The leader of a local environmental group says that Macao should “urgently” introduce charges for the disposal of household rubbish – and a local recycler believes that residents would be willing to shell out for a home recycling service.
The two were speaking on TDM radio on Thursday. Their remarks come in the wake of the Environmental Protection Bureau’s State of the Environment of Macau 2022 report last month.
The report showed that local residents were throwing out 1.77 kilograms of solid waste each day in 2022, more than people in Hong Kong (1.53 kilograms), and much more than the residents of Beijing and Guangzhou, who each disposed of just 0.98 and 0.86 kilograms of rubbish a day respectively.
Un Ka Hou, the president of Green Future, called for a waste charging system and said residents would need to step up recycling of food waste, paper, metals and glass if they wanted to minimise fees. He conceded, however, that recycling had to be made more convenient in order for it to be effective.
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Pun Wei Lai of the Sap Fong Recycling Centre suggested that items could be collected from households. “We want to try to … go to their homes for recycling,” he told TDM. “This brings [householders] convenience, I think convenience is most important in terms of recycling.”
Meanwhile, a member of the advisory council on the environment, Leong Hong Sai, said Macao should monitor Hong Kong’s attempts to introduce charges for household waste disposal to see if such a scheme could be applied locally.
Macao’s neighbouring SAR has been attempting to introduce a waste charging scheme for the past 20 years, with a typical three-person household expected to pay the equivalent of 33 patacas a month for rubbish collection.
The scheme has been delayed for another year, with the government asking for more time to work out logistics.
