What is your Plastic Footprint?
Do you know how much waste you produce every day?
In Hong Kong in 2024*, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), which includes domestic, industrial and commercial waste, was equal to 1.4kg/person of waste every day – that is over 511kg a year or 2 tonnes for a family of 4!
Although the government’s plan for waste charging has been delayed, we should still take a closer look at reducing our waste to reduce the amount we send to landfill and to make sure we are recycling what we should be.
Will you take on the challenge and do a Plastic Footprint Investigation to find out the size of your plastic footprint?
*latest gov’t statistics can be found here.
What do I need to do?
- Collect, clean and store all the plastic waste you create in a specific period of time, i.e. one week. You may wish to do this with all of your non-organic waste.
- At the end of the time period, lay out everything on the floor or a table and categorise it by what it’s used for. For example: bags, personal care products, food packaging, takeaway containers, etc.
- Record the amount with a photo and make a list of all you use.
Now the real challenge begins!
- Can you use less single use?
- Can you switch to reusables for any of these items?
- Can you get some of the products package-free?
- Which retailer or manufacturer could you contact about their packaging?
- Is there anything you can avoid/stop buying because of the waste it creates?
Share the challenge and inspire others to do the same!
