Trash Talk: Non-profit company offers to buy Hong Kong waste

Photo illustration
Photo illustration

As kids, we’re all bribed to clean our rooms and take out the trash, but who would have thought that one day we could be paid to make a mess?  Hoping to make this a reality (kind of), a non-profit organisation has offered to buy up Hong Kong’s waste to turn it into useful resources that can be enjoyed by everyone in the city.
 
With the aim of achieving zero waste in the city by 2020, Zero Waste Smart City Resources Association (ZWSCRA – a bit of a mouthful, even in acronym form) is pitching to manage the Hong Kong’s waste as a private commercial enterprise.
 
For HKD100 a tonne or HKD326 million a year, Peter Reid, chairperson of the ZWSCRA, has offered to buy 9,000 tonnes of solid Hong Kong waste for five and a half years starting from Sept. 2015 onwards, and recycle 100 percent of it in all 18 districts of the city. He hopes to transform the waste into valuable community resources.
 
Meanwhile, the government plans to spend roughly HKD60 billion to manufacture and run a controversial incinerator on Shek Kwu Chau to increase the size and servicing capabilities of landfill operations.
 
We don’t chain ourselves to trees that often, but the maths seems pretty clear to us.
 
Although capital costs are estimated to be HKD8 billion to fund the Zero Waste 2020 Plan, Reid is optimistic that 6,000 green jobs would be created, and that the scheme could change the mind-set of the average Hongkonger about environmental responsibility.
 
“A think-green, go-clean and live-cool vision [will] energise everyone living in Hong Kong,” said Reid in an interview with the SCMP.
 
He’s got it all planned out. Dividing the business into six different categories using digital waste separation technologies and waste applications, the method would see food and green waste dealt with using anaerobic digestion plants to produce fertiliser and fish food; paper, metals, plastic and textiles wholly recycled on a district level; and residual fuel waste turned into fuel feedstock for pyrolysis gasification plants.

For all you non-scientifically inclined/normal people out there, that’s code for making clean gas for all our mains and pipes.
 
So there you have it. Permission to start producing as much rubbish as humanly possible. It’s for the greater good!

Photo: Wikimedia



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