Nobody is offering any official results, but it seems the first test of the proposed solid waste charging regime was not a success.
The scheme, under which we will all have to buy bags from the government in which to dispose of household waste, has never attracted a warm welcome. Following a trial run it is now in so much trouble that politicians who have rarely seen a government proposal they didn’t like are suggesting politely that it might be postponed… possibly forever.
This is not surprising. The government has a genuine problem in finding places to dispose of the mountains of refuse which Hongkongers produce every day. But for most of us this is an “out of sight, out of mind” sort of problem. The charge for waste disposal is just a new tax.
For many years disposing of rubbish was completely free. You did not have to buy plastic bags for the purpose because most households simply reused the free bags provided when they shopped in a supermarket.
Then the government forbade the distribution of free shopping bags. So we all had to buy a non-disposable shopping bag for use in the supermarket, and rolls of garbage bags to dispose of our rubbish in. Now the government proposes to require us to buy our garbage bags from official sources. They will not be cheap.
The official position is that this is an extension of “the polluter pays.” But there should surely be limits to this. We are not expected to pay a carbon tax on the gases which we all emit when we breathe out. And the provision of clean facilities is an important ingredient in a clean environment.
We do not charge people for the use of public toilets because we don’t want them doing it in the street. If we charge for waste collection some people are going to go back to a common tactic in early public housing estates, which was just to throw refuse out of the window.
As taxes go, moreover, this one is highly regressive. That is to say that it bears more heavily on the poor than on the rich. It is impossible to live a modern life without producing some solid waste. This does not increase in proportion to your wealth, although no doubt rich people do produce more. Also those who have the money and space can splurge a couple of thousand bucks on a simple garbage compressor which will reduce their consumption of government bags by half.
Anyway, whether you look at this as a tax or an environmental reform it involves people paying for something which used to be free. It should come as no surprise that this is not a wildly popular innovation.
Apparently similar schemes have been introduced in other places and accepted without protest, or at least without enough protests to discourage imitation.
This brings us to a point which will probably not feature prominently in the public discussion of the charging scheme, which is that whether a painful but necessary innovation is accepted depends on a lot of extraneous factors – apart from whether there is a real need and the charge is reasonable.
The most important of these outside matters is the relationship between the government and governed, and here there is perhaps room for some soul-searching.
Hong Kong people do not, I fear, believe they get a great deal from their government. Defence is not our business. Public education and health care are provided, but those who can afford it prefer private alternatives which are better, or at least less crowded. The enterprises which run transport and utilities are perhaps admired, but they are not allowed to set their own fares and charges. Increases in fares and charges require government approval. So good service is credited to the providing companies but increased expense is blamed on the government.
Then there is the no doubt misleading but potent impression that the main preoccupation of our leaders these days is national security. There is more to this than putting popular people in jail, out of business, or both. But that is the part which makes the headlines, and offends.
So we have an interesting paradox. All formal opposition to the government has been crushed. But it does not have enough confidence in the public’s trust to attempt controversial reforms. It is simultaneously irresistible and weak, a giant with the courage of a gazelle. This may be fixable – but by them, not by us.
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