uproar was that, on January 12, harmful particulates in the air in China’s capital city were 36 times higher than the safe level recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Other big cities in China, including Hong Kong, have also been faring poorly. On Sunday morning, the ICC Tower in West Kowloon was only vaguely visible from across the harbour and, by lunchtime, Hong Kong Island was a hazy outline when viewed from Kowloon — despite the sun struggling to shine.

Only one out of the first 13 days of the year was deemed clear by the Hedley Environmental Index, which monitors and publishes the real-time public health costs of Hong Kong’s air pollution.

Hedley has claimed that pollution was a contributing factor in 253 premature deaths in Hong Kong during December. Worryingly, the number of doctor visits, hospital bed-days and premature deaths has dramatically risen during January, according to the activist website.

All this should concern government officials in China and Hong Kong, and employers as well. Sick days cost money.

Hong Kong plans to ban high-polluting diesel-powered heavy vehicles (such as trucks and buses) and offer subsidies to replace others — but so far this is talk in vague terms. And Hong Kong tends to move slowly on such projects.

One also has to wonder if the fuel going into all vehicles in China and Hong Kong — not just the diesel ones — is clean. Drive through a tunnel and see if you can see; they are reminiscent of the murky view you had in Holland Tunnel in New York in the 1970s when fuel laws were more lax in the US.

And we all know the other contributors to Hong Kong’s poor air — factories in China spewing pollutants, coal-fired power plants and dirty fuel in shipping as well.

Hong Kong officials have admitted that since air quality goals were enacted 25 years ago, the city has not once met its own low self-imposed goals.

Christine Loh Kung-wai, a former lawmaker and head of think-tank Civic Exchange, was appointed undersecretary for the environment in September. This is a step in the right direction. Loh has been critical of the public policy decision-making process, but she still has to convince legislators.

Existing laws also have to be enforced. China has strict pollution laws that have not made the air clean, as Beijing residents were reminded of this past weekend.

But has all this haze deterred professionals from moving to China? Probably not that much. While there is anecdotal evidence of a handful of senior corporate executives relocating to Bangkok, Singapore or Sydney from Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, and others quitting the region entirely, pollution is always just one factor in a laundry list of other problems that prompt such moves. And most executives say the departures are a part of the normal churn.

Pollution isn’t a deal-breaker yet. “Though Beijing is a bigger problem for relocating people, Hong Kong is seen as a relatively clean haven after a stint on the mainland,” said one banker.

Another noted: “The growth market is here in Asia [as opposed to Europe or the US] and all growth markets come with hardships. Ours are schools and pollution.”

In other words (sadly), it’s all relative.

That is a shame, because if corporations lobbied governments it would be more effective than the likes of Loh banging her fist on the table. And the two forces together would make change. While China is arguably a harder place to apply corporate pressure, all it would take in Hong Kong is for a few banks to say: “We’re moving to Singapore” and Hong Kong would wake up and start changing policies fast. If the ICC Tower and the IFC Tower were suddenly vacant, action would be taken. And if Hong Kong actually started stepping ahead of the mainland (instead of watching the mainland catch up to Hong Kong on a variety of fronts) you would see changes in China too.

But that won’t happen, either. Why? What multinational bank is going to chance losing an investment banking or commercial banking opportunity with the likes of Cheung Kong or Hutchison? If you abandon Hong Kong, the city’s elite will knock you off the list for a potential deal. And no one will chance that.

Recycling plan may add HK$1 on a bottle of beer

Jan 15th, 2013

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Published on South China Morning Post (http://www.scmp.com)

Home > Recycling plan may add HK$1 on a bottle of beer

Recycling plan may add HK$1 on a bottle of beer

Submitted by admin on Jan 15th 2013, 12:00am

News›Hong Kong

ENVIRONMENT

Cheung Chi-fai chifai.cheung@scmp.com

Wine and spirits could also be hit under government scheme to help deal with Hong Kong’s annual 70,000 tonnes of glass waste

A HK$1 levy may be charged on bottles of beer, wine and spirits to help pay the recycling costs.

The scheme is being considered by environment officials and could be put up for public consultation as early as next month. It follows the 50 cent plastic bag levy introduced in 2009.

Recyclers welcomed the idea, which could help pay for recycling the 70,000 tonnes of waste glass generated in Hong Kong every year. However, the food and beverage trade said it would be unfair to single out glass, which accounted for only 3 per cent of total waste.

Bottled soft drinks or sauce bottles would escape the levy.

