Green awareness rising, environmental chief says

The public’s green awareness is on the rise, said the head of Environmental Protection Bureau (DSPA), and the authority pledged to continue with its recycling efforts in collaboration will civil groups. However, the bureau is short on financial details about the possible proceeds from recycled materials.
In a press conference held yesterday, DSPA director Gary Cheong Sio Kai and Ng Siu Lai, the new president of General Union for Neighbourhood Associations (known as ‘Kai Fong’ in Cantonese), summarised the result of the ‘Environmental Protection Fun’ campaign they jointly launched in 2011.
Cheong said since the launch of the programme, last June, volunteer workers collected more than 9,600 kilos of plastic bottles, over 25,800 kilos of paper, as well as 44,120 aluminium and metallic cans through the 11 collection stations that Kai Fong set up across the city.
The association also launched a credit programme that granted people who brought recyclable waste to the stations credits that could be changed into rewards such as supermarket vouchers. So far they had recruited 2,322 members through this programme and the number continues to rise.
Cheong said the figures showed that the green initiatives were receiving growing support from the public but he stopped short of describing it as ‘satisfactory’, merely stressing that “there is room for improvement”.

No money

The bureau and Kai Fong promised to extend the collection network to cover even more communities. Authorities say they are open to all outsiders in the co-operation over environmental protection.
The DSPA director said an environmental complaints outreach centre would be established in the first half of this year to directly address the public’s environmental protection concerns.
The centre was originally scheduled to open by the end of last year, providing one location for Macau citizens to lodge complaints about issues such as air pollution, waste management or excessive noise.
Cheong also disclosed that the six-month campaign had cost MOP 800,000 of public funding. Ng added that Kai Fong spent most of the financial resources on waste collection and processing, with only a tiny fraction spent on administration.
Cheong was unable to say if they received any money from the waste they collected and delivered to recycling factories, only pointing out that the materials were sent to designated recyclers.
Asked if the government would follow Taiwan’s example and impose levies on household waste disposal, Cheong said the authority would continue to consult the public over the issue and study the possibility of employing monetary penalties instead of rewards (supermarket vouchers) to curb the ever-rising trend of waste disposal.         

S.C.