Liquid soap bottles. What a waste!

Why do so many households have these squirty soap bottles? Whatever happened to old good soap bars?

All these plastic bottles of liquid soap do is contribute to landfill. So not only is their waste something we have to think about, but what about the production of these bottles? All you have to do is take apart the pump dispenser and you will see how complex it is. What a waste to the environment.

I only buy soap bars and it is increasingly difficult to find them in local supermarkets. When i do, they are usually stacked on the bottom shelves, because of course, they are cheaper and last longer ... something that retailers don't like.

Too lazy to shake your umbrella? Disposable plastic sheaths are the ultimate folly

First the dispensers of disposable plastic sheaths appeared in shopping malls and office towers, now even facilities directly managed by government departments, such as museums and libraries proudly display them.

Before the appearance of these condoms for dripping umbrellas, people used to shake their brollies, or put them in the nylon sheath that comes with any umbrella you buy. Not anymore. If you are too lazy to shake it, you can slip it into a disposable plastic cover every time you enter a building. Multiply this action several time, and imagine millions of people doing the same, and you have a mountain of plastic waste to dispose of in a landfill. Not to mention the environmental impact of producing all those plastic sheaths.

Environmentally-irresponsible decisions are made everyday by people who don't think about the consequences of their actions.
It's even more annoying to see that taxpayers' money is used to pay the salaries of people who should know better.

Do trees kill people?

According to the latest statistics available, on average, there were 41 road traffic accidents each day in Hong Kong in 2006, involving 52 casualties and 61 vehicles. (http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/products_and_services/products/publications/statistical_report/feature_articles/transport/index_cd_B70707FB_dt_detail.jsp)

In 2009 one person was killed by the falling branch of a tree, a regrettable death that could have been avoided if said tree had been properly cared for.

And yet despite the fact that it was a freak accident, and far from common, the Hong Kong government has decided that mature trees are dangerous and should be surrounded by cages, their branches secured by unsightly cables attached to concrete poles.

These statistics beg one question. Given the deadly toll of traffic accidents in Hong Kong, why is the government so worried about the danger posed by trees? Instead of extending pedestrian areas and planning the city around pedestrians (the majority of residents don't drive!) more road have been planned, and in the meantime our officials are busy chopping down trees or building unsightly cages around them.

The most bizarre decision was to build a high fence on a concrete support around a majestic Banyan tree at the end of Battery Walk, near St. John's Cathedral. Not only they built an enclosure fit for a wild animal, but they covered part of the fence with plastic foliage (!) Inside the enclosure one can see a tall concrete pole on an over-scaled concrete box. The tree is now attached to this unsightly pole by several metal ropes. I have no idea how much taxpayers' money was wasted on this project, but certainly a tree expert would have pruned the dangerous branches, and left the tree alone!

Now instead of a beautiful tree that everybody can admire we have a concrete and metal monster, from the top of which a few branches jut out.

Gasping for air

At 11am, 1 June 2009, the air quality in Hong Kong is threatening all citizens, according to Greenpeace's Real Air Pollution Index.
All air quality monitoring stations recorded at least 2 kinds of air pollutants exceeding the World Health Organisation standards. Roadside station in Central even has 3 air pollutants.

After spending 4 hours in Central, gasping for air and suffering from extreme shortness of breath, i cancelled a couple of appointments and returned to Lamma, where i can finally breathe.

The situation is critical and yet the government is not even considering implementing traffic reduction measures on days of high pollution such as today. If Beijing does it, banning vehicles on alternate days according to their registration plates, why can't HK? It's obviously a patch and not a solution, but at least people would not be forced to cancel their engagements and run for cover!

Dymocks' disregard for the environment

Yesterday i walked into a Wanchai bookstore, one of the many Dymock bookstores that have mushroomed in HK. Though not a big fan of their selection, i went in to browse titles and kill time between classes. To my dismay all books were wrapped in a plastic film, to ensure that nobody would leaf through them. I am one of those people who don't judge a book by its cover, and always read the first page of a novel before buying it, as the writing style to me is just as important as the content. Most readers leaf through the pages before deciding what to buy....the way most people shopping for clothes or shoes try them on.

Wrapping each individual book in plastic certainly achieves the desired result of stopping people like me from browsing, but what are the other, unintended consequences of this ill-conceived decision? Bad news for the environment. A pile of discarded plastic wraps that end up in our full-to-the-brim landfills...not to mention the emissions caused by the production of those wraps.

Dymocks bookstores in Hong Kong are franchised, so it's hard to tell whether the Australian Group that owns the Franchise System is aware of this practise in one of his shops in HK. I have lodged a complaint and will tell you what their reply is.

Off to the library now...where books can be browsed and enjoyed at no cost for the reader and the environment.

the real crisis

For the last two months the media and the government have been obsessively informing us that we are in a 'state of crisis'. The 'crisis' they talk about is created by excessive spending, over- production, and a lot of toxic financial products. They call it a crisis, but it would be better to look at it as the inevitable outcome of an economic system based on greed and exploitation, exploitation of labour and natural resources.

What I think we are seeing is a clear example of the shock doctrine (an expression coined by Naomi Klein) in the way governments are using the economic crisis to push through an agenda without the chance of any real, sober and rational debate.

Worldwide, the taxpayers are footing the bill to save the same system that got us into this mess.

The capitalist system has solved previous crises by expanding and colonizing places and spheres of life that were once external to it. (See Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism).

