Hong Kong has seven main laws to control pollution. These are the Waste Disposal Ordinance, the Water Pollution Control Ordinance, the Air Pollution Control Ordinance, the Noise Control Ordinance, the Ozone Layer Protection Ordinance, the Dumping at Sea Ordinance and the Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance. Most of these laws have subsidiary regulations and other statutory provisions, such as technical memoranda, to give effect to the principal laws.

The Government has adopted a system of environmental quality objectives as a general principle in its pollution control laws. The objectives are set at levels that will meet environmental goals, such as the protection of public health or the preservation of a natural ecosystem. The system aims to achieve the required environmental benefits in the most cost-effective and economically sustainable manner. Limits imposed on polluting emissions are no more stringent or costly than is necessary to achieve the conservation goal, which also makes the maximum safe use of the environment's natural capacity to absorb and recycle wastes.

In 2004, EPD inspectors made more than 62 000 inspections to enforce control on air, noise, waste and water pollution. These included regular checks on environmental compliance and investigations of pollution complaints from the community. The enforcement work resulted in more than 586 prosecutions and nearly $4.6 million in fines. To streamline enforcement from a customer-oriented perspective and to enhance efficiency, the EPD has implemented integrated enforcement operations with multi-skilled teams dealing with multi-media enforcement operations within each district and looking into all types of pollution problems in any single site inspection.

Apart from law enforcement, the EPD set up dedicated teams in 2004 to develop partnership programmes with various trades such as the construction industry, the catering industry, the vehicle repair trade and the property management sector to promote good environmental practices and compliance with pollution control regulations.