Green quarantine? Hong Kong hotels under pressure to recycle plastics thrown out by guests spending weeks in Covid-19 isolation | South China Morning Post
▻https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3159356/green-quarantine-hong-kong-hotels-under-pressure
Green quarantine? Hong Kong hotels under pressure to recycle plastics thrown out by guests spending weeks in Covid-19 isolation. Experts caution against recycling items from rooms of quarantined guests, citing Covid-19 risk NGO Green Earth estimates hotels have used at least 100 million plastic items during pandemic
Hong Kong’s green groups are alarmed by the large amount of plastic tossed out by hotels where arrivals undergo compulsory quarantine during the Covid-19 pandemic.They want authorities, hotels and even quarantined guests themselves to cut the use of plastic water bottles, disposable utensils, tableware and toiletries, and try to do more to recycle.But some medical experts cautioned against sending items from quarantine hotel rooms into the community, citing the risk of spreading the coronavirus.
Green Earth, a charity that has focused on plastic waste since 2016, estimated that at least 100 million such items had been used at quarantine hotels since the pandemic began last year.Hahn Chu Hon-keung, a director of the group, said that assuming all 86,282 travellers quarantined so far had spent 14 days in a hotel, at least 120,000 water bottles and 13 million plastic items such as food containers and cutlery were used every month. Some in fact stayed 21 days.Chu, who underwent quarantine himself last month, said he emailed his hotel before arriving to ask it not to place bottled water in his room. He also requested reusable cutlery for his stay.
The Dorsett Tsuen Wan Hotel, where Chu stayed for 14 days, told the Post the amount of plastic items given to quarantine guests was so large that it had introduced reusable cutlery.It provided bottled water unless guests said they did not want it, and there were kettles for guests to use in their rooms.
The Amber Foundation, a charity which has collected unused hotel toiletries and airline kits for distribution to street sleepers, women in shelters and others, urged quarantined hotel guests to donate unused, sealed items.
How to use Hong Kong’s ‘Leave Home Safe’ app to enter mainland China and Macau quarantine free. Chairwoman Elizabeth Thomson said it used to repackage the donations into toiletry kits for men and women. Since the pandemic, these donations have surged.“We used to put together about 5,000 toiletry kits every year, but in the last month alone, we distributed more than 1,000 kits,” she said.Thomson said quarantined hotel guests could save unused items to recycle rather than leave them behind to be thrown away when they checked out.She said it would help if the Department of Health explained whether everything from the guests’ rooms had to be thrown out or if sealed toiletries such as liquid soap and shampoo could be given away.If there was nothing wrong with the items, the hotels could work with NGOs to recycle them and cut wastage, she added.
“If we try counting the number of plastic waste [items] in a quarantine hotel, it would be horrifying,” Thomson said.
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