African Clawed Frogs have long been suspected of introducing a harmful fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or Bd to new populations that haven't been exposed to this pathogen before. The fungus has led to the recent decline or extinction of 200 frog species worldwide. A previous study found that the earliest case of Bd in the world was found in African Clawed Frogs in their native South Africa in 1934, but until now no research has tested for the disease among this species in populations that have become established in the U.S.

"We found that African Clawed Frogs that have been introduced in California are carrying this harmful fungus," said SF State biologist Vance Vredenburg. "This is the first evidence of the disease among introduced feral populations in the U.S., and it suggests these frogs may be responsible for introducing a devastating, non-native disease to amphibians in the United States."

From the 1930s to 1950s, thousands of African Clawed Frogs were exported across the world for use in pregnancy tests, scientific research and the pet trade. These frogs will ovulate when injected with a pregnant woman's urine.

"Today, these frog populations are often found in or near urban areas, probably because hospitals released them into the wild when new pregnancy testing methods were invented in the 1960s," Vredenburg said.

Named for the claws they use to catch prey, these greenish-grey frogs live in pools and streams and have established feral populations in the U.S., including in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

African Clawed Frogs are potentially potent carriers of the Bd fungus because they can be infected for long periods of time without dying, allowing them to pass it on to more vulnerable species.

"It's amazing that more than half a century after being brought to California, these frogs are still here, and they still carry this highly infectious disease," said Vredenburg, associate professor of biology at SF State. "This implies that there must be a stable relationship between the pathogen and the frogs, whereas there are other frog species, for example in the Sierra Nevada, which have been wiped out by the pathogen."

For this latest study, Vredenburg and colleagues tested museum specimens at the California Academy of Sciences. They assessed the prevalence of the disease by swabbing DNA from the skin of preserved African Clawed Frog specimens that were collected from wild populations in California between 2001 and 2010.

They also tested archived specimens collected in Africa between 1871 and 2010 and found evidence confirming that Bd was present among indigenous populations of this species before they were exported worldwide.

Although no longer used in pregnancy testing, African Clawed Frogs are still imported to the U.S. for use in biomedical and basic science research. Because of their suspected role as a carrier of the Bd fungus and other potential pathogens, eleven states in the U.S. have already restricted the importation of these frogs, for example by requiring special permits and not allowing them to be sold as pets.

"Back in the 1960s, African Clawed Frogs were kind of ignored in terms of conservation research but now the damage has been done," Vredenburg said. "Now, we need to be cautious about other introduced species, including those in the pet and food trade. There could be other animals out there that are carrying diseases that we don't even know about yet."

"Prevalence of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in Xenopus Collected in Africa (1871-2000) and in California (2001-2010)" was published May 15, 2013 in PLOS ONE. Vredenburg co-authored the paper with Samuel V. G. McNally, a graduate student in Vredenburg's lab, and Stephen A. Felt, Erica C. Morgan, Sabrina Wilson, and Sherril L. Green from Stanford University. The paper is available online here.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST Beijing (AFP) May 16, 2013 - Nearly 1,000 people took to the streets of the Chinese city of Kunming on Thursday in a renewed protest against a proposed chemical plant, media reports said, with Internet users voicing support.

The gathering outside the Yunnan provincial government office followed a similar demonstration earlier this month, and is the latest example of growing environmental concerns in China, which its new leaders have promised to address.

The Kunming factory will produce paraxylene (PX), a toxic petrochemical used to make fabrics.

Protesters -- some of them wearing face-masks, sun-glasses and caps -- held banners reading slogans including "Kunming mothers seeking health for their babies" and "PX get out", photos posted on major news portal qq.com showed.

A "large number" of police were on the scene to "maintain order" and the area was cordoned off, captions said. Demonstrators engaged in shoving matches with police but there were no serious clashes, according to the website.

Online Chinese text reports appeared to have been censored, with searches for "Kunming" and "PX" leading to messages reading: "The webpage you wanted to browse cannot be displayed for the time being."

