Though NLP still operates at 30 per cent, Weston is optimistic about its role in Hong Kong’s recycling future. He points to the government’s upcoming Producer Responsibility Scheme on Plastic Beverage Containers (PPRS)—coming out in 2025—which, as the name suggests, puts the ownership on bottle producers to collect the bottles that they have sold in Hong Kong. This in turn might lead to an increase in the volume of plastic bottles being given for recycling at NLP.

Weston explains that this means, in practice, that producers would add a levy to every bottle they make which consumers can then redeem when they dispose of it at recycling stations. Similar producer responsibility schemes have been previously used to encourage the recycling of glass bottles and electronic appliances.

Currently, the government’s Green@Community collection points system incentivises people to bring their recyclables with tokens redeemable for groceries but with the upcoming PPRS, things are likely to scale up. Weston estimates the current recycling rate of plastic bottles in Hong Kong—meaning the percentage of used bottles that end up recycled—to be around 15 per cent. With the PPRS, he is confident this number will rise and eventually approach international standards at about 77+ per cent. To put that into perspective, Japan’s plastic bottle recovery rate was reported to be over 80 per cent in 2023 and China’s at over 95 per cent in 2020.

Postponed from earlier January this year to August 1, the charging of municipal waste disposal will also help improve Hong Kong’s recycling situation, says Weston. The law would require everyone to buy designated bags to dispose of waste—in principle, a positive step according to the NLP general manager. 

“At the moment, there’s no charging for waste going to landfill, which is a pretty unusual situation, because it means that there’s no cost for people to basically dump in landfill,” he explains. “So with the law, your average person will be paying for landfill, but also importantly, businesses too.” Weston says more businesses and individuals will have to start thinking about how to reduce waste going to the landfill. “An obvious way of doing that is by switching to recyclables like PET,” he adds.

However, Weston sees NLP’s mission as larger than just recycling. “When you talk about circular economy, recycling is actually at the bottom because it’s the last thing you want to be doing,” says Weston. “Swire Coca-Cola is looking into models for reusable glass bottles or having drinking fountains around Hong kong—to avoid recycling in the first place. Our focus [at NLP] is on making the circular economy for PET as efficient as possible.”

NLP works closely with Swire Coca-Cola to develop bottle designs that optimise recyclability. Clear PET, for instance, is easier to recycle than coloured PET. Labels, which need to be separated during the recycling process, can also be incorporated directly on the bottle or displayed as a QR code on the cap.

“We also have some projects with Drink Without Waste, [a local initiative of companies working to reduce waste from beverage consumption],” says Weston. “We are working with cleaners in housing estates, mainly looking at how to develop a network of cleaners in housing estates to help—through an incentive programme—accumulate bulk supply [of plastic bottle waste] and pile them at a local area to be collected by a compactor truck, which would bale it and deliver it to our plant.”

Though NLP plays its part in circular economy, Weston ultimately believes that for Hong Kong’s economy to be truly circular, other players need to step up. “The better things to be doing—or equally important, if not harder [than recycling]—are around repair and reuse, but there is very little business around [that],” he says. “A big challenge for Hong Kong is creating the right environment—meaning that more people are repairing things.”

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