Every night, while most of us are asleep, 80-year-old Hui Taz rummages through the city's rubbish, desperate to eke out a living.
She is a ragpicker, one of an estimated 300,000 in Hong Kong, trawling through our trash to find anything that can be recycled: old newspapers; cardboard boxes; plastic bottles; even copper from electrical appliances. But in this dirty business, competition is rife so Hui starts her shift at 1am, finishing just before 6am.
'At night, it's quieter and no one is snatching from you,' she said. 'In the daytime, you have to fight for the paper. It's scary so I go out late at night.'
However, after midnight, it's slim pickings of plastic bottles and bags, which are worth much less than paper and cardboard.
Seen by many as the poorest of the poor, ragpickers take their trolleys of recyclable goods to depots where they will receive a few dollars for their efforts, depending on the weight and the materials.
Since last July, Hui has been making the 10-minute walk from her public estate to the Kwai Fong recycling depot called Eco Sage. The depot is one of two run by a pair of young Hong Kong entrepreneurs who quit their jobs as environmental engineers to establish the start-up in 2005 and later expanded it into a social enterprise.
