You have no saved articles. Why don't you add some?

A small-scale exhibition entitled “Trash Talk” highlighted the work of a beach cleanup collective in Hong Kong and invited visitors to reflect on their contribution to marine waste.

Something went wrong. Error code 1.

This feature is only available for paying subscribers. You can continue reading without saving your preference, or you can subscribe now.

Already a subscriber? Log in here.

This feature is for paid subscribers only.

In July, more than a thousand people in Hong Kong encountered an unconventional rainbow.

On display in the center of an 18-square-meter room, the “rainbow,” upon closer examination, turned out to be loads of plastic waste — such as lighters and children’s culinary toys — organized in seven color categories. Alongside the installation was a buoy with two Chinese characters — 走塑 zǒusù, or “Reduce Plastic” in English — which revealed the reason why the people were there. 

This was part of a marine waste exhibition that took place in Hong Kong from July 17 through July 31. Titled “Trash Talk” (廢事同你講 fèi shì tóng nǐ jiǎng), the event was “perhaps the first of its kind in the city,” said Yeungs, one of the organizers. All the items on view were collected in the past one and a half years by around 10 beach cleaners in the city, a collective of volunteers who call themselves “ CraSea Cleanupper ” (淨灘瘋人院 jìng tān fēng rén yuàn).

“We are quite crazy about picking up the trash,” said Yeungs, a freelancer working in environmental education. “No matter sunny or rainy, we go to clean the coast every week.”

Yeungs, who is in her late 20s, started doing shoreline cleanup on her own in 2010 after she went to a non-gazetted beach and collected more than 500 bottle caps within an hour. “It was that moment where I realized how severe plastic pollution was,” she said. 

Located in one of the world’s most densely populated regions, Hong Kong contributes to large amounts of refuse in the form of household, recreational, and industrial waste. When it comes to marine pollution, a 2015 report published by Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department revealed that 95% of its ocean refuse was produced locally, with over 70% of its ocean litter being plastic and foam plastic items. 

The situation has deteriorated since the outbreak of COVID-19, as residents rely more on single-use cutleries and masks. According to a survey conducted by Ocean Park Conservation Foundation, Hong Kong (OPCFHK) in 2021, consumption of disposable plastic straws climbed from 4 to 4.4 per week, marking the first increase since 2017. 

Echoing OPCFHK’s findings, statistics from My Natural Diary (MND), an initiative that allows cleanup participants to input refuse data into a centralized system, show that approximately 75% of the beach litter collected in 2021 was related to food delivery, possibly due to soaring usage of take-out containers and utensils during the pandemic. Plastic bottles were the most common type of waste on the coast, with more than 50,000 of them being picked up last year.

Further complicating the problem is waste from external sources. Because marine trash can be transported by winds and currents, Hong Kong, with 263 islands and 733 kilometers of coastline, also receives debris from other parts of the world.

“On average, we pick up about 100 kilograms of trash every week,” Yeungs said. Since the start of 2021, about six tons of litter have been removed by members of CraSea Cleanupper, most of whom work or study in areas unrelated to the environment. Because the program’s weekly cleanup takes place on Thursday, some volunteers even save up their vacation time to partake in the activity. 

Leo Mak, an IT worker in his 40s, is one of the passionate cleaners. “It really doesn’t matter that I’m not a professional cleaner,” he said. “Anyone from any occupation can join us if they want to.”

Mak has adhered to coastal cleanup for four years while leading an eco-friendly lifestyle. When it comes to masks, he prefers the reusable type. But unlike others who wear cloth masks, Mak dons a respirator every day and changes its single-use filter once a month. 

“Many people think this is stuffy,” he said, with a veiled but discernible voice coming through the mask. “But actually I can breathe normally, even when I run or jump.”

For Yeungs, breaking free from plastic isn’t hard, as “you can always find the alternative,” she said. But she found it challenging to persuade other people to make sustainable, eco-friendly choices in everyday life. In an effort to convince people to go green, Yeungs, along with several other members of CraSea Cleanupper, put together the exhibition, where the rubbish was repurposed and given a meaning through handwritten cards telling the displayed objects’ stories.

“For example, many visitors have marveled at the beauty of the rainbow,” said Yeungs. “But these colors should never appear in the ocean. There should only be blue in the sea.”

Because it can take hundreds or even thousands of years for plastic to degrade, some of the items on display could date back to the last century. There was a Happy Meal toy released by McDonalds in 1998 that still looked brand new. A Coca-Cola bottle that has long passed its expiration date of “April 1990” still has a dark liquid inside. Although their long lifespans are proof of the “high quality” of plastic production, they also represented the material’s lasting damage to the environment.

Some exhibits were of unique local characteristics. For example, seven-digit phone numbers could be seen on some foam plastic pieces, which indicated that the debris was produced at least before 1995  — the year when local phone numbers were expanded to eight digits. Tiles of Mahjong, a Chinese board game popular in Hong Kong, were also collected along the shoreline.