Lenin observed that capitalist nations had avoided this crisis by expanding the pool of workers they exploited. Capitalism, he argued, "had escaped its three laws of motion through overseas imperialism. The acquisition of colonies had enabled the capitalist economies to dispose of their unconsumed goods, to acquire cheap resources, and to vent their surplus capital."

If you replace 'colonies' with 'global markets', you have a pretty good description of globalisation. Now this model has started to show its cracks. Capitalism has expanded to every corner of the world, and though production can still be moved to places where labour is cheaper, overproduction has become a problem. Not all sacked factory workers in the West can be turned into low-paid workers in the service industry. Low wages mean that these workers' purchasing power has dropped, and easy credit can only patch things up for a short period of time, until the financial markets collapese, as they did, and people become so impoverished they cannot even keep a roof on their head, let alone spend on useless consumer goods.

The only way the failures of this system can be corrected would be through redistribution of wealth, by which i mean higher wages for workers, both in developed and developing countries, and shorter working hours. This is of course anathema to capitalists, as it would erode their profit margins.

Redistribution would also be good for the environment, because production would only meet real demand, instead of boosting it artificially through marketing, advertising, and 'easy credit'.

Shortening working hours could create more jobs, and though less people would be making millions more people would earn a decent wage. Yes, luxury goods would go unsold, but do we really care if yachts, private jets, Hermes bags and Bentleys go unsold? I'd rather see millions of people around the globe be lifted out of poverty and gaining access to clean water, nutritious food, and education than pandering to the whims of the super-rich, the only ones who have benefitted from unfettered capitalism. The 'trickle-down' theory obviously doesn't work, as the widening gap between rich and poor clearly shows. Let's call it 'trick the poor' theory.

So, the geniuses who got us to this point, want to cure the disease by administering more of the same poison, i.e. boosting consumer spending, cutting jobs, lowering wages, while devising even more sophisticated Ponzi schemes.

In Hong Kong developers worry about low birth rates, factory owners worry about the rising cost of labour and falling demand. The government echos their concerns. No wonder. THe government represents their minority interests, rather than our interests. Hong Kong people deserve space to breathe, not more residential and office towers. And if the population shrinks, we can all enjoy a better quality of life, and less competition for jobs, i.e. more bargainingl power for workers. A view which is obviously not shared by developers and retailers. But they have to wake up and realise that the current rate of growth is unsustainable. Their blind greed will become our doom.

The world population has ballooned to an unsustainable level, but putting a cap on births is still regarded as too controversial in most countries (with the laudable exception of China)

If we want to give the human race a chance, we all need to minimize our carbon footprint, and that means acting NOW to curb consumption. All kind of material consumption.

Global warming, the collapse of eco-systems, widespread pollution, the depletion of natural resources, over-consumption and mountains of waste... these are the real emergencies. Not terrorism, not the financial crisis.

hair dye allergic reaction

Above is a picture of my neck...two weeks after colouring my hair with a light brown hair dye manufactured by L'Oreal.

For about 6 months i have suffered from a 'mysterious' allergy. After spending a fortune on tests, allergy specialists and dermatologists who diagnosed "eczema", "contact dermatitis" and prescribed hydro-cortison creams, steroids, anti-histamine pills etc. I finally discovered that the culprit wasn't stress or any food I eat but the hair dye that i had used on and off for many years.

My symptoms started six months ago, a couple of days after colouring my hair. Very mild at first: just a rash on my neck, shoulders and arms. Then, a couple of months later, after another application, red and itchy eyelids, blisters along my hairline, and several eczema patches on my neck, and temples.
It took me six months, and a more severe allergic reaction (my scalp was covered in painful scabs, lymph nodes in my neck became swollen like a ping pong ball, and the neck eczema got much worse) to figure out the real cause.

PPD, para-phenylenediamine, a substance banned in some European countries, but still widely used in hair dye products manufactured and sold in Asia and the US!
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) an American agency, stated that you should "prevent
skin contact" with PPD in order to avoid the "symptoms: Irritation, pharynx, larynx; bronchial asthma; sensitization dermatitis" (NIOSH,www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0495.html ). Recently, PPD received bad press when it was used to darken henna tattoos and caused numerous disfiguring scars. The FDA states "So-called "black henna" may contain p-phenylenediamine, also known as PPD. The only legal use of PPD in cosmetics is as a hair dye. It is not approved for direct application to the skin. However,
when most hair dye is applied it does come in direct contact with the scalp and quite often touches the skin on the forehead and ears. Hair dye is in direct contact with the skin for sometimes up to 30 minutes.

Many phenylenediamines are demonstrated to be mutagenic and carcinogenic. At its most innocent, PPD might inflict a person with a nasty welt-like reaction that itches and burns. At its most malignant, PPD has been associated with death.

Life threatening occurrences are rare. But judging from the stories i read in magazines, and on the Internet, sensitization and allergic reactions are much more common.

Some marketers and “appliers” prefer to tell clients that mild reactions are common and no big deal. They recommend an anti-itch cream, but blow it off as no big deal. They fail to mention the sensitization issues. This is ignoble and serves to prove the point that the use of PPD is purely to market something with no respect for the people who use it nor any care for what might happen to them. Though not an uncommon viewpoint in the capitalist mindset, it isn’t something that people in the know are going to let slide.

