SME Earth Chat: How to Create a Plastic Free Society?

According to the "2020 International Coastal Cleanup Report” published by Ocean Conservancy last year in September, plastic food wrappers for candies and potato chips surpassed cigarette butts for the first time since 1986, taking the top spot on the list of most common garbage on the beach, showing that the global plastic pollution problem is getting more and more serious.

In addition to the top two items: plastic food packaging and cigarette butts, the top 10 types of garbage (starting from the third place) are namely plastic bottles, plastic bottle caps, straws and stirrers, plastic cups and plates, plastic shopping bags, plastic takeaway containers, other plastic bags and plastic lids. It is important to note that beach garbage is almost made of all plastic waste, and some of them are actually recyclable.

According to the statistics of the "Monitoring of Solid Waste in Hong Kong 2019", about 1,400 metric tons of plastic tableware is disposed of at landfills every week. Clearly, the uncontrolled consumption of plastic tableware has put a lot of pressure on the carrying capacity of landfills. Besides, plastic pollution has a huge impact on the terrestrial and marine environment. Plastic reduction is at the top of our environmental agenda.

Our company has always been committed to promoting sustainable development, by engaging stakeholders externally and building a green company culture internally. And, we hope it can infect people around us.

People can often be seen getting takeaway for lunch. If everyone uses plastic tableware for lunch, the amount is huge. We took the lead in implementing BYOC (Bring Your Own Container) in 2019. In addition to providing environmentally friendly lunch boxes to encourage employees to bring their own tableware, we also appointed environmental ambassadors to search and personally lobby restaurants in the Tsim Sha Tsui to support going plastic-free. If the restaurant welcomes people to bring their own tableware, it can meet the plastic-free needs of customers. At present, several restaurants have signed agreements to become plastic-free restaurants, and some of them even offer a 12% discount to people who bring their own lunch boxes. We hope this can spread from Tsim Sha Tsui to all districts in Hong Kong.

At the same time, the corporate social responsibility department even wrote to the management office, suggesting that their shopping malls and restaurants support plastic-free. I am glad to see that this year, Harbour City finally implemented "Bring Your Own Box”, working with 25 catering merchants to reduce the use of disposable lunch boxes and tableware. During the promotion period, customers can bring their own eco-friendly lunch boxes to order food at participating restaurants, and 10 restaurants even offer discounts.