To a lot of us, paper is something so ordinary that we often forget its preciousness. We see paper around us in different forms – notebooks, publicity posters, office documents and contracts, paper carton boxes, magazines, newspapers, and even desktop calendars. Nevertheless, we tend to use paper while we turn a blind eye to the fact that we can be generating an excessive amount of paper waste.
Clearly, we need to make some changes to how we dispose of our paper, reduce paper usage, or learn how to be paperless. PolyU sees the need to curb paper wastage and reduce paper consumption. It officially endorsed its Paper Reduction Policy in 2017, and a specific Paper Reduction campaign was subsequently launched with a paper reduction target being set and successfully met in a year. This paper reduction initiative was gradually woven into the essence of work in the University’s green workplace movement and has become part of a green workplace goal under its Green PolyU Awards – Green Office programme.
Reducing paper consumption is one side of the story, while paper recycling is another. We may be fully aware of the need to print on both sides of the paper to reduce wastage, but we may not know how paper recycling is made feasible in the market. PolyU featured an online sharing that shed light on this topic recently. An industry expert was there to join the campus community to reveal the behind-the-scene story of paper recycling.
Mr Harold Yip, the founder of Hong Kong’s very first recycled pulp mill, met the students and staff online and shared his insights and experience. He revealed to the participants that instead of taking old office documents as garbage, he found a great business opportunity in recycling them. He shared the strategies for how his paper recycling business survived amid the challenges and difficulties such as international laws that restrict waste paper export.
He also explained why he decided to take a further step to establish a pulp mill in Hong Kong that turns waste paper into environmentally friendly products. He networked with different organisations to collect beverage cartons and came up with solutions to clean and process the cartons and turn them into paper pulp, paving ways for recycled toilet paper manufacturing.
To use less paper and support the paper recycling business can mean much more than we can imagine. Paper is too valuable to waste.
