Officials stick with outdated technologies

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Officials stick with outdated technologies

Howard Winn has been spot on with two pieces in Lai See (“Does the government need to rethink its incinerator project? [2]“, July 3, and “Buried treasure a waste when we can sell it to the Europeans [3]“, July 11) calling attention to modern ways to handle municipal solid waste. These include plasma gasification, waste-to-energy plants and the possibility of selling some of this waste to countries with excess capacity in waste to energy.

Given our government’s penchant for sticking to outdated and costly technologies, can we possibly believe that its current plans to erect costly and outdated giant incinerators – generating no energy – are the best way to go? I think not.

This municipal solid waste conundrum mirrors the government’s determination to build a monorail by the new Kai Tak cruise terminal.

Again, compared with modern light rail, this will cost a lot more to erect and run. The government should look at Sydney, where they are tearing down their own unsuccessful monorail, which has been a blight on the city centre.

Why can’t our government learn something from other parts of the world and give us modern, efficient, cost-effective infrastructure projects, instead of sticking to expensive and outdated technologies?

Peter Forsythe, Discovery Bay