This issue is not about cosmetic and technical grades- it is about a substance that does more harm than good and the public should be informed as to the extent of the harm. L'Oreal's defense is that some people are even allergic to food, therefore there is no reason to ban a substance that causes an allergic reaction in some people. Well, they don't mention the fact that food is not toxic, while PPD is neither promoted for use on the skin nor legal to use on the skin in many countries!
Even DuPont, makers of PPD, warn against using it on the skin.
Articles in the British Journal of Dermatology emphasise the inherent dangers of para-Phenylenediamine.

There seems to be a small misconception that you will react immediately to PPD, so if it doesn’t burn/sting or otherwise present an effect immediately, one is safe from any reaction. This is not true and it’s a dangerous myth! PPD is known for its short sensitization period- that means you might not get or see an immediate reaction, but the next time you come in contact with PPD you could have an extremely bad reaction.
The toxins slowly build up in your body, but it's not until you cross an unspecified threshold that you run the risk of a reaction which, as has been reported, can be very severe indeed.

I am concerned that there is no requirement in Hong Kong for manufacturers to declare quantities of chemicals they have in a particular product, and this needs to change. With so many hair dyes being sold over the counter, we need monitoring of types and quantities of chemicals in these products.

I wasn't allergic for years, but the build-up of PPD in my body eventually caused a severe reaction. As a result, my health has been very poor for 6 months, i am constantly tired, my skin is a mess, always itchy and inflamed, scabs don't heal properly, and my lymph nodes are still swollen and painful.

Toxic shoes

1.7 million leather shoes manufactured in Italy by Chinese companies were found to contain toxic levels of chromium hexavalent. It's not clear whether the chromium (Cr +6) was used in the tanning process in China, or in Italy. But investigators suspect that the toxic leather was imported illegally from China and then used by Chinese manufacturers based in Italy.

In order to take advantage of the added value provided by the "Made in Italy" origin of their products, since a few years Chinese producers of leather goods have set up dozens of sweatshops in the Prato area, in Tuscany, exploiting Chinese immigrants. This investigation revealed that not only working conditions in such sweatshops are appalling, but also the quality of their products would never meet the standards set by the leather industry in Italy.

It has been well documented that chromium in the oxidation state six is an established human carcinogen, associated with lung cancers. It causes mutations of the DNA chain, and people who come into direct contact with leather containing chromiun hexavalent can develop severe eczema.

Now, if toxic Chinese leather found its way into Italy, one can only wonder how safe are the leather goods sold in Hong Kong, given that most of them are imported directly from China.

Financial crisis...is it good news for people and the environment?

This is a very, very serious crisis of capitalism: it has been the build-up of private borrowing that has kept the system going, and it's coming unstuck. The whole system is unwinding; the other day we saw the biggest nationalisation in the history of humanity (Freddie and Fanny) today it's AIG, and that still isn't enough.

A great financial economist and historian called Michael Hudson talks about how the US economy is basically fictitious, based on pretend earnings and pretend values. This will only genuinely become a crisis of capitalism if people generally become aware that much of the growth and prosperity produced by capitalism is a fiction, and if the consensus about where the real global value lies shifts radically. In other words, if people stop believing that apparently wealthy countries actually are producing wealth (see also http://michael-hudson.com)

We will see a shift in power away from the US, and towards the developing world - to countries such as Brazil and the Gulf states that have commodities to sell, and to China, where the savings ratio is high. We are going to see a new world order. America as a driver of the global economy is finished.

In the late 19th century and also in the 1930s, the impact of depression made people begin to question whether the free market and a completely unfettered form of capitalism was the best form of organising society. In both periods it encouraged on the left the idea of a complete social transformation through revolution, and also encouraged people to devise various schemes for social reform. The problem now - unlike in the 1880s, when people discovered the ideas of socialism, and in the 1930s, when it seemed that communism was the solution - is that the left doesn't have a coherent alternative vision. But this might change.
Some people, faced with recession, tend to hunker down, but others confront the government and demand a better deal, and that gives the left hope.

Like it or not, Capitalism is not dead: like a phoenix it seems to be able to rise from its ashes, and take new, different forms. To defend itself from the dangers posed by fast spreading Communist ideals in many Western countries, in the 30s it embraced the Keynesian solution: Roosevelt's New Deal could deliver many of the things that the left is calling for - more public spending, more training and education.

Maybe now, after realising that the era of financial gambling, unfettered consumerism, real estate speculation and growth supported by fraudulent credit tools is over, capitalism might resort to jumping on the green bandwagon, and starting a green new deal, which would employ large numbers of people to insulate homes, retrofit power plants, develop greener technologies, and carry out major environmental works.

Or it might become nastier, exploiting people and planet even more...but going down this route will be its death knell!

John Tsang, after subsidising our wasteful habits, what next?

In other countries the increasing price of oil has led many to reduce their energy and fuel consumption. Which is great news for our planet, though some may argue it's too little, too late.

In Hong Kong, the land of paradox, instead we lost a great opportunity to reverse wasteful habits in matters of energy consumption. In the last budget, Finance Minister John Tsang promised to subsidise electricity bills, so that everybody, low-income families included, could keep their air-con/tv/computer/lights on all day and all night without breaking the bank.

I know that bad habits are hard to kick, and Hong Kong is addicted to low-cost energy. It seems that our government really has the best interest of its addicts at heart, so i would like to make a modest proposal.

