Another victory in Water for Free’s SAY NO TO BOTTLED WATER campaign: Following recent announcements by the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University banning the sale of bottled water from their campuses earlier this year, the Hong Kong government decided to ban the sale of bottled water from all newly installed vending machines placed on government premises (including country parks, public parks managed by LCSD, government car parks, government offices, public transport interchange and ferry piers) after Feb 2018. For already installed machines, the government will encourages vendors to stop selling bottled water on voluntary basis and will enforce this policy when the contract comes up for renewal.

Water for Fee has been the only green campaign that has been criticising the government for placing excessive numbers of vending machines selling bottled water on government premises and installing too few water dispensers. We welcome this new policy, which hopefully will also lead to all government subsidised schools and organisations following suit in the near future. We encourage the Hong Kong government to step up it’s effort to install more water dispensers, especially in places where there currently vending machines selling bottled water.  To this day, there is not a single water dispenser installed in any of the museums, city and town halls and most of the district libraries managed by LCSD.  The MTR Corporation, which is majority owned by the government, also needs to start fulfilling its social and environmental responsibility by providing access to drinking water for riders that does not pollute the environment.

We applaude the government for taking the first step in this fight against the war on plastic pollution.

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TV Most: 17 July 2017

Oriental Daily 10 October 2016

15 August 2016

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