Volunteers at Food Angel's Sham Shui Po kitchen trim edible surplus vegetables that would otherwise have been dumped in landfills. EDMOND TANG/CHINA DAILY Action taken in city to help seniors and children Three years ago, a woman in Hong Kong surnamed Lo was malnourished and could not afford to buy food. She lives alone in a 5-square-meter closet, known as a subdivided flat, in Sham Shui Po, one of the oldest and poorest neighborhoods in the special administrative region. Before Lo, 77, learned about Food Angel-a meals program-three years ago, she was as thin as a rake. When she could, she tried to supplement her starvation diet by lining up for free food packs handed out by a few NGOs and some restaurants. At other times she cooked simple meals such as salted fish and vegetables for herself in her tiny apartment. Today, Lo receives two free, nutritious meals every day at Food Angel's community center in Sham Shui Po. On the day she was interviewed, braised pig trotters were on the lunch menu. A contented Lo said, I have gained weight since I began having the meals here. The meals have also helped ease her financial burden. The HK$3,500($446) monthly Comprehensive Social Security Assistance payment she receives from the Hong Kong government does not go very far. More than half-HK$1,900-goes for rent and utility bills, and the rest is spent on basic essentials, including medications and transportation. Lo's eyesight is poor, as she has cataracts. With two free meals a day, she is able to save a small amount of money to see a doctor. Occasionally she can afford to buy clothes. Founded in 2011, Food Angel, a program run by the Bo Charity Foundation, turns edible surplus food from supermarkets, restaurants and hotel kitchens into meals. The meals, which are balanced for nutritional value, go to grassroots elderly people and other low-income households in the city Monday through Friday. In the past seven years, Food Angel has prepared more than 6 million hot meals and food packages for people in need. Julian Chow Chung-man, Food Angel's senior manager (community partner engagement) said the group rescues about 4,000 kilograms of surplus food a day. Most of it is packed into recoverable boxes and delivered to social welfare organizations, homes for the aged and schools, while a small number of elderly people have their meals at our community center, he said. Daily life in Hong Kong produces mountains of edible surplus food, most of which is dumped into landfills as waste. As an alternative, Food Angel collects and recycles food which would otherwise be destined for these dumps. Most of it comprises fresh vegetables and raw meat, and is donated by some 300 supermarkets, wet markets, restaurants and hotels. After the food is taken to the Food Angel base in Lai Chi Kok, staff members and volunteers trim yellowing leaves off vegetables, then wash and chop the food before it is taken in trucks to two kitchens, where it is transformed into hot meals. wristbands canadacustom silicone bracelets canadarubber bracelets canadasilicone bracelets canadasilicone wristbands canadacustom wristbands canadacanadian wristbandswristbands canada
Volunteers pick up discarded plastic bottles during a plogging event in Hong Kong organized by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. More than 13,000 people took part in the activity, which was held in 280 venues across the country. Photos Provided To China Daily Chilean businessman Roberto Astete has had the same dream for the past years: used plastic cutlery at a diner are automatically sorted into small grinders, then the debris dissolves in water in just a few minutes and is flushed away. We don't need to collect, transport and dispose of plastic waste at special facilities anymore. They can be processed easily on site to reduce ocean pollution, Astete explained. These days, his dream is almost a reality thanks to a new material and processing technology from his Chinese partner. In late July, Astete's company Solubag and Polye Materials in south China's Guangdong Province jointly launched a series of soluble shopping bags in Santiago, capital of Chile, right before the country enacted a new law barring businesses from giving out plastic bags to customers. It takes centuries for petrochemical plastic bags to degrade in the ocean, choking marine animals and harming the entire ecosystem. The bag introduced by the two companies dissolves in water quickly, and Astete even drank the mixture during a press conference to endorse its safety. According to Chen Gang, chairman of Polyrocks Chemical, Polye's parent firm, the bag's raw material is modified Polyvinyl Alcohol, or PVA, which comes from natural gas or calcium carbide. PVA bags dissolve in water in minutes so they won't choke the marine animals. The solution will not pollute water or soil, Chen explained. This alternative to plastic bags is eco-friendly. PVA has been used in paint, glue and textile manufacturing since the 1930s. PVA film has also been widely used for packaging in recent years. However, it was difficult and costly to process this material into shopping bags due to its lack of thermoplasticity, said Cui Yuefei, the bag's inventor and a senior engineer with the South China University of Technology. Cui had spent years on modifying PVA in laboratories and completed his experiments in 2008. By adding certain agents, he made it easier for the material to be pelleted, blow-molded and made into bags. The researcher's work caught the attention of Polyrocks, a reputed fire retardant producer that was trying to explore new business ventures. They joined hands in modified PVA industrialization in 2015. We were looking for a suitable blow-molding machine in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian in 2016, Cui told Xinhua. That's when and where we met Astete. At that time, the Chilean had been searching for a company capable of and interested in making affordable water soluble bags around the world for over two years. I was in the plastic industry and I thought to myself, we can't use petrochemical bags anymore, Astete recalled. I tried some European and American manufacturers first, but they showed little interest because the profit margin of shopping bags is very small. Then I came to China. Cui and Polyrocks first focused on hot water soluble bags, which would be more durable for everyday use. But Astete, coming from a country with a long coastline, insisted that the bags should be soluble in cold water. The Chilean helped us make this crucial decision in product development, Cui said. A prototype was produced in just two months, and Polye Materials was soon established for the project. The bags launched in Santiago are our third generation products. Their cost is about 1.5 times of that of a normal plastic bag, Cui said. We expect them to be as cheap as normal ones in our fifth generation. Li Lingyu, general manager of Polye told Xinhua that the company's yearly capacity of modified PVA pellets will reach 10,000 tonnes by November. That's about 500 million water soluble bags, she said. Astete hopes the bags will hit the shelves in Chile by the end of this year and has been trying to persuade his Chinese partner to open factories in his country. After the press conference, I got so many calls and there are thousands of inquiry emails in my inbox. It's crazy, really, really crazy, Astete said. We need to further increase our capacity. Eighty-five percent of the inquiry calls are from outside Chile, such as Mexico, Germany, France, and Spain. Polye and Solubag plan to start a joint venture in Hong Kong to deal with sales in the global market. Plastic pollution is considered a major threat to oceans worldwide. At this year's World Ocean's Day on June 8, Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, called on the world to stop plastic pollution from contaminating the world's oceans. Eighty percent of all pollution in the sea comes from the land, including some eight million tonnes of plastic waste each year, which have resulted in the deaths of one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals. Besides Chile, Britain is set to ban all sales of single-use plastics, including plastic straws and cotton swabs. Kenya and Morocco also have similar restrictions. Bags are just the start. We can also use modified PVA to make glass lids, straws, diapers and to replace products made from petrochemical plastics, Astete said. My country is small but people share a similar goal to have a beautiful, clean environment. It's also the aspiration of all humanity.
