Hong Kong has a monumental waste problem as the city faces straining landfill capacity. It is expected Hong Kong’s remaining landfill space will hit saturation in 2020. Each day Hong Kong is dumping over 10,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste into the landfill, making Hong Kong one of the highest waste-producing city on a per capita basis in the nearby region. With the recent ban from China on foreign trash, Hong Kong is facing an even tougher challenge to manage its waste.
In order to tackle this problem from its root, Reconnect offers workshop to develops students’ understanding of how waste can be transformed into resources or avoided at source.
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Food waste at schools is a challenging issue. Many school students opted to leave their purchased lunch unconsumed and the schools are posed with the challenge to deal with these food waste. This workshop demonstrates how food waste can be reused as a resourceful material as part of organic farming.
This workshop takes food waste from unconsumed lunch to make compost and applied to the school’s organic garden to grow vegetable. Students is led step by step on how to balance the carbon and nitrogen content of the compost and use of effective microorganism to produce compost.
Freshly grown salad from the school garden was served to the students as afternoon tea. The students got to enjoy the fruit of their harvest and to experience the complete “loop” cycle of recycling food waste.
This workshop is combined with an online game for students to record daily the amount of food that they have eaten in their meals. The aim of this game is to change the wasteful behaviour of students and tackle excessive food waste.
In the game, students will be given a plate of food and when they click on the food that they have eaten, it will disappear leaving the leftover on the plate. Students are expected to record the food that they have not finished every day in order to observe the food waste that they have accumulated throughout the period of time that they have been playing. Through this game, we hope to promote a behavioural change in which students will develop a habit of finishing their food.
This workshop is complimented by a fun online game developed for the students to donate food online to save the animal characters in the game. The online program scores the performances of the students as a measure of their effort. Concurrently, the students who sign the charter to donate food items online are encouraged to commit to their chartered statement.
Paper waste accounts for 21.2% (1358 tpd) of municipal solid waste in Hong Kong. In particular, tissue paper and paper bag accounts for the majority of the paper waste. To enhance the understanding how paper waste can be reused in our daily lives, Reconnect offers this Seed Ball workshop using recycled papers to make seed ball.
Farmers have traditionally used mud mixed with seed to make seed ball to help disperse seed for germination. To add an environmental flavor, paper waste is shredded and molded into a seed ball. Students can experience how this type of waste can be reused to become a product which we can use to grow plants. Students can also learn to identify various types of plant seeds and the process of plant germination.
Hong Kong supports a rich variety of flora and fauna because of its favourable geographical location in the subtropical area. A wide variety of local habitats including wetlands, grasslands, woodlands, seashores, mountain ranges and farmlands contribute are well conserved to support a rich biodiversity in Hong Kong.
Currently, the main form of science learning is recall-based through homework and assessment to reflect students’ achievement. Some of the key difficulties encountered in science education include limited hands-on experiential work for biodiversity learning. Under such learning culture, it is difficult to expect Hong Kong people to develop an awareness of biodiversity conservation.
One of the most effective learning methods is through practical hands-on exploration which can elevate students’ learning in investigation and questioning skills. We offer a variety of ecosystem related workshops for all ages to explore nature in a practical way. Check out our workshops offered!
This family friendly workshop allows participants to DIY their own unique aquaponic system for learning the complex symbiotic interaction of various components in our ecosystem. Through learning to balance the harmonious relationship between the aquatic organisms and the plants, the users will gain insight to the importance of environmental protection. The aquaponic system incorporates one integrated system that grows fish and plants together. The fish waste provides organic food source for the growing plants and the plants provide a natural filter for the water the fish live in. Aquaponics takes advantage of the benefits of fish waste and removes the drawbacks of fish waste which is a good example of sustainable living. This workshop teaches students to make use of self-powered energy-efficient wireless sensor network to monitored environmental factors in relation to the soil moisture level, air humidity, sunlight intensity, carbon dioxide levels and temperature. The data can be recorded in a graph to teach students how to analyse the data. Biomimicry is an approach that seeks sustainable solutions to human problems by modelling on nature’s best ideas. Humans have created massive sustainability problems which could have been avoided through better design inspired by nature’s long-term tested solution found in animals, plants and microbes. Students are challenged to take inspiration from nature to develop new perspectives on design and better ways of creating innovation. The workshop takes students to:
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) reached a landmark agreement in Paris which entered in force in 2016, reaffirming the goal of limiting global temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius, while urging efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees. Recent scientific research suggested that the global temperature 2-degree increase is inevitable despite a sudden stop in fossil fuel burning. With the year 2016 marked the hottest year in record since recordkeeping in 1880, and the more recent extreme rainfall and a series of typhoon events taking place in 2017 summer locally, the fatal consequences of human mortality, extreme climate events, loss of biodiversity are not unrealistic realities facing Hong Kong.
The purpose of our workshops is to nurture the concept of energy saving into mainstream thinking through practical activities. Check out our workshops for details.
Renewable energy is a sustainable source of energy which can be naturally replenished, and to reduce global carbon emissions and climate change. This workshop can help students understand the principle of power generation from different source of renewable energy, such as wind energy, solar energy, thermoelectric energy etc. Through teaching students to make their own power generating model, students can investigate the limitation and application of each types of renewable energy.
An Energy Saving Tongue Twister competition with each line to be revealed over 12 days. This can be an ideal campaign to raise awareness during the festive season such as Christmas which coincides with the Twelve Night theme. Students can also be involved in creating their own slogan to win this competition!
Example: “Whether the weather be cold or whether the weather be hot; we’ll weather the weather whatever the weather. Whether we like it or not.”.
Each year during Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, many types of waste are generated. In particular, waste generated electrical lantern is on the rise due to the popularity of the product. To reduce electrical waste generated from lanterns, this workshop demonstrates how recyclable material can be reused with a LED lighting system coupled with a solar panel.
Students can design and create their own solar lantern using recycled materials collected. Through this workshop, students can experience first-hand how solar power can be applied in their daily lives and the extent of the problem associated with lantern waste in Hong Kong. Students are encouraged to use their DIY lantern during the mid-autumn festival.
