Dear Editor,
What stands in the way of having a better livelihood?
I am responding to the letter ‘Why we now need modern incinerators’ dated 16April, 2013 written by Oliver Lam. I totally agree with his views.
Hong Kong now has three landfills, one in Tseung Kwan O, one on Ta Kwu Ling and the last one in Tuen Mun. Research has pointed out that the three landfills are going out of capacities soon. And the SAR government is to work out how this problem can be solved. The government has proposed building an incinerator in Tuen Mun or Shek Kau Chau. However, this sparked off an outcry since transporting the rubbish there can waste a lot of fuels and it is inconvenient.
Actually, the pros of having an incinerator will outweigh the cons. Let’s use Taiwan as an example, after they introduced a modern incinerator, rubbish produced every day can vanish into thin air. After a period of time the trash accumulated for some decades can also be resolved. Hong Kong is much smaller than Taiwan, they can achieve a breakthrough, then why can’t we? And some research show that the air in Taiwan is getting better and better due to the disappearing of rubbish accumulated.
The SAR government always appeals the citizens to reduce waste and recycle the recyclable things, such as used paper, aluminium and plastics. Yet, there are very few people willing to shoulder the responsibility of reducing waste.
Until 2008, trash transported to the landfills weighed 2660 tones every day and the figures kept going up. Therefore, other than burying both the trash and reusable materials, citizens should join hands to recycle reusable materials in order to lower the amount of trash.
Take my family as an example. Before we recycled reusable materials voluntarily, the rubbish thrown away could fill up a whole rubbish bag. After all of us customarily put the reusable materials into another special bag, we found that we only threw about half a rubbish bag of trash away.
A Chinese saying says, ‘Do not do evil things though they may be insignificant and do not give up good things though they may be minor matters’. Likewise, we should not think that recycling helps reduce only little rubbish and thus we do not recycle them. In fact, we should make this a habit.
What stands in the way of having a better livelihood is actually our own self. We banned the incinerators’ plan and refused to reduce waste. With the proposals mentioned, waste can be reduced, space can be increased and people can live better and comfortably.