John, can we also get some subsidised coke/heroin/ice/ectasy/ketamine next year?

Advertising makes you sick

The advertising industry is still one of the most irresponsible, reckless, unethical sectors of our capitalist society.

I am not only referring to its MESSAGE (consume what you don't need) but to the MEDIUM too. Not only the advertised products are often totally unnecessary, the medium used to advertise them is fast becoming even more harmful than the products themselves.

If you think that large billboards are a form of visual pollution, that's nothing compared to the environmental pollution caused by the new generation of plastic billboards and adhesive PVC. These huge adhesive prints stick to vehicles (buses, trams, MTR trains), and can be wrapped around buildings. No size is too big, with adhesive vinyl you can cover a football pitch, if needed. No surface can escape the invasion of these sticky 2-D monsters. As you might have noticed, banks, airlines, and developers are engaged in a billboard size war, the escalation has now resulted in MTR stations being covered from floor to ceiling with huge vinyl prints.

You can ignore them, if you like, but after the advertising campaign is over, somebody will remove these vinyl wraps from the walls, and chuck them into our landfills.

If you ever felt guilty about using too many plastic bags, and have switched to a canvas bag for your grocery shopping, you will probably feel that your little effort is tantamount to rearranging chairs on the sinking Titanic.

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is present in countless household products like shower curtains, bags and toys, not to mention piping and automobile interiors. Sadly, PVC is among the most eco-unfriendly plastics and some varieties can release brain-damaing lead and hormone-disrupting phthalates. Its disposal is particularly problematic given that, if incinerated, it will release carcinogenic dioxin and other contaminants into the environment.

The advertising and marketing industry is raking in millions, and nobody is holding it accountable for the pollution it causes. Where is the much trumpeted "Polluters pay" principle? If it was applied, this industry would be forced to clean up its act and find a different way to reach people.

Those who work in that industry consider themselves "creative", if they really are so creative, they can come up with a better idea than sticking PVC on any available surface.

in the phallus we trust

A few weeks ago Calvin Klein launched its biggest outdoor campaign in the world, a 27-story billboard across the former Ritz Carlton Hotel in Central, ear-marked for demolition just 15 years after opening. This huge billboard will be taken down on April 15, and rest in peace in one of our landfills. The environmental cost of printing such a billboard, and then throwing it away a couple of months later, is mind-blowing, but in a city where new skyscapers are demolished to make room for taller ones, Calvin Klein's marketing executives must have thought "what the heck.... a phallic skyscraper + our well-endowed black model wearing white briefs equals a super-phallic message...and we are in the business of dressing dicks."

After the Hilton, demolished immediately after completion and the Furama hotel, another skycraper will become rubble and be replaced by a taller office tower. Disposing of construction waste is cheap, despite the fact that Hong Kong landfills are nearly full. Somebody must have realised there is money to be made in incineration, and shortening the life of landfills makes "business sense".
Welcome to "premature ejaculation capital of the world"...where concrete erections disappear at the blink of an eye...leaving a big mess behind.

The 2008-09 budget is an invitation to waste more energy

Financial Secretary John Tsang has shown how much the government cares about the environment. With the excuse of improving people's livelihood and supporting disadvantaged groups his budget allocates HK$4.3 billion to subside domestic electricity accounts. The 2008-09 budget grants each residential electricity account a subsidy of $1,800. At present, about 15 per cent of households in Hong Kong pay an average of not more than $150 a month for electricity charges. Incidentally I pay less than that, mainly because i live on Lamma island, and can keep my windows open instead of relying on air-con.
Instead of rewarding households that save energy, the subsidy will enable even low income households to turn up their air-con, boosting the revenue of electricity companies. The real winners are the shareholders of HK Electric and China Light & Power, the loser is obviously the environment. So much for sustainability.

Chinese copycats invent the hybrid super-brand

Chinese counterfeiters are possibly the most creative in the world. They take counterfeiting to new heights. Let's not forget that these are the guys who brought us the fake egg - the egg' s shell is made from calcium carbonate while the fake yolk is made from a mixture of gelatine, starch and other chemicals.
Now they have found a great solution to the problem of copying the ever-increasing number of western brands that have taken their country by storm. When only LV and Gucci bags were in demand, they had it easy, but their customers have become more and more demanding, every month a new brand hits the shelves of Chinese stores and keeping up with them has proved difficult. Moreover, these brands churn out new designs every season. Our resourceful copycats never despair and...voila'...they have just come up with the perfect solution. Let's stitch that old Gucci logo onto the leftover LV fabric, add the Prada logo to the Coach design, assemble Burberry's and Fendi's prints, and you reach the fans of two brands with just one product. Lévi-Strauss defined the operation of a mind moving from primitive to modern, scientific thought as 'bricolage': the 'bricoleur' performs his tasks with materials and tools that are at hand, from 'odds and ends.' He draws from the already existent while the modern scientist, according to Levi-Strauss, seeks to exceed the existing boundaries.
The bricoleur deals in signs, whereas the scientist deals in concepts. Concepts open possibilities while signs recycle previously available meanings.

Fashion brands are not "inventing" anything, they just slap their logos on mass-produced goods of dubious quality and through marketing and advertising create the impression of uniqueness and luxury. In fact these branded products are manufactured cheaply in factories where low-paid workers endure sweatshop conditions and then are sold at extravagant prices in swanky boutiques.

