The Hong Kong government is considering plans to make consumers pay for e-waste disposal or recycling.

 

Officials are weighing the results of a consultation following the release of a discussion paper by the Environment Bureau, scmp.com has reported.

 

Unlike South Korea, Taiwan and Japan and much of Europe, the territory has no system for managing used electrical and electronic gear, and much of its ends up in unregulated recycling yards, the paper said.

 

Hong Kong generated about 71,000 tonnes or 5.4 million items of waste electronic and electrical equipment in 2008, with 86% from bulky home appliances and computers. About 80% was recovered but about 1,000 tonnes was handled by recyclers known by the government, while the remaining 20% was dumped in landfills.

 

Recycling trials by the local IT industry have discovered that it costs about HK$60 ($7.70) to handle a used computer.

 

One model canvassed by the consultation is the Japanese system, favored by the local electrical retailers lobby group. This would require that consumers pay only when they dispose of the products, which would be handled at recycling plants paid for by manufacturers.

 

But Friends of the Earth said the model would encourage illegal dumping of electronic waste to avoid the charges. It called for the adoption of the Taiwan system, which requires manufacturers or distributors to prepay a sum of money into a central fund.

 

"The beauty of this scheme is the government only has to supervise a few recyclers instead of a large number of consumers. It also takes into account the existence of a large number of waste recovery agents in Hong Kong," Michelle Au Wing-tsz, a senior environmental affairs officer, told scmp.com.