But Internet users overwhelmed China's Twitter-like weibo services with support for the protesters.

"There is a riot in the mind of the people of Kunming who are strangled," wrote user "Director Wang Tingting".

Another blogger, "Xi Xiaobudou", said: "Government and media, please do not lie -- we do not want the refinery to come to Kunming."

Others called for an online petition to block the plant.

"I'm the 213,670th citizen to disagree with building the refinery in Kunming... everybody please forward the post and add a number," said "Optimistic V".

According to the official news agency Xinhua, Kunming's mayor Li Wenrong has promised: "The government will call off the project if most of our citizens say no to it."

China sees around 180,000 demonstrations a year on a wide range of issues, including some against proposed chemical plants in what analysts have identified as a rising trend of environmentally-motivated "not in my backyard" protests.

Local authorities in the coastal city of Xiamen cancelled plans for a PX plant after thousands took part in a protest in 2007. A huge protest in the northeastern city of Dalian in 2011 prompted authorities to announce a similar climbdown.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST Paris (AFP) May 17, 2013 - Martine Aubry, a leading French politician who led the ruling Socialist party, was Friday cleared by an appeals court of manslaughter in a probe into thousands of deaths caused by exposure to asbestos.

The court's decision clears the way for Aubry, who was charged with manslaughter in November, to return to top-level politics. She stood down as Socialist leader last year.

Aubry is now free to bid for a seat in President Francois Hollande's government. She had stood against Hollande in the primary to become the party's presidential candidate last year on a slightly more left-wing platform.

"The courts today recognised that no fault or negligence could be attributed to me," Aubry, who is presently the mayor of the northern city of Lille, said in a statement.

"Everybody knows that I have always acted as an official and as a minister to defend and reinforce the rights of workers and protect them from occupational hazards," she said.

The case against Aubry relates to her time as a senior official in the ministry of social affairs, before she became a major figure in French politics.

As the ministry's director of industrial relations from 1984-87, Aubry is accused of having helped to delay the implementation in France of a 1983 European Union directive designed to strengthen the protection of workers dealing with asbestos.

The examining magistrate in the case said Aubry bowed to pressure from industrialists lobbying against a complete ban on the use of the material and that she ignored warnings from French health authorities of a mushrooming epidemic of cancers and terminal lung diseases.

Aubry, the daughter of former European Commission President Jacques Delors, was one of many figures caught up in a far-reaching probe into how the French authorities handled the emerging evidence of the dangers posed by asbestos between 1970 and 1997, when the material was finally banned.

The specific charges against her related to the case of workers employed at the Fereo-Valeo auto-components factory in Normandy. Asbestos was once widely used for car brake pads.

An estimated 3,000 people currently die prematurely every year in France as a result of asbestos poisoning and there have been pessimistic predictions that the death rate could nearly treble over the next decade because of exposure in the 70s and 80s.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST Chicago IL (SPX) May 16, 2013 - Northwestern University scientists have struck gold in the laboratory. They have discovered an inexpensive and environmentally benign method that uses simple cornstarch - instead of cyanide - to isolate gold from raw materials in a selective manner.

This green method extracts gold from crude sources and leaves behind other metals that are often found mixed together with the crude gold. The new process also can be used to extract gold from consumer electronic waste.

Current methods for gold recovery involve the use of highly poisonous cyanides, often leading to contamination of the environment. Nearly all gold-mining companies use this toxic gold leaching process to sequester the precious metal.

"The elimination of cyanide from the gold industry is of the utmost importance environmentally," said Sir Fraser Stoddart, the Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "We have replaced nasty reagents with a cheap, biologically friendly material derived from starch."

Sir Fraser's team discovered the process by accident, using simple test tube chemistry. A series of rigorous follow-up investigations provided evidence for the competitive strength of the new procedure.

The findings will be published in the online journal Nature Communications.

