Short shrift for brolly plastic

One in four Hongkongers supports the banning of umbrella bags as the city goes through 14 million of them every year.

A green group said a survey by the Council for Sustainable Development has found that 83.2 percent of Hongkongers agreed that there was a need to regulate distribution of umbrella bags while 25.5 percent wanted an outright ban.

That emerged in a poll from September 30 to December 29 of 9,400 organizations, companies and individuals on controls for single-use plastics in which the issue of single-use umbrella bags was broached.

Around 32.5 percent said action should be taken within a "short" period of three years, 28 percent believed something should be done within a medium term of three to five years, while 25.5 percent said they should be banned altogether.

Last week, Hong Kong was hit by a daily barrage of heavy rain and thunderstorms, with the Observatory hoisting amber and red rainstorm warnings.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing said the Environmental Protection Department will actively follow up suggestions made in the public engagement report.

"Citizens should avoid using disposable umbrella plastic bags," he wrote.

He also said he was very glad to see more and more malls and venues had stopped distributing the bags and replaced them with water removers.

"There's also a trend among people of bringing their own DIY reusable umbrella bags. Don't be a big waster!" he wrote.

Greeners Action called on the government to enact legislation to regulate umbrella bags as soon as possible, saying they should not have come into widespread use because they can be fully replaced.

According to a poll it conducted in 2017, more than 14 million umbrella bags are used here every year during the rainy season.

"There are many methods to replace plastic bags now that the technology for removing water from umbrellas has become maturer and the cost of these kinds of technology has dropped," chief executive Ho Hon-wai said.

Greeners Action also implemented a "Reduce the Use/Distribution of Umbrella Bags" scheme in 2017 to encourage property management companies to adopt different methods to reduce the use of plastic umbrella bags.

According to the Monitoring of Solid Waste in Hong Kong report by the Environmental Protection Department in December, an average 804 tonnes of plastic bags were disposed in landfills every day.