March 10, 2011
Very interesting day, so suit up! We visited City University of Hong Kong. We met with an expat, professor with the information technology department. He gave a great talk about sustainability issues. Hong Kong has done many measures to deal with their problems. Water availability is a big concern. The largest pollution issues are air pollution (particulate, vehicular based) and trash. They are an island and small peninsula and thus have limited space for landfills. No matter where it is located it will be in the backyard of someone. The forerunning solution is municipal incineration. Our speaker did say that up to 60% of the land (which is all owned by Hong Kong) is set aside for green space!
We had lunch in a large mall across from the City University. After lunch we met with the Business Green Council to hear several speakers. We met the CEO, Andrew Thomson. The business council helps do market studies and demand analysis for companies wishing to locate to Hong Kong. Then a program director for waste reduction and a company representative of a waste recycler presented additional topics. Waste recycling in big business for Hong Kong. They import up to 2,000,000 tons of waste from the United States to repackage, break down, and sell to China. In total, Hong Kong exports about 6,000,000 tons of recycled material to China. Hong Kong is a huge investment center and just off the trash they make considerable money off the spread between the buy and ask. Low value recyclers merely pick out product and package it for resell. Most trash can be recycled (up to 80% by weight), but competition is fierce among recyclers. The tough part is recycling economically. Hong Kong is trying to attract high value recyclers such as biodiesel producers, PC board recyclers and others. They have built an Eco-Park that supplies infrastructure to business start ups to encourage high value recycling businesses.
City University of Hong Kong, mall for lunch, Business Environmental Council,
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