Zhichang Liu, a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart's lab and first author of the paper, took two test tubes containing aqueous solutions - one of the starch-derived alpha-cyclodextrin, the other of a dissolved gold (Au) salt (called aurate) - and mixed them together in a beaker at room temperature.

Liu was trying to make an extended, three-dimensional cubic structure, which could be used to store gases and small molecules. Unexpectedly, he obtained needles, which formed rapidly upon mixing the two solutions.

"Initially, I was disappointed when my experiment didn't produce cubes, but when I saw the needles, I got excited," Liu said. "I wanted to learn more about the composition of these needles."

"Nature decided otherwise," said Stoddart, a senior author of the paper. "The needles, composed of straw-like bundles of supramolecular wires, emerged from the mixed solutions in less than a minute."

After discovering the needles, Liu screened six different complexes - cyclodextrins composed of rings of six (alpha), seven (beta) and eight (gamma) glucose units, each combined with aqueous solutions of potassium tetrabromoaurate (KAuBr4) or potassium tetrachloroaurate (KAuCl4).

He found that it was alpha-cyclodextrin, a cyclic starch fragment composed of six glucose units, that isolates gold best of all.

"Alpha-cyclodextrin is the gold medal winner," Stoddart said. "Zhichang stumbled on a piece of magic for isolating gold from anything in a green way."

Alkali metal salt waste from this new method is relatively environmentally benign, Stoddart said, while waste from conventional methods includes toxic cyanide salts and gases. The Northwestern procedure is also more efficient than current commercial processes.

The supramolecular nanowires, each 1.3 nanometers in diameter, assemble spontaneously in a straw-like manner. In each wire, the gold ion is held together in the middle of four bromine atoms, while the potassium ion is surrounded by six water molecules; these ions are sandwiched in an alternating fashion by alpha-cyclodextrin rings. Around 4,000 wires are bundled parallel to each other and form individual needles that are visible under an electron microscope.

"There is a lot of chemistry packed into these nanowires," Stoddart said. "The elegance of the composition of single nanowires was revealed by atomic force microscopy, which throws light on the stacking of the individual donut-shaped alpha-cyclodextrin rings."

The atomic detail of the single supramolecular wires and their relative disposition within the needles was uncovered by single crystal X-ray crystallography.

The research - a prime example of serendipity at work, brought to fruition by contemporary fundamental science - is poised to find technological application. This basic science has been forged by the team into a practical labscale process for the isolation of gold from scrap alloys.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Science Foundation supported the research. The paper is titled "Selective isolation of gold facilitated by second-sphere coordination with a-cyclodextrin." In addition to Stoddart and Liu, the other authors of the paper are Marco Frasconi, Juying Lei, Zachary J. Brown, Zhixue Zhu, Dennis Cao, Julien Iehl, Guoliang Liu, Albert C. Fahrenbach, Omar K. Farha, Joseph T. Hupp and Chad A. Mirkin, all from Northwestern, and Youssry Y. Botros of Intel Labs.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST Geneva (AFP) May 10, 2013 - Governments have agreed to phase out the use of the toxic chemical HBCD, and restrict trade in four other dangerous substances, the head of the UN's anti-pollution division said Friday.

"Adding these chemicals to the list is a good thing, because they are known to be quite bad chemicals," Jim Willis, executive secretary of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, told reporters as a two-week international conference wrapped up in Geneva.

The conference agreed to ban the production and use of HBCD from next year, albeit with a five-year grace period for its use as a flame-retardant in polystyrene building insulation.

HBCD, or hexabromocyclododecane, is also used in interior textile fittings for vehicles as well as packaging materials. It is considered a "persistent organic pollutant" -- chemicals which linger in the environment, enter the food chain and thereby pose risks to human health and nature.

Health campaigners say that among its ills is that it undermines the ability of children to learn and grow because it can harm thyroid function and brain development.

Such chemicals are overseen by the Stockholm Convention, finalised in the Swedish capital in 2001 and which to date has drawn in 179 nations.

