Up to June 2006, there are 772 establishments of Food & Beverage Industry in Hong Kong. This sector is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises with 80% of establishments engaging less than 20 employees.

In general, there are a number of common environmental characteristics of Food & Beverage Industry:

• The wastewaters contain the conventional pollutants of oil and grease, suspended solids, and detergents and have high BOD values.
• The pH may be alkaline as a result of detergents used.
• Grease traps have to be installed resulting in a reduction of the oil and grease concentrations as well as the settleable solids to discharge as a requirement of the food licence issued by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department.
• It is noted that inadequate design and maintenance of grease traps is a common occurrence, particularly in the small establishments.
  

(Source: Hong Kong Trade Development Council & Trade and Industry Department)

Challenges for SMEs

Owing to increasingly stringent regulatory requirements and progressively higher social pressure towards environmental protection, manufacturers all over the world have to identify and implement cost-effective measures to properly tackle their environmental problems.

In addition, issues such as food hygiene, raw material availability, production cost and efficiency, and increased competition are also placing pressure on food and beverage processors to improve their environmental and economic performance.

However, SME manufacturers face a number of barriers during the course of looking for self-improvement and becoming a green and responsible industrialist. The main barriers for SME in improving their environmental performance are:

• Ability in adopting the right cleaner production concepts in production process
  
• Know-how in eco-product design
  
• Identifying a cost-effective pollution control technology
  
• Understanding the local and global legal requirements in environmental protection
  
• Proper ways in responding global environmental supply chain pressures
  
• Strategic planning for long-term environmental improvement
  
• Constraints from capital and human resources
  

Want to know more about the Key Environmental Issues of Food & Beverage Industry? Go to the section of Key Environmental Issues.