Barbequed Excuses

In Hong Kong, barbeque (or BeeBeeQ as locals say it) is a messy affair.

Most often held in country parks or at beaches with fire pits, Hong Kongers arrived loaded with charcoal, barbeque forks, and packages of meat and various types of seafood balls.

The time is spent gathered around the fire, trying to cook pork chops or chicken parts well enough to eat.

Afterward, most folks toss their garbage in the bins, but some are content to leave their rubbish (metal barbeque forks in particular) behind.

Cleaners from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department must then walk through to collect the refuse to prepare the area for the next day's visitors.

This was reflected in a letter to the editor, in which the author criticised this bad habit:

When we go out to a beach or park, we've seen too many people loaded up with 10 to 50 'disposable' metal skewers. Young and old alike head out to enjoy a barbecue, but at the close of each day, the garbage bins and landscape are peppered with the wood handles and steel skewers people grab by the bunch when they go out.

That didn't sit well with one woman, who wrote her own letter in response, which begs to be ... er, skewered:

Ran Elfassy's criticism about the bad habit of disposing of barbecue skewers ("Disposing of bad habits", September 3) is justified but not practical for most Hong Kong people.

Let the justification begin!

It is already harsh and exhausting for us to bring so many skewers, food, paper plates and other things to the barbecue.

If it's so harsh and exhausting, why do it? This is a complaint only someone with a domestic helper would make. If this person had to clean up after herself all the time she'd have better muscle tone to cope with the hardships of pleasure-seeking.

After the barbecue, the skewers are covered with layers of grease, charcoal particles and other dirt.

Utensils get dirty when people use them. Get used to it.

They are far too unhygienic to touch and nobody would take heaps of heavy skewers back home and spend hours on washing them.

If they're hygienic enough to eat from, they're hygienic enough to take home. And if it takes her hours to wash them (but again, I suspect her domestic helper would get that job), she's using too many, which is Ran's point. If everyone brought fewer forks, the desire to just dump them wouldn't be as strong.

A more viable solution is to put rubbish bins for skewers in the country parks, which can be collected and recycled as new skewers. This is more convenient and something most Hongkongers would do.

SHANNON LEE, Tsing Yi

I have nothing against recycling, but her attitude is typical: someone else will clean up after us. Why hit taxpayers with the added expense required to set up special bins because you're too lazy to take home a few forks? How difficult could it be?

You'd think that after consuming all that protein you'd have lots of energy.

Unless eating is too harsh and exhausting.

← Older Posts · 早前 | →