Transcript of remarks by SEN

     Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for the Environment, Mr Wong Kam-sing, at a media session after attending a radio programme this morning (October 25):

Reporter: Two questions. About the levy on solid waste, you said you are not confident that the bill would pass in LegCo. Why is that so? If so, what measures will you take in this period of time? And the second question is about concerns about tear gas, about the air and water quality after the Police have used tear gas. Have you been monitoring the situation?

Secretary for the Environment: I think I should have said that we are still supportive of the Municipal Solid Waste charging scheme. We have put the bill to the LegCo for their review, we will support LegCo members to consider and vet the bill. At the same time, we are stepping up our support for waste reductions in Hong Kong. I would like to cite two examples of waste reductions that we are promoting recently. Firstly, we have approved a new tender to support a pilot scheme to collect plastic recyclable items in the Eastern District. We will expand it to other districts step by step so that we can support the community to have better and cleaner recycling. At the same time, we use other means to support the private sector to do more recycling. A recent example is Tetra Pak recyclable items. We use, for instance, the Recycling Fund to support the private sector to recycle Tetra Pak beverage containers. Regarding your last question about the monitoring of air quality in different districts in Hong Kong, tear gas is mainly composed of particulates. Through our monitoring system, we are monitoring the PM (particulate matter) and related particulates. We did not note there were any particular changes in our monitoring results. Thank you.
 
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)