Leanda Lee
Annie Lao, a fellow plastic-waste activist, and her team petitioned the government to take some baby-step actions to curb Macau’s disproportionate creation and mismanagement of solid waste. The group submitted the initial document with 4,700 signatures on 2nd September. Although now losing momentum, over 5,510 have responded; to all these voices, the government has failed to respond publicly.
Then, on 16th September came Mangkhut. Making up for any lack of response elsewhere, Mangkhut dumped tonnes of organic and plastic waste on our streets for the government and the people to clean-up: 3,932 tonnes were reported to have been collected by CSR Macau in the two days after the typhoon, with more collected by IACM and volunteers. Pictures of the filth we humans put on the streets and on Cheoc Van and Hac Sa beaches (of this “world-class travel destination”) went viral. As a former colleague posted on social media, “What we throw into the ocean, the ocean throws back to us”. Let’s bring it one step closer to home, shall we? What we waste in our lives, makes waste of us.
Mangkhut has proven to be the most powerful activist to date. It has been a timely in-your-face, badass aggressor, laying down the gauntlet to anyone that denies we have a waste problem. The authorities, the retailers and producers are not dealing with this. They are either not aware, they don’t care, they think someone else will deal with it or they simply do not have the knowhow.
Do not expect the problem to be diminished without concerted community-wide response and individual effort. Each of us plays a role, and herein lies the opportunities: to build awareness of the problem, concern for the consequences of inaction, and to demand leadership from those with the greatest resources.
Education is slow to occur and awareness slow to develop but the best way to educate our community on future sustainability and food security – about where our food comes from, what wastage means to our economy and individual household finances – happens in schools: with one child, and one family, one neighbourhood, then one Macau. “It’s just one [plastic] straw,” said 7 billion people, or so the meme goes.
As part of their responsibility to the community, the corporations that give and take most from our region are starting to lead in this space. On 13th September MGM announced that single-use plastics would be replaced with environmentally-friendly alternatives in all of their restaurants. Melco is supportive of government initiatives and has received the Green Key award and is focused on water and energy conservation.
Compliance with ISO standards is laudable, but what we currently need is innovative leadership in waste management. I would like to see additional incentives for casino concessionaires to commit to zero-waste processes across the full range of their businesses: not just replacing one throw-away option with another, but by eliminating waste entirely. Here is an opportunity for these corporations to become global leaders in waste- management and circular-economy innovation. Due to their scale they can command change from their suppliers and innovate all along the supply chain.
Corporates can find opportunities to make resourcefulness chic: food waste is being rebranded as surplus food. Just as over-ripe bananas make the most fragrant banana bread, stale bread makes the best bread-n-butter pudding, and apple-scraps ferment into delicious vinegar, the best chefs of the world are competing to use ingredients that are typically thrown away to create unique flavours. The triple Michelin-starred Italian chef, Massimo Bottura invites celebrated chefs from throughout the world to bring their creativity, technical prowess and ingenuity to create new menus daily, entirely dependent on the ingredients available from market surplus. Such projects send strong promotional messages of value, and move us from wastefulness to resourcefulness.
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