By mixing logos Chinese counterfeiters create a hybrid product that reveals the absurdity of people's appetite for brands rather than quality. If there is nothing behind the brand, the logo becomes an unhinged signifier, a free-floating signifier that means nothing beside itself and therefore can be manipulated at will.
I have also good reasons to suspect that the bits and pieces that the counterfeiters assemble, are coming out of the same factories that manufacture them for the big brand in the usual 'Chinese box' system of contractors and sub-contractors.

As Ackbar Abbas argued, the fake has a unique diagnostic value, largely because the question of the fake never involves just the fake alone; it forces us to re-assess all the objects and processes around it, including the global market and media technology. By definition a suspect object, the fake makes us take a suspicious or critical attitude to objects. Through a kind of maniacal imitation, the fake catches the global icon off-guard and reveals something about it that might otherwise be indiscernible.

The hybrid super-brand created by Chinese counterfeiters reveals the misery of the brand...it possesses no intrinsic value. A rag is a rag is a rag.

beaches and parks will become an office extension. Electromagnetic pollution in Hong Kong

Do you fancy the idea of writing email on the beach? Or receiving email notifications while hiking in a country park or walking your dog on the waterfront? If you do, you probably need to have your head checked. Well, PCCW have just unveiled a plan to turn this idiotic fancy into a scary reality. They intend to install Wi-Fi masts in parks, beaches, and all along the waterfront.

In many countries Wi-Fi has been banned, or dismantled if already installed, from public schools, libraries and hospitals after lab tests found that Wi-Fi radiation affects animals.
In Paris, many library clerks where Wi-Fi access points were installed last summer (in the Paris Ville Numerique - Paris, digital town) - reported different symptoms like headaches, sore eyes or muscles, dizziness or vertigo. Since December, Wi-Fi access has been turned off in French public libraries.
Citing the possibility of health risks associated with the usage of WiFi networks, a Canadian university refused to sign off on their campus-wide installation, noting a California Public Utilities Commission study which mentions the possible risk of tumors and other diseases due to exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs).

So, if even places of study such as libraries, schools and universities prefer wired to wireless access in order to play safe, one wonders why on earth HK residents should be exposed to electro-magnetic fields even when they are out of the office, out of school, taking a stroll in a park.

Could it be that our health is sacrificed yet and again on the altar of profit? Whose profit? PCCW, that will get a generous handout from the government (taxpayers' money!) to ensure that no spot will be left uncovered in this territory-wide Wi-Fi galore. Who is PCCW chairman? Richard Li, the son of tycoon Li Ka-shing (ranks 9 in world's billionaires) whose stooges sit in the unelected government, thanks not only to his economic power, but also to his powerful connections in Beijing.
If you ever wondered why HK tycoons seem to be getting richer and richer, while ordinary HK citizens get poorer and poorer, this cosy deal provides further evidence of business and government collusion. If you get cancer because of electro-magnetic pollution, don't worry, the faculty of medicine, University of Hong Kong is now called Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine. You can bet that no researchers there will receive grants to study the link between EMF and cancer!

Get me out of this gas chamber!

Pollution is a crime against humanity...no, wait, it's worse: it affects all living species...but, you know, they can't complain.

Pollution is a silent killer... toxic substances are administered everyday, and though not strong enough to cause an immediate death, they certainly accelerate it. Of course, our cause of death will be dismissed as cancer, and not murder. Our killers will never be put on trial.

If you are diagnosed with cancer, doctors routinely ask you if you ever smoked, worked or lived with smokers. They certainly don't record pollution levels at your home, or work.
One could argue that if you lived in the Swiss Alps you would still be smoking a pack a day at age 90!
Tobacco companies have become the perfect scapegoat...While polluters get away with murder!
Why isn't anybody bringing a class action lawsuit against car manufacturers, polluting factories, or governments that refuse to control toxic emissions?

In HK we choke on severely polluted air every day and yet 'our' unelected government is doing absolutely nothing to tackle the problem. Its inaction is criminal.

This government banned smoking in offices, bars, restaurants, karaoke clubs, night clubs, parks and beaches, instead of letting patrons choose smoke-free establishments and areas. So, no allowances are made for smokers, and yet idle engines can freely spew toxic fumes, power companies can keep burning coal without any emission caps (filters? what filters?), developers can turn our streets into canyons where car fumes are trapped for us all to breathe, building managers are free to set air-cons on freezing temperatures (are they all China Power & Light shareholders?), and i could go on and on.

There is nowhere to run. No pollution-free areas. The fact that walking and breathing at street level feels just as bad as clubbing all night in a smoke-filled club (but is much less fun!) should make all the rabid anti-smoking campaigners organize sit-ins in our busy road junctions...where are they? Still celebrating the fact that their clothes no longer smell of tobacco??

I don't care much for Christmas, but i have a Christmas wish to make: I wish i could see Donald Tsang and most Exco members kept in a cage in Gloucester Road, right next to the Cross-Harbour tunnel, or maybe Hennessy Road, for at least 12 hours. Let them sit there at street level, where we mortals walk everyday. Maybe once they share our fate they will start to see the light...through what they insist calling "haze".

Fashion...and its victims

Last Saturday i went shopping for a new pair of jeans. I don't particularly enjoy shopping, but when my last pair of jeans fell apart after ten years, i knew i had no choice but to replace them.
I tend to get emotionally attached to my clothes - each item is the equivalent of a Proustian madeleine that triggers rich memories - that's why i am so reluctant to throw them away. The idea that clothes are disposable and should be replaced before the end of their natural life never crossed my mind. I seem to love my clothes more than fashion trends.

