Some people claim that not enough of the waste from homes is recycled. They say that the only way to increase recycling is for governments to make it a legal requirement To what extent do you think laws are needed to make people recycle more of their waste?

Huge amounts of household waste have brought an alarming situation to society recently.

Although

some

people

may think that the most vital

way

to booth the recycling rate must be dependent on legislation to force citizens to follow, I strongly believe that

law

enforcement is not the best

way

to turn

people

to build up a recycling habitat. Of the reasons why setting up laws is not a good

way

to booth recycling rates, probably the most significant reason is that mandatory

policy

may not make

people

truly obligated to the

law

and follow the practices.

People

can choose to pay for the penalty rather than recycle, which means the effectiveness of the

policy

would be restricted if there are not many

people

to obligate. Plastic Bag Tax in Hong Kong is the prime example to explain it. Having implemented Plastic Bag Tax by the Hong Kong

government

for more than 10 years, the effectiveness of

this

policy

is not significant.

According to

the recent data collected by the

government

, plastic bag usage in our society has increased in these years, and the

government

increase the taxes in order to enhance the deterrent effect of the

policy

this

year.

This

indicated that the

law

would not be a good incentive to ask

people

to follow the rules of recycling. Another noticeable reason is that

people

are likely to have rewards

instead

of being punished. With not enough facilities and knowledge, citizens find difficulties in recycling used goods regularly. If the

government

can organise and establish more recycling stations and have a wide promotion on how to recycle, the public are willing to learn and practice.

For instance

, ‘Green Community Centres’ in different districts of Hong Kong, organised and controlled by Non-

government

organisations and sponsored by the

government

, set up a reward scheme to encourage the public to bring used goods or items for recycling

as well as

organise workshops and activities to introduce the recycling methods to the participants. Those centres are opened spread out in different districts, which receive more than a thousand tons of used products weekly. With

this

in mind, it indicates that education and promotion are essential to raising the public’s incentive on waste recycling. Under

this

line of thinking, the

law

would put pressure on the public on recycling, but

due to

the restriction on money penalties and effective reward schemes, I strongly believe that compulsory legislation is not an effective

way

to persuade

people

to recycle goods.