Lai See Reuse and Recycle Program

Traditionally, a lot of people refurbish themselves and their new flats for the Chinese Lunar New Year Holiday, including new clothes, new decorations etc. However, those moves may lead to unnecessary wastage. An example is the extra generation of 258 ton of waste from just the first week of the holiday in HK. Another tradition is the red pocket delivery. According to Greeners Action’s figure, 320 million of red pockets are produced by Hong Kong people in one year. Without proper handling, those red pockets would end up in unnecessary waste. In view of this, we organize consecutively 10 years the “Red Pocket Recycling & Reuse Campaign”, hoping to raise public awareness of reduce waste at source from every tiny part of life. Our target is 15 million this year as 91 organizations have taken part in it. It is expected to have 3 million more from the 12 million red pockets recycled last year. One campaign’s aims is to encourage enterprises to reduce red pocket production at source by adopting simple-designed red pocket, while another aim is to appeal citizens to reduce buying new red pocket plus cultivate habit of recycling and reusing the “reproduced one”, thereby achieving the green economy.

Greeners Action officially started the campaign on the 12th February. Having the Secretary for the Environment, Wong Kam Sing, Justice of Peace, he appealed to the public to develop habit of recycling, starting with red pocket during this Lunar New Year holiday. In wake of the coming waste charging scheme, it is time for everyone to reduce wastage.