Opinion | Green design is a daunting challenge that’s well worth the effort

If recycling is not cheaper and faster, is it worth it? Building owners need to understand nature is valuable despite not having a price tag

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A worker moves renovation waste onto a lorry in the neighbourhood of Jordan on June 26. Green design in Hong Kong should involve reusing salvaged materials. Photo: Jelly Tse

Published: 4:30pm, 8 Apr 2025

Hong Kong’s “Super March” has come and gone. According to Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po, mega-events such as Art Basel, LIV Golf and the Hong Kong Sevens significantly boosted tourism and the city’s economy.

I happened to work on a temporary project at Art Basel – a VIP Lounge for a major host partner and property developer. Having witnessed the art enthusiasts coming and going from the fair at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, I knew March would end on a high note.

The VIP lounge might have been small but it represented a big idea. The developer had a vision of truly recycling materials from their previous projects for this pavilion. We were not asked to specify off-the-shelf products with green labels indicating that they contain recycled materials – a fairly common practice in the industry. Instead, materials were directly harvested from the developer’s decommissioned projects and painstakingly turned into raw materials at the contractor’s factory.

Truth be told, I had never worked on a project with such a focus on cradle-to-cradle design – whereby old materials are used as new, thus eliminating the idea of waste as we understand it. In green design, it is more usual for clients to ask what the project team can do to earn credits for sustainability certificates under the BEAM Plus or LEED rating systems. In other words, their focus is often less on sustainability than on earning a sustainability rating.

In contrast, true recycling was nothing short of an education. First, the contractor had reservations about the process. Its representatives reminded me that “sustainability has a price”. They had to exert more effort in extracting, cleaning and testing the materials, as well as customising wood and steel panels to our design requirements. Due to the extra man-hours needed to pull this off, labour costs could easily outweigh the sum of purchasing new materials.

Second, while we wanted to use as many recyclables as possible, structural and safety concerns demanded that we use some new materials. Although what the public sees is often just the surface, properly sourcing a display’s supporting elements is just as significant. We knew we couldn’t make the VIP lounge out of only recycled content but we aimed for the most optimal result short of 100 per cent.