Some objects harbor interesting stories. In 2011, a Sichuan boy threw a drifting bottle with a letter inside into the ocean from Zhuhai, a coastal city in Guangzhou province. Ten years later, the bottle was picked up by the cleaners in Hong Kong. The letter has the boy’s basic information such as his name and school, along with a note saying, “I want to make friends with you.” 

“I am astonished to see these litter still existing after so many years,” said Ginny, a 21-year-old university student who happened to be at the exhibition’s location and decided to go in and take a look. Her boyfriend, a 22-year-old graduate, remarked: “It’s more powerful to see straws bitten by fishes with my own eyes, compared to plainly knowing the information.”

Elsie Leung, a 26-year-old nurse who learned about the exhibition through Yeungs’s social media posts, shared similar views. “I think what they are doing is very influential. They make me want to do beach cleanup in the future,” she said. 

Yeungs and Mak said they hope the exhibition will transform people’s lifestyle from extravagant to abstemious, step by step. A “Plastic Reduction Promise Area” was set up for visitors to vow to change their behavior, beginning with “stop using plastic straw,” “bring tableware,” and “prepare shopping bags.” 

“Although we are passionate about picking up ocean waste every week, the beach cleanup is an endless work,” Yeungs said. “We need everyone to take action if we want to solve the ocean debris problem for good.”

Trevor Tong is a journalism student currently based in Hong Kong. His areas of interest include politics, environment, LGBTQ rights, and all other people-related topics in Greater China. Read more

Former U.S. Ambassador to China

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Performance cookies are key in allowing web site screens and content to load quickly on all types of devices.CookieDescription_gatThis cookies is installed by Google Universal Analytics to throttle the request rate to limit the colllection of data on high traffic sites.YSCThis cookies is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos.

Preference cookies are used to store user preferences to provide them with content that is customized accordingly. These cookies also allow for the viewing of embedded content, such as videos.CookieDescriptionbcookieThis cookie is set by linkedIn. The purpose of the cookie is to enable LinkedIn functionalities on the page.langThis cookie is used to store the language preferences of a user to serve up content in that stored language the next time user visit the website.lidcThis cookie is set by LinkedIn and used for routing.PugTThis cookie is set by pubmatic.com. The purpose of the cookie is to check when the cookies were last updated on the browser in order to limit the number of calls to the server-side cookie store.

Analytics cookies help us understand how our visitors interact with the website. It helps us understand the number of visitors, where the visitors are coming from, and the pages they navigate. The cookies collect this data and report it anonymously.CookieDescription__gadsThis cookie is set by Google and stored under the name dounleclick.com. This cookie is used to track how many times users see a particular advert which helps in measuring the success of the campaign and calculate the revenue generated by the campaign. These cookies can only be read from the domain that it is set on so it will not track any data while browsing through another sites._gaThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors._gidThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form._omappvpThe cookie is set to identify new vs returning users. The cookie is used in conjunction with _omappvs cookie to determine whether a user is new or returning._omappvsThe cookie is used to in conjunction with the _omappvp cookies. If the cookies are set, the user is a returning user. If neither of the cookies are set, the user is a new user.GPSThis cookie is set by Youtube and registers a unique ID for tracking users based on their geographical location

Advertisement cookies help us provide our visitors with the most relevant ads and marketing campaigns.CookieDescription__qcaThis cookie is associated with Quantcast and is used for collecting anonymized data to analyze log data from different websites to create reports that enables the website owners and advertisers provide ads for the appropriate audience segments._fbpThis cookie is set by Facebook to deliver advertisement when they are on Facebook or a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising after visiting this website.everest_g_v2The cookie is set under eversttech.net domain. The purpose of the cookie is to map clicks to other events on the client's website.frThe cookie is set by Facebook to show relevant advertisments to the users and measure and improve the advertisements. The cookie also tracks the behavior of the user across the web on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.IDEUsed by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.mcThis cookie is associated with Quantserve to track anonymously how a user interact with the website.personalization_idThis cookie is set by twitter.com. It is used integrate the sharing features of this social media. It also stores information about how the user uses the website for tracking and targeting.PUBMDCIDThis cookie is set by pubmatic.com. The cookie stores an ID that is used to display ads on the users' browser.TDCPMThe cookie is set by CloudFare service to store a unique ID to identify a returning users device which then is used for targeted advertising.TDIDThe cookie is set by CloudFare service to store a unique ID to identify a returning users device which then is used for targeted advertising.test_cookieThis cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the users' browser supports cookies.uidThis cookie is used to measure the number and behavior of the visitors to the website anonymously. The data includes the number of visits, average duration of the visit on the website, pages visited, etc. for the purpose of better understanding user preferences for targeted advertisments.uuidTo optimize ad relevance by collecting visitor data from multiple websites such as what pages have been loaded.uuidcThis cookie is used to stores information about how the user uses the website such as what pages have been loaded and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This data is used to provide users with relevant ads.VISITOR_INFO1_LIVEThis cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.