Well, replacing my beloved and trusted jeans proved more difficult than I thought. And i am not talking about the grieving process.
Shops that sell casual wear are stocked with overpriced "designer" jeans that look worse than my old ones: worn-out, rotten, thread-bare or dirty.

If this is what we are supposed to be wearing this season, why would anybody pay
HK$ 2,000 to buy a pair of jeans that have been stone-washed, sand-blasted, bleached, stained, ripped and...branded? They are already falling apart, and look as if they won't last more than one season, that is, if they don't go out of fashion before (wait a couple of months and some fashion "guru" will inform us that they are "so last year" and that we are supposed to chuck them in the bin before we are arrested and stoned to death for committing such a crime against fashion)

If wearing dirty jeans with holes makes you feel and look better, that's fine. I am not an arbiter of taste. But i know that the look can be easily reproduced by wearing your jeans for a few seasons, owning only one pair, or shopping in a second-hand store.

Now the question is:

Why can't these fashion designers buy second-hand jeans and restyle them for the fashion victims instead of using chemicals to make new denim look old? Just imagine how much energy and resources would be saved if they re-stitched old denim.

Unfortunately "sustainable clothing" is still an oxymoron in a world where fashions change every few months and consumers spend more than $1 trillion a year on clothing and textiles, an estimated one-third of that in Western Europe, another third in North America, and about a quarter in Asia. In many places, cheap, readily disposable clothes have displaced durable, good quality clothes that used to last for years.

The environmental impact of fast-food is well known, but only a few critics have dared to talk about the impact of fast-clothes: cheap, fashionable, low-quality rags that last only for a few months...they are not meant to last, as fashion trends change every season.

The environmental impact of this madness is huge. The victims of fashion are not only the shopaholics that go into debt to buy the latest fashion "must-have" (i have little sympathy for them) but the rest of us who see landfills encroach on parks, factories discharge chemicals in our rivers, cotton fields destroy eco-systems, etc. The production, packaging and transportation of the clothes adds to the huge carbon footprint of the fast-fashion industry.

Cheap clothes also mean sweatshop conditions for millions of workers in developing countries. Behind all the hype that surrounds fashion, the reality is very grim. Behind the label is an exploited worker, out of sight, out of mind.

Hong Kong Air Pollution Index

Yesterday the highest roadside API [Air Pollution Index] was 151, which is also the highest this year, followed by 147 on October 7. This level translates as 'very high" on the scale provided to the general public by the EPD (Dept. of Environmental Protection) and the HK Weather Observatory

As a general rule of thumb, a "high" API reading rates as a health hazard under the European Union or World Health Organisation standards. Immediate measures would be taken to reduce the number of cars allowed on the road on days where the index is "high" or "very high". Not in HK. Here smog has been renamed "haze". So when the weather forecasts inform us of "hazy days ahead" we should blame the monsoons, leave the camera at home, and keep jogging in Bowen Road.

The Greenpeace API - it takes the figures from the EPD air monitoring stations, and convert them in a calculation based on the World Health Organization Air Quality Objectives (AQO) - is staggeringly higher. For instance, in Causeway Bay, when the official API reads 85, "high", the Greenpeace Index reads 299! Hence, roadside pollution is HK is constantly well above levels regarded as hazardous by the WHO.

The HK government not only refuses to acknowledge the serious health threat posed by such pollution levels, it holds on to outdated air quality objectives, arguing that countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam etc. have set the same objectives.

And yet when it comes to selling us white elephants like the WKCD, 'our' governemt claims that HK is a 'world city', and needs state-of-the-art cultural facilities.

We are either a first world city or a third world one. But we are told to leave logic aside and go with the spin. First world one day, third world the next.

As to the thousands of people who die of lung cancer every year despite the fact they never smoked a cigarette, let's blame "passive smoking", surely one of their co-workers, distant cousin, or neighbour must have been a smoker.

Just another type of plastic bags...Hong Kong retailers' answer to criticism

Hong Kong retailers have long been criticised for handing out too many plastic bags to their customers. And Hong Kong shoppers are notorious for putting their convenience above anything else. Environmental concerns are dismissed with a shrug. So far the government has failed to come up with legislation to reduce the overuse of plastic bags - a plastic tax would easily solve the problem, but goes against the neo-liberist ethos that ensures the interests of a minority overrule those of the majority. In this depressing context local retailers have come up with a solution that is worse than the problem.

Now they hand out non-woven, polypropylene tote bags... for free. These bags are worse than plastic bags as they can't even be recycled as bin liners. They just end up in landfills, as customers have no incentive to re-use them....they are free!

Making the customer pay for biodegradable plastic bags that can be re-used as bin-liners is the only way to reduce their number. Consumers would start bringing their own bags once they had enough bags for their bins. All non-biodegradable shopping bags should be banned. Easy. But apparently this solution doesn't please the lobby of plastic bags manufacturers, nor retailers who treat their customers like children who must be spoilt.

