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• plastic city

  Wednesday, Mar 26, 2008 7:24PM / Standard Entry / Members only
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  This is really sad.  A large piece of icefloe has broken off in the Antarctica due to global warming.  It's the largest piece to date, supposedly four times the size of Paris.  More people now are more aware of our planet and trying to do our bits to preserve what we have - recycling and such.  But there are still a huge population (in many countries) have no awareness of what's going on... we can't seem to see the little daily convenience that we enjoy can be a huge cause to our environment... 
  
  When I was working in HK, I noticed how much plastic (containers/bags) people waste.  Recycling still isn't a popular notion, even in a metropolitan city like HK.  They have "environmental day" and do ask people not to use plastic bags when you purchase stuff at convenient stores like 7-11.  But every time when I told the cashier not to give me a plastic bag, s/he was always shocked and would thank me profusely.  One even told me that I was the first person for the past two days asking her to not give me a plastic bag, even though there was a sign right there at the cashier saying "support environmental day!" 
  
  Another thing I noticed is how much people love take-outs.  Granted HK is a fast paced city where everyone is always working and running around, so people just go for take-outs.  But just think about the amount of plasticware they waste!  At least in the States/Europe, the recycling system is more advanced that we can recycle almost anywhere around the residential and office areas.  But in HK, people just dump them right into the trash bin after their meals.  Restaurants love to give you gazillion plastic utensils that are also wrapped in plastic, plus the plastic containers and then the plastic bag... all this - for just one takeout meal - gets thrown to the non-recycling trash bin afterwards...   I witnessed this behaviour in a few offices, and sometimes I just looked up at one building thinking there are at least 100 offices in there, and then the building next to it, and then the building next to that....  just think how much plastic containers, folks, spoons, bags this city produces and wastes alone...  
  
  I often ordered take-outs there, but I'd try to ask them not to give me the 5 plastic spoons that they always shoved inside my order...  Offices should just stock their own utensils, so when they order takeouts, at least they could just ask the restaurants not to include the plasticware that they love to give out so much.  It's such a waste.
  
  We sometimes say how superficial and "plastic" the city HK can be, I think it literally is...  of course it's not just HK, China has been reported to have an astronomical amount of plastic waste... along with India and even the US...
  
  I wish someone could come up with a genius plastic solution, here is something that I saw once in an exhibition that could be inspirational:
  
  
  The entire art piece made out of plastic bag... pretty genius I say...
  

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