While consumption stimulates economic growth, it also increases waste.
At the speed Hong Kong is generating waste, our landfills are to be full in 5 years.
While Hong Kong citizens have just started to learn to categorize their garbage, their consumerist counterparts in Japan are a long way ahead. The citizens of Nagoya are striving to make their hometown a zero-waste city.
Our story will bring us to a typical family in Nagoya, which is so used to separating their rubbish into 16 categories meticulously, and is learning to be waste-conscious at the moment of shopping.
The Nagoya experience of waste reduction has been a bottom-up one. At the beginning, the local community initiated a waste-reduction campaign to rescue a lake from being reclaimed as a landfill by the government. The action motivated the authorities to further the community effort of waste reduction, which has subsequently led to an awakening at large.
After all, what can we learn from Nagoya's experience?
To evolve from a consumerist society to one which prioritises waste reduction, Hong Kong people still have a long way to go.
