Solutions to the Imminent Land Pollution Problems in Hong Kong

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Nowadays, an average of 25,000 tonnes of solid waste were disposed of daily because of human activities of domestic households, commercial and manufacturing business and construction sites in the territory. This tells an imminent land pollution problem in Hong Kong. To deal with this problem, I discover three solutions. The three possible solutions will be increasing the number of recycling bins, landfill expansion and building more incinerators. The best remedy of the problem of land pollution will be building more incinerators.

The second solution might be for the Environmental Protection Department to increase the number of recycling bins. As the recycling method might help to decrease the number of municipal solid waste in Hong Kong, increasing the number of recycling bins may be the best method to release the serious situation of land pollution in Hong Kong.

However, some people may believe that increasing the number of recycling bins would not be able to deal with the land pollution because of the high recycling cost and low degree of environmental awareness of citizens.

First, the recycling cost would be too high. When start a business of recycling, we need to afford the high transportation fee, sundry expenses and the price of raw materials. Take plastic as an example, the cost of recycling is $6000 per tonne, but the selling price of recycled plastic is $3000 per tonne. As the cost of recycling is the double of the selling price, there will be a lost. This would lead to lower investment incentive and fewer people are willing to devote capital to the recycling industry. Therefore, only few companies could survive in Hong Kong market and this shows the recycling industry in Hong Kong decline nowadays. Although the Envir...

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...y incineration in the past few years. It seems that using incineration might not be a good idea, but if we have a regular inspections of incinerators to ensure the plants can meet the required safety standard, the occurrence of accidents would be greatly reduced. Also, the government could provide more training scheme to the workers who operate the incinerators, because practice makes perfect.

In conclusion, building more incinerators would generate more renewable energy source and greatly decrease the size of original waste. Although some people might argue that during incineration many air pollutant and safety concerns may come up, government could impose the gas cleaning system of waste incinerators and educate the workers. If the government and factories can cooperate well, building more incinerators would be the best solution to the problem of land pollution.

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