(此文章只提供英文版本。)
 
The Green Earth
Suggestions for the 2018-19 Budget
 
1.To manage Hong Kong’s waste in a sustainable manner, it requires much stronger support from our government. The support could be given in several ways:
● by providing suitable lands at nominal rent for the recycling industry to conduct waste recycling thoroughly, especially for the low-value recyclables such as plastics, and to turn such types of waste into high quality raw materials and even products
● by offering service fees to the recycling industry to help our government collect and recycle certain types of waste, in the whole society including public housings, that were financially unattractive to recyclers and therefore to prevent them from disposing as of landfills, while such types of waste were not covered by the Product Eco-Responsibility Ordinance. In future, such service fees should be borne by producers when the relevant ordinance comes into effect
 
2.To suppress private car growth and roadside air pollution, our government should review its current policy for electric private vehicles.
● Instead of slashing the allowance of the first registration tax (FRT) for electric private vehicles from 100 per cent to a relatively low amount, our government should consider making adjustments. If a car owner buys an additional car, the car owner needs to pay the current FRT for the additional vehicle even if it is a pure electric vehicle, and if the additional car is not electric-driven, the FRT should even be higher. However, if a car owner surrenders his/her existing private car to the government and to buy a pure electric vehicle, the FRT allowance can be applied to promote the adoption of electric vehicles to reduce roadside air pollution and this will not trigger private car growth
● Our government can consider raising the annual licence fees for private vehicles with relatively high fuel consumption and high vehicular emissions to discourage the use of such category of vehicles to help reduce roadside air pollution
● Congestion charge is another financial strategy that our government should consider tackling traffic congestion of districts with serious traffic congestion
● The additional fees collected should be used to subsidize local citizens taking public transport
 
3.To address global climate change, it requires mandatory approaches and financial incentives.
● Instead of offering electricity tariff subsidies to each household in the past, our government should consider offering subsidies to households to encourage replacement of old and inefficient appliances with high energy-efficient appliances
 
Proposed by The Green Earth
Email: [email protected]
Ph: 3708 8380
4 January 2018