Group turning food waste into compost wants to cut down on landfill and make Hong Kong more self-sufficient
- Three friends who founded Hong Kong Community Composting want to reduce the more than 3,500 tonnes of food waste the city send to landfills every day
- For HK$110 (US$14) a month, subscribers can deposit their leftovers in special bins, which is collected and turned into compost and biogas
Boris Yeung, a brewer at Little Creatures Brewing in Hong Kong’s Kennedy Town, points to a large metal tank where malt barley is boiled to convert its starch into fermentable sugar.
“For every brew we use about 100kg to 150kg [220lb to 330lb] of malt barley and depending on the beer style we use different kinds of malt. We used to just throw the spent grain into the bin and it would go into the landfill,” Yeung says.
But since last summer the microbrewery has been sending the discarded grain to Hong Kong Community Composting (HKCC), even though it costs money.
Yeung became more environmentally conscious after living in Seattle for eight years and he wanted to make sure the refuse did not go straight into Hong Kong’s fast-filling landfills.
Cities around the world are grappling with mounting foodstuff waste and some, including San Francisco and Seoul, have introduced mandatory composting and recycling laws for all residences and businesses.
