Pupils join green campaign against excessive packaging

Primary schoolchildren yesterday lent their voices to an environmentalists' campaign against wasteful packaging.

The 50 students from Whampoa Alliance Primary School gathered outside the Legislative Council building displaying fancy brand-name packages, to urge legislation on the issue. They presented handwritten appeal letters and samples of packaging waste they had collected to several lawmakers.

'There are only four edible items in a box of mooncakes. but you can find 20 pieces of packaging in there - it's very wasteful,' said Angie Leung Kar-yee, 10, showing mooncake packaging pasted onto a sheet of cardboard.

The students were answering a call by the Friends of the Earth environmental group to report overpackaging of products and to reflect on their waste-generating effects.

Waste materials they had gathered included packages for Saint Honore cakes, Microsoft Windows installation discs and Lee Kum Kee sauces.

Primary Five student Abby Au Yeung said in a letter: 'I think the government can have a law so that suppliers will reduce packing.'

Statistics from the Environmental Protection Department show the city produced 2,000 tonnes of packaging waste a day in 2005, accounting for 21 per cent of the total municipal solid waste and costing an annual processing fee of HK$150 million.