Perspective

The Hong Kong Government has a new, multi-prongeed solid waste management plan that maps out the city’s strategy for the next decade. It's aimed at slowing the rate at which rubbish is sent to the city’s three existing mega-dumps, which are projected to reach capacity in 2015, 2017 and 2019 unless something is done. Unveiled by Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing, Hong Kong: Blueprint for Sustainable Use of Resources 2013-2022 repackages the familiar mantra of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” as “Use Less, Waste Less” and envisages building of at least two organic waste treatment facilities together with a large waste-to-energy incineration plant.

With the death toll from last month’s collapse of Rana Plaza now past 900, the fall-out from Bangladesh's worst industrial disaster will be felt well beyond Dhaka’s slums and tenements. Karl Borgschulze of Consulting Services International, who has been working on CSR issues within the Bangladeshi garment and textile industry since 2005, shared his views with CleanBiz.Asia.

Hong Kong customs have had some success of late in tackling the underground trade of illegal wildlife products, with large shipments of smuggled wildlife goods been intercepted through its ports. Between October 2012 and January 2013, three shipments of ivory tusks were seized by Hong Kong customs. The biggest consignment included 1,209 ivory tusks seized in two containers, arriving from Tanzania and Kenya, worth an estimated USD3.5 million. The line between legal and illegal wildlife products can be blurred and rather confusing in Hong Kong. Firstly, the sale of animal parts is ubiquitous. Crocodile skin, earthworms, seahorses and countless others, are synonymous with their use in traditional medicine.

Singapore and Hong Kong are traditional rivals but they also share many similarities. Both are former British colonies, have limited natural resources and are economic powerhouses. Both are also dependent on others for water resources. Singapore sources about 40 percent of its water from Malaysia, while Hong Kong purchases 70-80 percent of its raw water from Guangdong. Despite this similarity, the attitudes of Singapore and Hong Kong towards water security are drastically different.  Singapore is highly pro-active in reducing its water dependency and securing its supply, while Hong Kong appears unbothered that its water security depends on an increasingly threatened source.

Hong Kong should be a walker’s paradise. It is compact and dense, with a large number of amenities concentrated in a very small space. Few errands require the use of a car, and in fact over 90 percent of daily journeys occur on public transportation. Walk Score, a US-based website which calculates walkability based on the proximity and concentration of amenities in a neighborhood, gives much of urban Hong Kong scores of 70/100 or above. Moreover, Hong Kong has a vibrant street food and market culture, boasting areas with enough complexity and variety to keep people entertained for hours. Yet Hong Kongers do not seem to enjoy walking.

China has been the dominant producer of solar PV components for several years, with domestic manufacturers rapidly expanding capacity and pursuing economies of scale, aided in no small part by government assistance at the provincial (driven by local job creation goals) and national (supporting a key industry sector) levels. Germany, on the other hand, has seen its production base dwindling over the past few years, while remaining the largest single-country end-market in the world. But this changed at the end of 2012 when China passed it. According to research in the upcoming NPD Solarbuzz Marketbuzz report, this trend is now set to continue for many years.

President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech had few surprises except in his use of China as way to motivate rivals to stand behind his green policies. Obama put most of the onus on new climate policies on a less-than-enthusiastic Congress, but dropped a strong hint that if they don't do something, he would use his executive muscle to address climate change “for the sake of our children and our future.” 

The world needs to spend a massive USD5 trillion a year on infrastructure to keep up with transport, energy and water needs, says a coalition of institutions including the OECD and World Bank. That’s equivalent to the combined GDPs of the France and the UK, each and every year. But finding the cash isn’t the only challenge, warn the authors of the report Green Investment, who presented their findings at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos – the world`s largest annual jamboree for business and politicians — last week.

No doubt: the Indian solar market has strong fundamentals. Irradiation is very high, power is expensive and in short supply. Solar is getting cheaper. In addition, there are now a host of new policies (NSM phase II, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, etc. – please refer to our other blog entries) promising upwards of 4-GW of new solar installations in the coming months. On the other hand, there are only a few players that are really enjoying themselves. Tier 1 Chinese module manufacturers find price pressures too high – as do many EPCs. Project developers still face difficulties in getting their projects financed. The question is: does anyone earn any money? The answer is: no. But those who are ready to try new approaches will do so in the future.