A separate accord, the 1998 Rotterdam Convention, restricts trade in chemicals by obliging exporters to ensure that destination countries have been fully informed about the risks involved and have given an explicit green light for imports.

A total of 152 nations have signed up to that accord, and the parties agreed to add four chemicals to its list: the insecticide azinphos-methyl; perfluorooctanesulfonates, which can be used as water repellents; and two forms of flame-retardant, pentabromodiphenyl ether and octabromodiphenyl ether.

Delegates failed, however, to slap similar trade restrictions on the pesticide paraquat, in the face of resistance piloted by India.

In addition, they were unable to reach a consensus on adding chrysotile asbestos -- which health experts say causes cancer -- to the list.

Past efforts to do so were long stymied by Canada, a major producer until the government withdrew support to the industry last year.

With Ottawa taking a back seat, the baton was picked up by Zimbabwe and Russia, the globe's top asbestos producer.

Unlike the 180-nation Basel Convention of 1989, which governs exports of toxic waste notably from rich to poor countries, the Stockholm and Rotterdam Conventions lack compliance mechanisms and have to rely on countries honouring their pledges.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST Iowa City IA (SPX) May 13, 2013 - Since polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are produced through industrial processes or activities, it is assumed that people living in industrial cities will have higher concentrations of these toxic chemicals in their blood than people in rural communities.

Researchers at the University of Iowa say this isn't the case. In a paper published in March in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, scientists report that mothers and children in East Chicago, Ind., and Columbus Junction, Iowa, had only subtle differences in their PCB blood levels. This analytical paper is the first to report such a comparison between two communities, between mothers and children, and including all 209 PCB compounds.

"This is not good news, and it certainly applies to all of us," says Keri Hornbuckle, professor of civil and environmental engineering in the UI College of Engineering and senior author on the paper. "I thought it would be worse in a very industrial city than in a rural community. Our results really shook us up. We all have PCBs in our blood, and they are coming from somewhere. We don't make them in our bodies."

Study subjects from Indiana live in a highly industrialized community of 32,400 people that is bisected by the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. In contrast, Columbus Junction is a rural community of 1,899 with no known current or historical PCB sources.

Serum samples were collected from junior high school-aged students and their mothers who were enrolled in the Airborne Exposures to Semivolatile Organic Pollutants (AESOP) study between April 2008 and January 2009. The AESOP study is directed by Peter Thorne, professor of occupational and environmental health in the UI College of Public Health and a project leader in the Iowa Superfund Research Program.

The serum analyzed was gathered from 41 mothers and their 44 children in East Chicago, and from 44 mothers and their 48 children in Columbus Junction. Researchers found a greater variety of PCBs in the blood of mothers and children in East Chicago. Despite the expectation of a large environmental exposure difference, East Chicago and Columbus Junction participants had similar concentrations of PCBs in their blood.

"We're looking for evidence of inhalation exposure. There are clearly big stores of PCBs in the environment," says Rachel Marek, doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering and first author on the paper. "How can we reduce of the overall level of PCBs in the environment and therefore reduce exposure to PCBs? We need to be able to identify those sources and clean them up."

PCBs can enter the human body by eating or drinking contaminated food, through the air we breathe, or by skin contact. Hornbuckle, however, doesn't know why participants in East Chicago and Columbus Junction have similar PCB concentrations in their blood.

"What is probably going on is that these two communities eat similar things, because their demographics are similar, and they breathe similar air with respect to the total amount of PCBs in the air," says Hornbuckle, a project leader in the Iowa Superfund Research Program who analyzes PCBs in blood and air.

Ninety-two individual PCB compounds were detected in the samples. Researchers report the detection of PCB 11 and PCB 83, which, to their knowledge, have not been found previously in human blood.

The researchers detected the neurotoxic PCB 11 in more than 60 percent of participants-more East Chicago mothers than Columbus Junction mothers. This finding helps verify that the environment is a significant source of PCB exposure. In particular, recent studies found that PCB 11 has been an inadvertent byproduct of paint production. The compound has been found in the air and in a wide variety of organic paint pigments from multiple manufacturers.