Nespresso, another wave of yuppie shite hits HK

A few days ago i walked past the Nespresso shop in the IFC mall, and it took me a while to realise that the brightly coloured pods, artfully piled in the shop window, were not complimentary chocolates given away with overpriced coffee machines but something far more sinister. Apparently Nestle' has devised a new way to maximise landfill waste, and energy consumption. These geniuses have come up with yet again another ridiculous product: a huge, expensive, unwieldy power-hungry machine that requires individual plastic pods to make coffee. For each espresso you drink, one plastic pod ends up in the bin, and your electricity meter turns faster.

We have a perfectly good drink you can make at any time with the assistance of some hot water and a caffettiera. So what do the marketeers do? Package the stuff in individual plastic containers and then call it a lifestyle choice.

Have Nestle secretly decided to completely bugger up the planet, one pathetic little "coffee" pisspot at a time?

RTHK "civic education"

RTHK, the Hong Kong publicly-funded brodcaster, has been "entertaining" us with civic education campaigns for as long as i can remember. Topics range from oral hygiene (brush your teeth, fight gum disease), to travel insurance (HK is probably the only country in the world where buying travel insurance is regarded as a civic duty!) to pest control (the infamous "rodent nuisance" campaign) to family love (love your family, help your wife with housework, tell your children you love them) to Japanese encephalitis (stirring up anti-Japanese sentiments is always a good way to promote national pride, even when all evidence points to the Mainland as the hotbed for this type of encephalitis). Now the latest campaign suggests that "we all need culture", and urges the public to support the West Kowloon Cultural District.
So, now, be a good citizen, forfeit your right to clean air and green spaces, wear a gas mask and start practising how to be cultured.

More on WKCD. Laissez-faire...HK style

Hong Kong was known as a place thriving on laissez-faire principles. Though I doubt this was ever fully true, the Hong Kong Government to a large extent facilitates big business and grants privileges to powerful lobbies, while adopting a truly laissez-faire approach on issues such as environmental protection, the minimum wage and the very unequal distribution of wealth.
The WKCD seems to arise from the same philosophy, with government conceiving a large project the realization of which will mainly benefit developers and vested interests.
In a city where arthouse cinemas had to close down because of poor attendance, concert halls are half empty, and museums are not doing much better, one can only question the agenda of those who support the WKCD. If they defend the government intervention on cultural matters, how can they stick to neo-liberalist, laissez-faire policies on welfare and environmental matters without falling into contradiction?

According to government plans for the WKCD, its 'crown jewel' will be a huge M+ art museum (the size of the Tate Gallery in London) that will mainly show modern and contemporary art. While there is little doubt that artworks have become a commodity - they are traded, bought and sold by collectors and speculators, and the value of such works rise according to where they are shown, which collections they are part of, etc.- one wonders why HK taxpayers should foot the bill. If the market system is so perfect, can't we just wait until galleries, collectors, and other art aficionados reach deep into their pockets and set up a private museum? From what i can tell, public and private museums show exactly the same artists.

Let art collectors open their collections to the public, if they wish to do so, but build a museum for them? Let artists showcase art works in their studios. Let galleries do their job of selling art, but i hate the idea that my money is spent to facilitate them rather than being used to build and staff hospitals, improve the quality of education by paying teachers a decent salary, help the elderly and the unemployed live with dignity, protect the environment, improve public transport. In short, benefit the community as a whole, not a particular group.

The government is not building churches, and rightly so. Christians make donations to build their places of worship, and so do Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists. Museums are places for art worshippers. But not everyone worships the same kind of art. What i regard as art, another person might regard as rubbish, and viceversa. There is no canon for contemporary art, its measurable value is determined by market forces...as to its intrinsic value, well... that is just a matter of taste. Truly subjective, like religion.

HK taxpayers are asked to contribute to a sector of the economy that generates huge profits for a minority of wealthy investors. What next? A public museum where local tycoons can show off their old Bentleys and Rolls Royces? Some might argue that cars too are cultural artefacts. And following this logic, why not a museum where fashion designers can show their collections? Where do we draw the line?

Fashion designers, artists, designers etc. are professionals who have embraced the market economy the same way dentists, lawyers, fortune tellers, architects, etc. have. So, why should taxpayers' money be spent on them? They certainly don't need more venues to showcase their work....they have art fairs and galleries. Art lovers can walk into a gallery if they like to see original works, or browse the Internet, art books and magazines for images. As to the few artists who have turned their back to the market economy, and have a genuine political and social agenda, they can install their works in public spaces and reach a much wider audience by doing so. Site-specific art doesn't need museums. If anything, it has always been very critical of this institution and looked for alternative spaces. This is the art i like, and don't expect to find it in a museum.

How can a museum showcasing the commodified works of millionaire artists (and shrewd businessmen) contribute to the cultural development of HK residents and visitors? How do we define culture?

WKCD deconstructed

Hong Kong legislator Emily Lau can spot a white elephant from miles away!

Here she speaks in support to Alan Leong's motion and uses hard data to counter the fluff we have become so accustomed to.

"Mr Deputy, as far as I can observe, and as mentioned by some Members already, the utilization rates and patronage of most existing cultural facilities have been on a general decline in recent years. For example, the number of visitors to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum has dropped from some 800 000 in 2001-02 to just 460 000 in 2003-04. In the case of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, there used to be 250 000 visitors a year, but now there are just 220 000. As for the Hong Kong Film Archive, the number has dropped from 120 000 to 85 000. When it comes to performance venues, the number of visitors to the City Hall has, for example, dropped from 400 000 in 2001 to 370 000 at present. The utilization rates of the Ko Shan Theatre, Ngau Chi Wan Civic Centre, Sai Wan Ho Civic Centre, Sheung Wan Civic Centre, Hong Kong Coliseum and the sports complexes in Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun, the North District, Tai Po, Sha Tin, Kwai Tsing and Yuen Long have all been declining. The only exception is the Queen Elizabeth Stadium. When the utilization rates of these facilities are all declining, how can we be so confident that all the new facilities in the WKCD development will not become white elephants?"

