Picture this, the meal takeaway you took for your lunch from the Canteen, do you think it is recycled or directly disposed to a landfill? Well the answer, unfortunately, is the latter. Infact, our CUHK Campus approximately produces around 1000kg of non-biodegrable disposable waste every single week which, according to data, contributes to melting 21 sq. metres of sea-ice every single week! Let that number sink in, we are (directly or indirectly) contributing to such massive scale climate change on a daily basis.
My project aims to introduce a Reusable Food Container system for meal takeaway at Wu Yee Sun College Canteen which will replace the use of these non-biodegradable food packaging with much more environmentally friendly (and healthy) reusable food containers.
Picture this, the meal takeaway you took for your lunch from the Canteen, do you think it is recycled or directly disposed to a landfill? Well the answer, unfortunately, is the latter. Infact, our CUHK Campus approximately produces around 1000kg of non-biodegrable disposable waste every single week which, according to data, contributes to melting 21 sq. metres of sea-ice every single week! Let that number sink in, we are (directly or indirectly) contributing to such massive scale climate change on a daily basis.
My project aims to introduce a Reusable Food Container system for meal takeaway at Wu Yee Sun College Canteen which will replace the use of these non-biodegradable food packaging with much more environmentally friendly (and healthy) reusable food containers.
Description:
Meal takeaway from canteens is fairly common among students. These takeaways are usually wrapped around with plastic polythene bags and styrofoam packages which contribute to large amounts of disposable waste that usually end up not being recycled but in landfills. Since these materials are non-biodegradable, they are usually burned. Disposing of these waste materials in the aforementioned ways releases huge amounts of greenhouse and other toxic gases into the atmosphere. For perspective, CUHK campus (as a whole) produces approximately 1000kg of disposable waste which contributes to melting around 21 sq. meters of sea-ice [1] every week which is a huge carbon footprint on the environment. Moreover, having food from these styrofoam-wrapped containers has its own health risks too. Styrene which is a component of styrofoam can leech into the food it is carrying and finally be ingested by the user. This chemical styrene has been linked to cancer, vision and hearing loss, impaired memory and concentration, and nervous system effects.
Objective:
1. Introduce a sustainable and green solution to this problem by introducing the use of Re-usable Food Containers for takeaway in Wu Yee Sun Canteen.
2. Inspire Wu Yee Sun College students to be more Sunny and Go Green by providing them tokens called "Green Points" for using Re-usable Food Containers for takeaway which can later be used as a voucher in the Canteen.
This project targets two areas of the Sunny Living motto - 1. Green Life: Significantly reduces disposable plastic waste from canteen meal takeaways and promotes the motto of green living among students. 2. Health and well-being: As previously discussed in the Objective Section, using styrofoam for meal takeaways has huge health risks. This project aims to eliminate styrofoam from takeaways thus, promoting health and well-being among students.