"PCBs are everywhere and they are really high in building materials, especially for homes that were built between 1950 and 1970. Both communities have similar housing materials," Hornbuckle says. "We also found that PCBs are in modern household paint, so it doesn't matter if you live in East Chicago or Columbus Junction."

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, PCBs have been shown to cause cancer, along with a variety of other adverse effects on the body's immune, reproductive, nervous, and endocrine systems. For more information, visit www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/tsd/pcbs/pubs/effects.htm.

"These chemicals are known to be toxic to humans, and they are known to be toxic for developing humans, so we want them out," Hornbuckle says. "We don't want them in our paint. We don't want them in our indoor air. That's why there are fish consumption advisories on all the Great Lakes, because we don't want them in our food."

Contributing authors include Thorne; Kai Wang, associate professor of biostatistics; and Jeanne DeWall, research associate in occupational and environmental health.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST New York NY (SPX) May 08, 2013 - Toxic waste sites with elevated levels of lead and chromium cause a high number of "healthy years of life lost" in individuals living near 373 sites located in India, Philippines and Indonesia, according to a study by a Mount Sinai researcher published online in Environmental Health Perspectives.

The study leader, Kevin Chatham-Stephens, MD, Pediatric Environmental Health Fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, presented the findings at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC.

"Lead and hexavalent chromium proved to be the most toxic chemicals and caused the majority of disease, disability and mortality among the individuals living near the sites," said Dr. Chatham-Stephens, first author.

The study titled, "The Burden of Disease from Toxic Waste Sites in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines in 2010," was a joint research partnership between Mount Sinai and the Blacksmith Institute.

Eight chemicals were sampled and collected at the toxic waste sites in 2010. The samples were then measured for pollutant levels in the soil and water and then compared with the 8,629,750 individuals who were at risk of exposure around these sites in order to calculate the loss of years of equivalent full health.

Researchers calculated healthy years of life lost due to ill-health, disability or early death, in disability-adjusted life years (DALY), a measure of overall disease burden used by the World Health Organization.

One DALY represents the loss of one year of equivalent full health. In this study, the total number of lost years of full health or DALYs was 828,722.

In comparison, malaria in the same countries caused 725,000 lost years of full health, and outdoor air pollution caused 1.4 million lost years of full health in 2008, according to Dr. Chatham-Stephens.

"The number of DALYs estimated in our study potentially places toxic waste sites on par with other major public health issues such as malaria and outdoor air pollution which are also causing a high number of healthy years of life lost," said Dr. Chatham-Stephens.

"This study highlights a major and previously under-recognized global health problem in lower and middle income countries," said Philip Landrigan, MD, MSc, Dean for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and one of the authors of the study.

"The next step is targeting interventions such as cleaning up the sites and minimizing the exposure of humans in each of these countries where toxic chemicals are greatly present."

Additionally, children and women of child-bearing age made up two-thirds of the population in the study. "If a woman is pregnant, the fetus may be exposed to these toxic chemicals," said Dr.

Chatham-Stephens. "This data is relevant because the prenatal to early childhood period is the time when individuals are very vulnerable to some toxic exposures, such as lead's impact on the developing nervous system."

Previous studies have shown that lead can cause neurological, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular damage, while those also exposed to high levels of chromium have a greater chance of developing lung cancer.

"Our research shows that chemical pollutants from toxic waste sites are insufficiently studied in lower and middle income countries and that disease and death caused by these chemicals can contribute to loss of life," said Dr. Chatham-Stephens.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST Southampton UK (SPX) May 06, 2013 - A recent study involving the University of Southampton has investigated public perception of how waste disposal sites affect residents living nearby. Public opinion of waste management facilities can influence where sites are located and how waste management services are delivered.

Obtaining the support of communities around municipal solid waste (MSW) facilities is an important part of the successful operation of these services. One common complaint from local communities concerns unpleasant smells emitted from waste disposal facilities, such as from landfill sites.

