ELEANOR CHAN Wing wants to be a green consumer, but it's hard to work out which choices cause less environmental damage. Is glass better than paper or plastic?
When it comes to fizzy drinks, Chan, a lawyer, usually opts for a can because she reckons it's most likely to be recycled. 'The price of aluminium is higher so people will usually reuse the material,' she says. 'But no one bothers to collect plastic bottles. As for glass bottles, they're not always available.'
Chan's efforts to be an eco-friendly shopper are also frustrated by indifferent retailers. She brings her own bags and containers to the wet market, but stallholders habitually weigh out the vegetables and thrust them into plastic bags before she can dig out her own. 'The transactions happen so quickly, I don't have a chance to say, 'wait, I have my own bag',' Chan says.
Her attempts to bring reusable containers for a takeaway at a fast-food restaurant get short shrift from the staff. 'If you want congee, they don't seem to be able to work out how much to give you,' Chan says. 'And some choices are pre-packed in throwaway lunchboxes.'
The environmental group Green Sense recently got a fair indication of how much we throw out at meal times after monitoring 90 outlets of five major fast-food chains: Cafe de Coral, Fairwood, Maxim, McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The two-month study found that more than 2.7 million sets of disposable cutlery - plastic knives, forks and spoons - are issued to customers every month during lunch hour alone. What's worse, many may not be used at all.
Then there are the millions of polystyrene containers for takeaway orders. All will end up in the city's already overtaxed landfills, which are expected to reach capacity in as little as five years unless we curb our throwaway lifestyle. To minimise waste, Green Sense calls on fast-food restaurants to set up stations where customers can pick up the implements they need and reduce their use of throwaway products.
