Beach cleanup effort winds up this weekend
Hong Kong's month-long effort to clean up its blighted beaches will come to an end this weekend. The campaign has seen more than 30 groups of celebrities, corporations and ordinary residents scour the city's seafronts to gather up society's discards.
Organised by Civic Exchange and the Ocean Conservancy, the cleanup aims to tidy up the environment and get people thinking about how to stop marine pollution at its source. One of the final efforts will take place this weekend at Tai Long Wan in Sai Kung.
Actor Carl Ng Ka-lung, who participated for the second year in a row, said that while cleaning the beaches was something small that everyone could do, it helped get a larger message across.
'If Hongkongers can't even look after their own beaches, then how can they expect other people to take care of their environmental issues?' he said.
Lisa Christensen, whose company Ecovision helps co-ordinate the effort and is behind this weekend's effort in Sai Kung, said the event had attracted a great following among the city's younger residents in the four years since the global campaign was introduced here.
Model and actress Maggie Q, who has been a big supporter of the project, said the increased involvement was due to a realisation that Hong Kong's environment was one of its great attractions.
'Hong Kong is finally putting its money where its mouth is - the entire community now seems prepared to commit valuable time, effort and financial backing to educate and improve the environment,' said Maggie Q.
The actress is currently overseas filming the third Mission Impossible movie.
