Reducing Hong Kong’s waste, one upcycled product at a time
Industrial design graduate Kevin Cheung rummages through rubbish for items he can turn into something useful. Now he's out to spread the word about how to reduce the city's waste
All it took was a picture of a packed landfill on TV to catch Kevin Cheung Wai-chun’s attention.
Seeing it filled with plastic bottles, boxes and other non-disposable materials, he realised that something needed to be done to prevent all that waste.
Deciding to do his part to foster a greener environment, Cheung put his industrial design degree from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to use.
From reshaping plastic bottles into speakers to reusing wallpaper of different textures to make wallets, Cheung, 28, now works as an upcycling product designer.
Watch: Kevin Cheung shows off his upcycled musical instruments
“I started this project three or four years ago and you cannot imagine how much waste we are actually [creating],” he says. “When you look at our landfills, which will be filled up in a few years, all of the things we will throw inside are solid waste. A lot of those objects are still very useful.”
