Should the Hong Kong government impose food waste charges for daily household food waste?

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Recently, there has been a great deal of discussion on the issue of imposing food waste charges for daily household food waste. In the following, I’d like to talk about both the advantages and disadvantages of imposing the charges.

 

Firstly, it can help to reduce the burden of the landfills. As we all know, the landfills will become saturated gradually in these few years. Most of the garbage comes from the food waste. With the imposing of the charges, people will try to make less food waste in order to save the money. It will greatly reduce the volume of garbage to be transported to the landfills. It helps to reduce the burden of the landfills. Therefore, it helps to extend the period of using the landfills and delay the plan of extending the landfills.

 

Also, it helps promote the messages about protecting the environment. Imposing the food waste charges lets the people know how much they have wasted every day. While promoting the charges scheme, the government can promote the messages about environment conservation to the public at the same time. It helps to educate the citizens to cherish what they have and make less food waste.

 

It seems that there are many opinions and points that support the imposing of the food waste charges for daily household. However, there are also some disadvantages.

 

First, it may increase the burden of the citizens. It is inevitable that we make food waste every day. Although it may not cost too much, many a little makes a mickle. The citizens need to pay much at last. It will affect the lives of the citizens and increase their economic burden.

 

Moreover, imposing the charges may inculcate the wrong concept into the citizens. As they need to pay for the wastes, they may think that money can help to deal with the problem of saturation of the landfill. They may think that they can make more waste as they can pay for them. It may inculcate the wrong concept into the youngsters, even the adults.

 

Furthermore, most of the food waste is not made by the households, but made by hotels and restaurants. If the government only levies the food waste charges on the daily households, it would be unfair to them. If the government wants to deal with the problems brought by the food waste, it should deal with the hotels and restaurants first. It would be fairer to the citizens.

 

 

Based on the above analysis, we can see that there are both advantages and disadvantages of imposing the food waste charges. However, the cons outweigh the pros. Therefore, I think the government should not impose the food waste charges instead of thinking of the methods to reduce the volume of the food waste only. We should think of the methods to deal with the food waste through a better way at the same time.