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Independent Enquiry Study Report
Enquiry Question: Is plastic bags levy scheme effective to solve the
root cause?
Year of Examination: 2015-2016
Name of Student: Lam Yik Sze
Class/Group: 5B
Class Number: 16
Number of words in the report:
Notes:
1. Written reports should not exceed 4500 words. The reading time
for non-written reports should not exceed 22 minutes and the
short written texts accompanying non-written reports should not
exceed 1100 words. The count for written reports and the short
written texts does not include the covering page, the table of
contents, titles, graphs, tables, captions and headings of photos,
punctuation marks, footnotes, endnotes, references, bibliography
and appendices.
2. Candidates are responsible for counting the number of words in
their reports and the short written texts and indicating it
accurately on this covering page.
3. If the Independent Enquiry Study Report of a student is selected
for review by the School-Based Assessment System, the school
should ensure that the students name, class/group and class
number have been deleted from report before submitting it to
the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment authority, schools
should also ensure that the identities of both the schools and
students are not disclosed in the reports. For non-written reports,
the identities of the students and schools, including the
appearance of the students, should be deleted.
Table of Contents
A.
B.
C.
D.
Problem Definition
Relevant Concepts and Knowledge/Facts/Data
In-depth Explanation of the Issue
Judgment and Justification of the Issue
A. Problem Definition
A1. Introduction
Nowadays, the environmental problem happening all over the
global has been exaggerated. For example, according to NASA1, on
Greenlands ice sheet, a vast icy landscape crisscrossed by
turquoise rivers and dotted with melt water lakes, a small cluster of
orange camping tents popped up in late July. Every city has taken
some measures to alleviate the case including Hong Kong. The
government has taken a Plastic Bag Levy Scheme to tackle the
overuse of plastic bags. The legislation mandating a charge of 50
cents for each plastic shopping bag requested at Hong Kong shops
will come into effect on April 1 for all retailers, instead of just the
3,300 registered retail outlets under the current phase of the
1 http://www.nasa.gov/feature/a-summer-of-nasa-research-on-sealevel-rise-in-greenland
Figure1
Notwithstanding the implementation (figure1) at 1/4/2009, there is
a supplementation on the scheme which implements at1/4/2015.
Penalty ($2000) will be given to the retailers who dont follow the
regulation.
The included retailers are the following:
2http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1753454/plastic-baglevy-confuses-hong-kong-shoppers-full-scheme-comes-force
3 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/plastic-bag
Figure
2
Figure3
Figure 3 shows that the usage of plastic bags is increasing. Despite
the 68% decreased of vest pockets and 20% of perforated bags, the
rest including non-charged bags are sharply increasing. It shows
that the implementation of plastic bags levy scheme is lack of
effectiveness.
A2. Research Objectives
Figure 4
There is a trend for people using plastic bags according to the
questionnaire. A quarter of interviewers are seldom using plastic
bags for shopping. One- third people are often use plastic bags.
Admittedly, the trend of using plastic bags is decreasing. The social
awareness of Hong Kong people has been raised due to promotion
and education and also the unfavorable condition for shoppers.
This is a chart observing the usage of recycling bags.
Figure 5
It shows that people are more willing to bring own bags to shop.
45% of respondents always use recycling bags as there is sufficient
advertisement not only on television but also on newspaper. Apart
from that, Hong Kong people are money oriented so they would be
profit maximization. They would not waste the petty cash and save
as much as possible. As a result, they bring their own bags and
Figure 6
Figure 7
On products, the scheme has comprised numerous types of plastic
bags including plastic shopping bags with handle, handle hole,
perforated line for tearing out handle hole, carrying string or strap,
or any other carrying device on, or attached to, non-woven bags,
and paper bags with plastic lamination in the first phase. The next
phase also embraces the flat- top bags. It is obvious that the
coverage of the scheme is becoming widened.
C.2.2.Feasiblity of the scheme in Hong Kong
Given that the sellers can keep the charges of the plastic bags, it
encourages the owners to apply the charging scheme. For each
plastic bag, sellers can charge them for $0.5 dollars. Figure 8 shows
that there would be a profit on government finances in the scenario
2. Compare to scenario 1, there is a HK$629679303 increase in
scenario. The overall trend is sharply increased. The peak is in the
scenario 3 which is the HK$617512035 for both all levies and 80%
levy collected.
Figure
8
Figure
9
Figure 10
In figure 10, it shows that the proportion of plastics in municipal
solid wastes rank the forth. The highest proportion is the paper
shopping bags, there are no need to stop the amount used plastic
bags.
Secondly, the government is difficult to monitor. As above said, the
covered retailors store is as many as stars. It is difficult for
government to allocate human resources to check if the shop
owners have charged them as the shop owners would prefer to keep
their shop images. Some governmental parties are afraid of the fact
that some owners may still give to the customers secretly so as to
maintain their relationship. The charge of law- breaker may be too
low and cannot cause a deterrent effect to them. The only method
for government to monitor is to have random checking or reported
by citizens, said by ontv.
Thirdly, it is difficult for government settle down the negative
feeling of the governance. Some may think that this is not an
alternative method to curb the usage of shopping bags as it only
forces the customers to avoid using but it is without reason. It may
also cause the anti-government feeling as it causes the
inconvenience of the customers and the foreign visitors. There is
lack of social acceptance. Hong Kong people may think that the
government is lack of governance. This may further affect the social
stability as they may question about the effectiveness.
Figure 11
90% of respondents think that there is not enough for only having
plastic bags scheme. They suggest adding other wastes into
different levy scheme. Their ideas are diversified. The first three are
the construction wastes, electrical wastes and food. As a result, the
government can pose the laws of the charging scheme of electrical
wastes and food.
Figure 12
13 http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/misc/cdm/scheme.htm