Apart from building the Recovery Park in Tuen Mun, the Government is considering introducing some sort of levy to subsidise the recyclers, Secretary for Environment, Transport & Works Dr Sarah Liao says.

Speaking after a radio talkshow today, Dr Liao said the levy is related to producer responsibility.

"There are many kinds of products. We're using tyres as an example which are polluting and hard to recycle. As a responsible producer, they should bear some of the cost and this can be factored into their sale price and that will be called a levy."

Dr Liao said the levy can either be used by the manufacturers themselves if they can put up a recycling or recovery organisation or plant to do it. Otherwise, the Government can do it on their behalf using that levy to subsidise the recyclers.

Rubbish separation programme to be expanded

On rubbish separation, Dr Liao said the Government has a programme called source separation in all the residential blocks.

"We have started with 13 residential estates and that's proved to be very successful.

"We're planning to push it to many more places like public housing estates and private housing estates so that we can have a better recovery rate with garbage well separated. And we can increase the source of recyclable materials to enable the recycle industry to be a sustaining business."

Turning to air pollution, Dr Liao said two important policies have been established to tackle the problem. One is the use of emission caps to control the pollutants that come out from the power plants.

"Second is the use of natural gas. That is an important policy because this of course will, to a certain extent, affect the cost of electricity depending on how easily we can get hold of more natural gas."