To understand how living close to a waste disposal facility affects peoples' perceptions of odours and local pollution, the study, which is published in the journal Waste Management, questioned residents in four villages located near a cluster of waste disposal sites in southern Italy.

Two sanitary landfill sites (designed to isolate the waste from the environment) were constructed in the 1990s and a refuse derived fuel (RDF) plant (where MSW is shredded and dehydrated to recover materials for fuel) was built in 2001. All facilities were closed in 2008.

Residents were questioned in 2003, when the facilities were operating, and again in 2009, when they had closed, about their perception of and attitudes towards pollution and odours in the local area. They were also questioned their awareness of the waste facilities in the area.

The residents' perception of odour nuisance considerably diminished between 2003 and 2009 for the nearest villages, with odour perception showing an association with distance from the facilities. After the facilities had closed, residents had difficulty in identifying the type of smell due to the decrease in odour level.

During both surveys, older residents reported most concern about the potentially adverse health impacts of long-term exposure to odours from MSW facilities.

However, although awareness of MSW facilities and concern about potentially adverse health impacts varied according to the characteristics of residents in 2003, substantial media coverage produced increased knowledge about the type of facilities and how they operated.

It is possible that residents of the village nearest to the facilities reported lower awareness of and concern about odour and environmental pollution because the municipality received economic compensation for their presence.

Professor Ian Williams, Head of the Centre for Environmental Sciences at the University of Southampton, says: "This study clearly shows that user surveys have an important role to play in providing practical assistance to the development of improved sustainable waste management strategies.

A lesson for future installation of solid waste facilities is that residents have to be adequately informed about the nature and specific characteristics of these facilities and the requirement to equip a country with essential infrastructure.

This is particularly important in areas such as southern Italy that have suffered serious social and environmental problems because of negative perceptions of waste management, which after all, is an essential public service."

Co-author of the study, Dr Giovanni De Feo from the University of Salerno adds: "This is an excellent example of how sharing expertise between universities internationally can bring positive benefits to the community and can assist decision-makers faced with challenging issues." ]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST Washington DC (SPX) May 06, 2013 - It may be the 21st century, but nearly half the world's population still cooks and heats with open fires or primitive stoves that burn wood, animal dung, charcoal and other polluting solid fuels.

The article in the ACS journal Environmental Science and Technology describes impressive progress being made to remedy that situation and the obstacles that remain.

Susan C. Anenberg and colleagues describe the health and environmental consequences of those old-fashioned energy sources. They include an estimated 4 million deaths annually from inhalation of soot and other material in the smoke, and air pollution that contributes to global warming.

Reliance on wood and charcoal also contributes to deforestation and other problems. In a broadly based response, scientists, international aid agencies and governments have launched efforts to develop and introduce cleaner, more efficient cook stoves that may improve health and livelihoods and reduce climate emissions.

The article describes efforts to introduce millions of cleaner stoves into developing countries and to better understand the resulting benefits. Some new stoves, for instance, can cut fuel use by 30-60 percent, while reducing air pollution exposure and climate-warming pollution.

It also discusses the importance of evaluating stove performance for a variety of policy goals and of ensuring that the new stoves are acceptable and affordable to users.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST Hong Kong (AFP) May 3, 2013 - An army of road sweepers and refuse collectors keep the streets clean in the heart of Hong Kong -- but on the outskirts, growing mountains of waste are testament to what campaigners say is an environmental crisis.

While the city may look well-kept, its three huge outdoor landfill sites are piled high with rubbish and are set to reach capacity by 2020, according to the government's Environmental Protection Department (EPD).

Some predictions say the first will be full in a year or two.

"We need to have a clear roadmap for waste reduction, otherwise our rubbish will be on the streets in seven years' time," environmental scientist Professor Jonathan Wong, of the Hong Kong Baptist University, told AFP.

