Reported by Clara Ip
Edited by Tomi and Brison
The two kids, fascinated by the show boards and the games, ran over to the roadshow truck parked next to the Lee Cheng Uk Estate in Kwun Tong. Ms. Chan Wing-Sze, a housewife and mother of two, kindly reminded them to pay attention to the promoter when he explained the recycling process of clean carton boxes.
She was pleased to participate in the education campaign organized by Vitasoy because she believed that it was vital to inculcate recycling into the younger generations since they were young. “It would be better if we could get all of them into a habit of doing recycling,” she illustrated.
“Usually we do some recycling, like recycling plastics and metals, even glass bottles. But I seldom recycle beverage carton boxes,” said Ms. Chan, “if there are some recycling activities like recycling beverage carton bins, we will be more than happy to do so.”
A report conducted by Green Power in 2018, a local environmental group, found that there were around 3.7 billion cartons disposed annually in Hong Kong, and it is enough to fill up 16.9 Hong Kong football stadiums. It is estimated that there are around 116 cartons are disposed each second.
According to Drink Without Waste, over 80 percent of the packaging beverages ended up in Hong Kong's landfills in 2017. On the current course, by 2030 the numbers will swell to over two billion units per year.
Vitasoy International Holding Limited, one of the largest drink manufacturers in Hong Kong, announced in early October that they would bear a part of the responsibility by launching Hong Kong's first Beverage Carton Clean Recycling Education Programme.
The Vitasoy Beverage Carton Clean Recycling Education Programme is currently in a pilot phrase, with the first clean carton boxes recycling bin set up starting from this November in Lee Cheung Uk Estate. These recycling bins are specially designed with their main bodies made of recycled material from beverage cartons.
The programme aims to promote waste reduction by collecting and recycling beverage cartons from any manufacturers in Hong Kong as well as educating students and the local community about clean beverage package recycling.
“At Vitasoy, we adhere to our sustainable growth model, which aims to sustain our business growth while ensuring consistent improvements in the Company’s contributions to the
environment,” said Ms Dorcas Lau, the Chief Executive Officer of Vitasoy Hong Kong, “Vitasoy is committed to engaging and collaborating with various parties to help support the development of local beverage carton recycling value chain.”
Secure Information Disposal Services Ltd (SSID) will regularly collect recycled cartons from those bins for processing at Mil Mill, the first government-approved carton recycle facility. Alongside the launch of the programme, the recycling facility has celebrated its official opening on October 21, with a waste carton recycling capacity of 10 tonnes per day.
Beverage carton recycling bins will be placed in residential areas and schools to support carton collection. At the moment, there are about 90 collection points, mainly in local and international schools. A series of workshops and activities are planned to be organized at 75 local and international primary and secondary schools.
The School of Design of Hong Kong Polytechnic University also held interactive workshops on paper pulp extraction and 3D printing technology. Students' products were displayed at Maker Faire Hong Kong on 31 November to 1 December.
Ms. Dorcas Lau stated that Vitasoy targets to attract one-third of primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong to participate in the programme in three years.
Green Power has been urging Vitasoy to fulfil their carton recycling duty since 2016. Vitasoy was pointed fingers at after a sample Green Power done by collecting carton boxes from a community for four continuous weeks and the sample shows that 74 percent of the packages in the Hong Kong landfills comes from the firm.
Ms. Dana Winograd, operations director of Plastic Free Seas, mentioned that the carton recycling programme done by Vitasoy may not be as effective as the campaign held by Plastic Free Seas, where members recycle carton boxes every month. She believed that Hong Kong people could not reflect on how many cartons they have wasted if carton boxes were collected every day.
Some of the members who joined Plastic Free Seas carton recycling programme volunteered to make their own chocolate milk every day, instead of buying, after they realized how many boxes they have thrown every month.
With the rise in global attention towards environmental issues, many leading companies in Hong Kong have gradually launched a series of recycling programs in the last two years. They are aiming to sustain their business growth while ensuring consistent improvements in their contributions to the environment.
At the beginning of the year, Hong Kong drinks company, Watson Water launched the “Drops of Fun” Reward Program and started to put up reverse vending machines that offer coupons or gift redemptions. There are 19 “Recycling Green Points” across Hong Kong for members to recycle empty plastic water bottles.
Ms. Winograd believes that more effective actions should be taken to improve the recycling situation in Hong Kong.
"The programme is an exquisite gesture, but what they are doing is not enough," she said.
She emphasized Vitasoy did not address the root of the problem since they are the ones who are creating these beverage containers. Instead of focusing on how to recover these containers, she believes the firm should target on how to generate less single-use packaging.
The Green Power reported the recycling rate in Hong Kong is close to zero in 2016 while other countries, including Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China have their recycling rates of 45 percent, 30 percent and 10 percent respectively.
Ms. Winograd thinks the low recycling rate is due to the education process of recycling in Hong Kong, which is far behind from other countries and insufficient financial incentive provided by the government. Still, it is mainly due to the mistrust Hong Kong people have towards the current recycling system.
Plastic Free Seas in 2016 reported many people believe that the plastic waste they sort for collection all ends up in landfills, which has led to the unfortunate attitude of 'why bother' trying to do good in a broken system.
Paul Zimmerman, member of the Southern District Council for Pokfulam and Chief Executive Officer of Designing Hong Kong, commented that people do not have trust towards the recycling bins that are lying in the middle of the street since it is always contaminated.
"The bins busted in the middle of the street are easy to be contaminated, since it is easy to put things into the wrong bin. Therefore, the system is basically failing. It is a design failure, use failure and people's attitude failure. There are a lot of things going wrong. The system has been failing. But once it has a monetary value, it has a better chance," he said.
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