The money collected would subsidise local glass recyclers, who might be paid according to the volume of glass they treated.

Terence Wong Chee-ho, director of Laputa, one of two local factories making bricks with glass waste, welcomed the proposal. “It would help us to recover the transportation costs,” said Wong, whose bricks, made in its Tuen Mun plant, are used mainly by the government.

But Michael Glover, chairman of the Hong Kong Food, Drink and Grocery Association, which represents major beer makers and wine importers and has been in talks with officials on the issue for more than two years, said any option considered should “treat people fairly”.

“It is not a bottle or a can issue. It is a total waste issue … any system needs to be equitably shared against all users,” he said.

Glover also said the levy would not encourage people to separate glass from other waste.

A spokesman for listed Dynasty Fine Wines said the company supported the scheme and hoped it could be done in a similar way to the plastic bag levy. It did not think sales would be affected.

Keith Wong Wing-kit, a wine dealer, said the levy would have a far greater impact on beer.

“Each beer costs about HK$10 and they are more popular than wines. It would add up to lots of money if an importer brings in 100 million bottles a year,” he said.

Wong also said it would be highly unlikely that glass beer bottles would be replaced with plastic ones.

“Glass is superior as it doesn’t allow light in and it won’t have any reaction with the wine,” he said, adding that some low-end wines might switch to plastic bottles.

A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Department said recycling glass bottles was a priority and a consultation paper was being prepared.

The recycling rate of waste glass containers was just 5 per cent in 2011.

Hahn Chu Hon-keung, environmental affairs manager at Friends of the Earth, said the levy should cover all beverages and even plastic bottles to maximise the waste reduction benefits.

Topics:

Environment

Recycling plan

glass waste

Source URL (retrieved on Jan 15th 2013, 9:34pm): http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1128091/recycling-plan-may-add-hk1-bottle-beer

Hong Kong air pollution causes 3,000 deaths, costs billions annually

Jan 15th, 2013

by Editor.

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Submitted by calum.gordon on Jan 15th 2013, 6:31pm

News›Hong Kong

Lai Ying-kit

More than 150,000 people hospitalised with pollution-related illnesses last year, HKU survey shows

Air pollution caused more than 3,000 premature deaths and monetary loss of HK$39 billion last year to Hong Kong, according to a study by University of Hong Kong researchers.

Researchers from the school of public health developed an index in 2008 to provide real-time estimates for premature deaths, doctor visits, and days spent in hospital with illnesses associated with air pollution.

In their latest study, presented to the Legislative Council’s environmental affairs panel last Friday, they estimated that 3,069 people died prematurely last year due to air pollution and 151,300 were hospitalised for pollution-related illnesses.

The medical bills and the value of loss of productivity as a result was HK$39.4 billion, according to their estimates.

Professor Anthony Hedley, who developed the index and headed the study [1], told the panel that air pollution was the biggest threat to Hong Kong’s sustainable health and called for more attention to the problem.

“Probably, 100 per cent of the population is exposed, at unacceptable levels, to this environmental hazard,” he said.

Hedley said one latest trend was that marine emissions, from ships in inshore waters, had become a major cause of illness and deaths linked to air pollution.

His study also suggested that while everyone was exposed to pollution, the study found lower income groups in the city suffered from a higher death rate than other sectors.

It found that an increase of 10 microgram in pollutants could pose a greater risk to people who are unemployed, have lower education attainment and lower incomes than more affluent people.

Hedley compiled his index by analysing readings from the Environmental Protection Department’s Air Pollution Index (API).

He said the risk categories in the government indices bore no relationship to the bad health outcomes and he aimed to provide a more accessible picture of the related health risks.

To check the The Hedley Environmental Index, visit: http://hedleyindex.sph.hku.hk/home.php [1]

Topics:

Air Pollution in Hong Kong

January, 2013:

Old trucks face scrapheap to curb air pollution

HK$1 glass recycling levy welcomed by most, SCMP.com poll finds

Chief executive declares his priorities for helping an overcrowded city

Health Burdens: Pollution related Premature deaths in Hong Kong during the term of office of Donald Tsang as Chief Executive

Black Carbon Second Only to CO2 in Heating the Planet

Please, delay no more in clearing the air

Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system: A scientific assessment

Pollution: Until it hurts business, it won’t clear up

Images of China’s pollution graced the front pages of international newspapers this past weekend, but will all the attention force change? Probably not.

Recycling plan may add HK$1 on a bottle of beer

Hong Kong air pollution causes 3,000 deaths, costs billions annually

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