Super profits: Hong Kong bottled water producers accused of reaping big money while adding heavily to plastic bottle waste
Green group says the government should increase water tariffs for commercial users to bring them in line with production costs
Taxpayers are subsidising bottled water producers and enabling them to reap “super profits” while contributing heavily to the plastic bottle waste crisis.
Environmental group Green Earth is making a plea to residents to reduce consumption of bottled water and their overall “water footprint”.
Water tariffs, which are heavily subsidised, have remained frozen for two decades. The current rate for commercial users of using one cubic metre of water is just HK$4.58, which is roughly half of the Water Supplies Department’s production cost.
This means that thanks to taxpayers, a bottler that sells 2,000 500ml bottles of water at HK$4.40 can reap profit margins 1,900 times the original purchasing cost, said group chairman Dr Frederick Lee Yok-shiu.
“It doesn’t make sense for taxpayers to be subsidising these big companies,” said Lee, who heads the University of Hong Kong’s water governance research programme. “They are making super profits ... water is currently very underpriced.”
Lee said the bottled water problem reflected another fundamental problem in the city – tariffs do not reflect the real value of water and are only encouraging wastage. He urged the government to increase them to more appropriate levels of cost recovery.
