Store giants to look again at bags rebate
The two biggest supermarket chains - ParknShop and Wellcome - will review their plastic bag rebate programmes after criticism they did not reduce the numbers used.
A quarter of the bags given away were superfluous, a survey by the Green Student Council found.
The two chains said they would examine the rebate schemes to decide if more promotions were needed.
'We will review the present programme and if we find the customers do not know the programme very well, more promotions will be done,' a Wellcome spokeswoman said. ParknShop said it would do the same.
Wellcome gives a 10 cent rebate - to a maximum of $1 per transaction - to customers for every bag they save on purchases over $25. ParknShop offers the same deal, but customers can save up to $2 per transaction.
While saying education and environmental awareness were the responsibility of the government, both ParknShop and Wellcome insisted their plastic bags made up only 2 to 3 per cent of the plastic bags found in landfills.
'It means the majority of plastic bags that end up in the landfill are from elsewhere,' Wellcome marketing development manager Diane Chiu Man said.
ParknShop's public relations manager, Teresa Pang Sau-kwan, gave the same figures.
The Environmental Protection Department says 649 tonnes of plastic bags end up in landfills each day. If 2 per cent come from supermarkets, that is about 12 tonnes, or more than 416,000 bags a day.
Ms Chiu also said that Wellcome would consider charging customers for plastic bags if the government conducted a city-wide survey and found the public favoured such charges.
About 7.6 billion plastic bags are used in Hong Kong every year and it costs $40 million to dispose of them, according to the Green Student Group.
