Hong Kong biotech firm wins government contract to use fly maggots to eat up city’s huge organic waste problem
- Organic Tech plans to establish a 35,000 sq ft facility in Tuen Mun where larvae will turn city’s chicken waste into fertiliser, fish feed
- Company CEO calls the project part of a ‘great circular economy’, suggests future expansion could tackle overflowing city landfills
A biotechnology company has suggested using fly maggots to take a bite out of Hong Kong’s massive food waste problem, with plans already going ahead for a facility to use larvae to chew through chicken waste.
Organic Tech, a subsidiary of Baguio Green Group, one of the city’s main waste management companies, will set up a plant in Tuen Mun’s EcoPark in June, to convert 10 tonnes of chicken faeces – one-third of the city’s output – into about five tonnes of fertiliser and fish feed by September using black soldier fly larvae.
“They will eat anything as long as it’s organic matter, and they are very hungry,” Baguio CEO Phyllis Ng Yuk-kwan said.
“This is an environmentally friendly method that can help tackle the food waste problem, and the end product also goes back into food production. It’s a great circular economy system,” she added.
After it won an Environmental Protection Department contract worth HK$27.6 million (US$3.53 million), Baguio plans to build a 35,000 sq ft enclosed, controlled environment facility to run the project and ensure the flies cannot escape.
The two-year project, ending in August 2023, would use chicken waste collected from 25 local chicken farms in the New Territories each day, Ng said, explaining that it would be easy to increase capacity as the tubs used to keep the larvae could be stacked up.
