Kevin May, Greenpeace Toxics campaigner, displayed a yellow banner with black ink reading “ban the burn”, voicing out slogan “no incineration” in front of Tung Chee Hwa, Chief Executive of Hong Kong SAR Government, one of the guests of honour of the opening ceremony. After voicing out slogan “support tourism, no incineration”, May was escorted by the guards to walk out. Meanwhile May delivered an open letter to a representative that was sent out by the organiser of the Conference. After thorough explanation to the police on the purpose of the action for about 20 minutes, May was requested to leave the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The open letter is jointly signed by Greenpeace China and 45 environmental groups from Europe, South America, Africa, the United States, Australia, Japan, India, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines to the organisers of the Conference. The groups urged all Asian governments to discontinue waste incineration and desist from building new incinerators, and to support community-driven, healthy, socially just and sustainable discard management systems. All groups urged tourists associations to work with all stakeholders, including tourism ministries, travel agencies, airlines, hotels, restaurants, service providers and the tourists themselves, towards reducing tourism waste to zero. “Incinerators put the health of citizens at risk, including tourists who are coming to Asia. We deplore the use of the outmoded waste disposal technology that poisons our environment, our health and food supply with toxic chemicals, including cancer-causing dioxins,” said Kevin May.

By the year of 2002, Japan(89) owns the largest amount of incinerators in Asia. Taiwan(19) comes the second. While China(17) and South Korea(17) are the third, and Thailand owns 8 incinerators. Since 1997, there has been no municipal waste incinerator in Hong Kong. However in 2000, the SAR government approved a subsidy of 9 million Hong Kong dollars on Green Island Cement’s research on burning waste. The company submitted a proposal to build an incinerator in October 2002. If the proposal is to be approved by the government, Hong Kong will own the biggest incinerator in the world. As a result, the environment in Hong Kong will be worsened. “It’s conflicting for the SAR government to try to boost tourism on one hand and to introduce municipal waste incineration on the other hand. Burning waste poisons the environment. We wonder how Hong Kong could attract tourists! Greenpeace demands stopping waste incineration and supporting a territory- wide recycling system,” said May.

(Kevin May, Toxics campaigner 9078 2094 Percy Mak, Media Officer 9381 6304, www.greenpeace-china.org.hk)