Department of Geography, University of Hong Kong, 10/F, The Jockey Club Tower, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.
School of Arts and Social Sciences, The Open University of Hong Kong, 7/F, Block A, 30 Good Shepherd Street, Homantin, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
J Environ Manage. 2018 May 15;214:416-425. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.03.029. Epub 2018 Mar 13.
Many high-density cities struggle to find space for disposing municipal solid waste. Hong Kong is one of these cities, seeking to scale up waste recovery efforts as an alternative to disposal. However, territory-wide recovery initiatives do not account for socio-economic variations across place, leading to mixed outcomes among diverse communities. This study aims to investigate socio-economic effects on recycling behavior in a sample of subsidized rental housing estates. It constitutes an improvement from previous studies by using the entire estate as a unit of analysis and analyzing actual recycling outcomes, which have received limited attention from researchers. The analysis focused on the volume of recyclables collected from 158 public housing estates in Hong Kong, with an average population of 12,285. Results suggest that recycling outcomes vary with a limited set of socio-economic factors. Housing estates managed by a private property management company and populated by better off households collected more recyclables from their residents. Measures of absolute and relative recycling intensity achieved similar results. The findings will be useful for identifying residential communities requiring additional support for promoting waste separation and recycling. Differentiated policies for economically disadvantaged communities are warranted.
许多高密度城市难以找到处理城市固体废物的空间。香港就是其中之一，它寻求扩大废物回收工作，以替代处理方式。然而，全港范围的回收倡议并没有考虑到不同地区的社会经济差异，导致不同社区的结果参差不齐。本研究旨在调查社会经济因素对补贴性出租屋邨居民回收行为的影响。与以往的研究相比，这是一个改进，因为它使用整个屋邨作为分析单位，并分析了实际的回收结果，而这些结果一直受到研究人员的关注。该分析集中在从香港 158 个公共屋邨收集的可回收物的数量上，平均人口为 12,285 人。结果表明，回收结果因一系列有限的社会经济因素而异。由私人物业管理公司管理、居住着经济条件较好的家庭的屋邨，从居民那里收集了更多的可回收物。绝对和相对回收强度的衡量标准得出了类似的结果。这些发现将有助于确定需要额外支持以促进废物分类和回收的居住社区。有必要为经济弱势群体社区制定有区别的政策。
