The struggle for sustainable waste management in Hong Kong: 1950s–2010s

Loretta Ieng Tak Lou and Nele Fabian

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: As Hong Kong’s landfills are expected to reach saturated conditions by 2020, the city can no longer rely on landfilling alone as the sole solution for waste treatment in the long term. Drawing on five months of archival research at the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Public Records Office (PRO) in 2016 as well as 17 months of fieldwork conducted between 2012, 2013 and 2016, this article provides a much-needed overview of why sustainable waste management has always been such a challenge for Hong Kong. Focusing on the city’s dependence on landfills and its failure to integrate alternative waste management technologies, namely incineration, into its current waste management regime, we explicate Hong Kong’s waste management predicaments from the 1950s to the present day. Through a historical lens, we argue that Hong Kong’s waste problems have a historical root and that they are unlikely to be resolved unless the government is willing to learn from its past mistakes and adopt a much more proactive approach in the near future.

Keywords: waste management; landfills; land reclamation; incineration; recycling; sustainability; Hong Kong (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2019-11-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-his
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Published in Worldwide Waste, 6, November, 2019, 2(1). ISSN: 2399-7117

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:103562

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