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Cheung Chi Fai

With their bare hands, Celia Fung Sze-lai and her friends spend hours shredding foam lunch boxes into small flakes at the Occupy area outside the legislature. They then stuff the pieces into bags to make pillows for protesters still camping in Admiralty.
"No worries, the boxes have all been cleaned. But there might still be traces of grease left behind," she quipped.
Since the movement began more than two months ago, Fung and her friends have dropped in a few times a week. They are not there to protest, but to protect - the environment, that is.
The international media highlighted how disciplined the Hong Kong protesters had been about clearing their rubbish, but Fung belongs to a small, behind-the-scenes army of volunteers that also deserves credit.
They know that in a movement which involved more than 100,000 people on the streets at one point, not everybody was as civic-minded about their litter.
This is where Fung and company come in. She remembers the night after the tear gas incident on September 28. Fung observed the melee quietly from a distance. When the crowd retreated, the remains of that fateful night were hers for the sorting and clearing.
"I was furiously scavenging. You could find everything, you name it. Heaps of plastic bottles - mostly still more than half-filled, and unfinished or untouched meals in takeaway foam boxes," she recalled.
Fung confessed she could not help but get upset with those who left behind their rubbish, no matter how sympathetic she was to the movement.
She picked up most of the items scattered on the roads, and wheeled them to a temporary shelter. That shed is now bursting at the seams. It is the depository for hundreds of abandoned umbrellas, countless rolls of plastic wrap, piles of used or new towels, boxes of baking soda and other assorted items.
It is also a makeshift recycling and repair workshop where volunteers sort out the aluminium frames of broken umbrellas from the linen. Some of these frames were turned into a sculpture, and detergents made from discarded fruit skins have also been produced.
On the night of September 29, Fung recalled a police officer approaching her. She thought she was about to be chastised. Instead, he offered help. "I told him I was trying to save these materials. A moment later, he came back with a cart he had found abandoned in a pile of rubbish. He also handed me a bottle of water and told me this was the only thing he could do for me."

During the first few days of the Occupy movement, nearly 1,000 bags of rubbish were left uncleared near City Hall, as government cleaners claimed they could not get to the roads cordoned off by the protesters.
Fung and her friends took on the unpleasant task of untying the bags and sorting out recyclable materials. It was a race against time, she said, before the rubbish trucks moved in.
"We have occasionally appealed to the organisers to remind the protesters about the importance of saving resources. While we are fighting for democracy, this is something we should not turn a blind eye to," she said.
A former campaigner for Friends of the Earth, Fung quit her job months ago to champion her cause of recycling waste. She and two friends founded the Facebook group "End dumping all in one bin" - a slogan modified from a politically sensitive chant on ending Communist Party rule. Within four months, the group received over 4,500 likes.
"We are actually a loose collection of people, not even a group. But we are so sick of the current deadlock [on waste management] that we feel obliged to do something about it," she said.
She believes firmly that at a time when the government had been distracted and thus ineffective in tackling green issues, more volunteers should step forward.
"Please ask yourself what you have done before you grumble about what the government failed to do. In fact, the more one relies on the government, the more one becomes apathetic," she said.
The figures are sobering. Hong Kong's per capita waste disposal at 0.87kg per day is higher than that of Seoul at 0.35kg, and Taipei's 0.41kg. Yet, there is a lack of financial incentive, unlike in those two cities.
Activists noted that in the initial weeks of the Occupy movement, there was no shortage of supporters helping to clean and collect recyclables. Their enthusiasm has waned, lamented Lam Tsz-ching, a co-founder of "End dumping all in one bin".
At first, volunteers - mostly students - were seen tirelessly sweeping the area, moving bags of rubbish aside or urging visitors to crush their cans and remove the lids of their plastic bottles before discarding them. Their actions moved commentators, some of whom called them the "most civilised demonstrators in the world".
The protesters have thinned out, so have these self-appointed "cleaners".
"Many of those who helped have gone already," said Lam.
Still, Lam said their efforts had made a difference. The Occupy organisers had taken on board more ideas, such as regular collection of recyclables, from their group.
But it is an uphill challenge. "Some visitors helped to collect rubbish but came back with bags of mixed rubbish. Some still regard our station as a final disposal site and dumped them in front of us. I was quite mad and made a drama out of it by splashing the rubbish out on a corridor with a note asking for the owners to show up and reclaim it," she said.
"And then I had a heated debate on democracy and environment with four youngsters camping in front of the rubbish. All they wanted was to clear the rubbish - just some old newspapers and plastic bottles - as quickly as possible," she added.
Before their current mission, Lam and Fung were behind the move to seal rubbish bins at the annual July 1 rally in a bid to make it a green event. Instead, they placed separate bags at some points to get people to dump their recyclable waste.
Now, the next big impetus is when the protesters withdraw from the sites, which may happen as early as this week.
Fung said: "When the site is cleared, many will have no time to pack and inevitably a lot will be left behind."
Her main hope: that all the protesters' items can be rescued and reused again.
And then? She said: "It would be great if someone could just loan us a place to keep them."
 


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News

Hong Kong

Small but dedicated band collect the mountains of rubbish left by the Occupy movement, and recycle what they can to help the environment


With their bare hands, Celia Fung Sze-lai and her friends spend hours shredding foam lunch boxes into small flakes at the Occupy area outside the legislature.