The majority of the 13,000 tonnes of rubbish dumped at landfills in Hong Kong each day is termed 'municipal solid waste' (MSW), generated by households, business and industry.

With a population of more than 7 million, Hong Kong is sending 1.3 kilograms of MSW per person to landfills daily. Most of it is 'domestic waste' - rubbish from homes and institutions including schools, as well as refuse collected by public cleaning services, from food to furniture.

Its per capita generation of domestic waste is significantly higher than other leading Asian cities, including Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei.

The public's attitude to consumption has been partly blamed for the problem.

"Hong Kong is a fast-moving city and people want to keep up with the trends, whether it's clothing or iPhones," said Angus Ho, executive director of Hong Kong environmental NGO Greeners Action.

"They may have a perfectly good piece of furniture but they will dump it for a new one because there is no sense of responsibility - there's a habit of consuming and disposing of things."

Ho, along with other campaigners, also blames government inertia for Hong Kong's mountains of rubbish.

The EPD published a 10-year framework for managing the city's waste in 2005 but has been criticised for failing to implement much of the plan and for having no concrete schedule for instigating it.

Currently it is working on another waste management 'blueprint' which is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

In a statement to AFP, the EPD acknowledged Hong Kong "has a waste crisis".

It added that this can only be dealt with "by taking multi-pronged actions, ranging from waste reduction at source to enhancing waste recovery, as well as building a comprehensive and modern waste treatment infrastructure that can handle different types of waste".

-- Struggling for solutions --

The government and green groups believe that waste charging for households and businesses according to the amount they dispose of is the key to reducing the amount of rubbish generated - such schemes have worked well in Taipei and Seoul.

But successive administrations have been hesitant to take on the public, commerce and political opponents to push through that policy.

"The government doesn't want to do anything too drastic and creative because they will face a hard time in LegCo (Hong Kong's legislative council)," Edwin Lau, director of Friends of the Earth Hong Kong told AFP.

"An effective framework is there - they don't need to reinvent the wheel. They just need to get it rolling," he said.

Lau says the HK$0.50 (US$0.06 ) plastic bag levy, introduced in 2009 and which currently covers 3,000 shops including supermarkets and convenience stores, shows how effective a charging system can be in changing people's behaviour.

The EPD says use of plastic bags at the retailers under the scheme has reduced by 90 percent.

Plans have also been discussed to extend current landfills and build an incinerator, both proposals which are unpopular with residents and some environmentalists.

While the government stalls on the bigger picture when it comes to managing the city's waste, smaller-scale groups are trying to get the message across at the grass roots.

Hong Kong Recycles is a non-profit organisation set up last year which issues four reusable bags to its subscribers so that they can separate their paper, plastic, metal and glass for recycling - the bags are picked up from their doorsteps once a week.

Although some apartment blocks in the city already have recycling bins, they are often too small for the number of residents.

"A lot of Hong Kong people do care about the environment and want to recycle, but they don't want to walk down to a community centre or to wheelie bins with their rubbish. We thought of a way to make it easier for them," said operations manager Joshua Tan.

Subscribers pay HK$25 ($3) a week for the service and there are currently 250 clients, including corporates, plus a waiting list, says Tan.

Retail company director Marc Dambrines, 39, who has lived in Hong Kong for 17 years, said he signed up because HK Recycles was able to explain clearly to him where his rubbish would go and how it would be used.

"It's easy to recycle, but often you don't know what happens at the end of the process," he said.

Hong Kong already recycles around half of its waste, but Professor Wong says compulsory recycling should be introduced as part of any government waste reduction plan.

"The government and people need to join hands now to cope with the crisis," he said.

For many in Hong Kong however, the frenetic pace of daily life means thinking about waste is not high on their list.

"Most people don't worry about it. I think about how much my household produces, but sometimes convenience is a priority," said 40-year-old housewife Ophelia, who believes waste charging would make a difference.

"It would give me a push to do better," she said. "Chinese people are very money-minded. If we're charged for something we will be more careful."

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:24 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D