To read the rest of her speech, check out Emily Lau's website:
www.emilylau.org.hk

No minimum wage in HK

While the government is planning to spend HK$ 19 billions on the WKCD white elephant, poverty among workers in wealthy Hong Kong has almost doubled to more than 418,000 people over the past decade. The rich-poor divide is widening as the Hong Kong's economy improves. More than twice as many people in the city of 6.9 million earn 3,000 Hong Kong dollars (385 US dollars) or less than a decade ago.
A recent study by the Hong Kong Council for Social Services found that more than 20 percent of Hong Kong families - 1.33 million people - now live on monthly incomes of less than $900 for a two-person household and $1,500 for a four-person household.

Welfare and labour groups in Hong Kong have long campaigned for increased workers' rights and a minimum wage.
However, the government has repeatedly resisted the demands.

The infamous French queen Marie-Antoinette suggested that workers who couldn't afford to buy bread, should eat croissants instead, our unelected government (similarly out of touch with its subjects) seems to think that those who can't pay rent, buy food, or afford a bus ticket, should appreciate art and shut up.

Art at the service of real-estate speculation

Hong Kong used to be a city with a vibrant street culture. When life in the streets was so exciting, who needed museums?
So, first they had to kill all expressions of collective creativity in order to create the need for institutional and commodified forms of creativity (the museum, the concert hall) Organic, spontaneous life forms had to be replaced by their anaemic copies.

The artist becomes the high priest of this commodified society of the spectacle. In a society without "malaise"one might expect to see that "the artist is not a special kind of person, but each person is a special kind of artist."

Where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.

The spectacle in general is the concrete inversion of life.

West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD). Another white elephant?

Before the current proposals, the site had been earmarked for a WATERFRONT PARK. In 1998, then chief executive Tung Chee-hwa announced a "state-of- the-art performance venue" for the site. The government admits that this project was not "demand-led" but "supply-led". That is, HK people don't need another white elephant (we already have Cyberport!)
Concept plans were submitted in 2001 followed by invitations to developers for preliminary plans in 2003.

A couple of years later, the government buckled under pressure and announced a scaled-down proposal for the development of the 40-hectare harborfront site at the southern tip of the West Kowloon reclamation into what it calls a "world- class cultural district."

The new proposal sought to allay fears that the government colluded with big developers by limiting the land open to a single developer to 20 hectares and opening up the other half to multiple developers.

Under the revised proposal, one of the three short-listed bidders will win sole-development rights to at least half of the residential and commercial land, with the remaining land put up for open tender.

The large Waterfront Park this city misses so much is traded for a mix of residential towers, shopping malls, and cultural facilities. The collusion between the unelected government and big business means that yet another huge plot of land is stolen from the people and handed over to developers who will capitalise on it.

An opinion poll conducted by HK alternatives revealed that:

1. 81% prefer cultural plus leisure facilities including a large green park;
2. When given full information on the cost and visual impact, 77% oppose a canopy;
3. 90% of the respondents support planning and development by an Authority or quasi-Government agencies – only 6% opted for management by private developers;
4. 65% believe that harbour reclamation was excessive;
5. 72% objected to commercial and residential development on the west Kowloon Cultural District ;
6. 62% believe Hong Kong does not have sufficient open space and green parks;
7. 64% believe Hong Kong lags behind international cities in terms of open space and parks;
8. 90% liked the idea of developing Hong Kong into an environmentally friendly city.

The results are very different from what government surveys claim. In the consultation process, the public was invited to choose one of three different proposals submitted by developers, the alternative option of having a park dotted with some small cultural venues was never included in the government surveys.

As a long-term resident, educator and cultural critic i firmly oppose rushing through the WKCD against the real needs
of the community.
If a lesson is to be learned from Cyberport - a huge white elephant, with very low occupancy that totally failed to become the regional hub for high-tech research we were promised by its supporters - the government should consider investing on education before planning any expansion of existing cultural facilities.

Hong Kong has a large number of empty industrial buildings and a few heritage buildings that can be converted into
cultural facilities. Private galleries and artists have already rented space in districts such as Kwun Tong, Fo Tan etc. to meet their needs. The art sector here is so small, that supply far exceeds demand.
On the other hand, in such a polluted and congested city, everybody needs green open space. Hong Kong people still work ridiculous long hours, and can't even find the time to play with their children, let alone visit museum exhibitions. HK schools don't put enough resources and emphasis on art education, a pre-condition for art appreciation and production.

Furthermore, why should art be exhibited in purposedly-built museums? Art installations can be placed anywhere! And, after killing all cultural life in old districts, removing street markets (and street life) by making room for yet more shopping malls, they are trying to make us pay a museum ticket to enjoy a bad copy, a sanitised version of it in a white cube.
It's a bit like killing the remaining wildlife and building a zoo!

Nobody reads on the MTR

why oh why?
In other cities the sight of readers is less uncommon than here in HK. People are either playing videogames on their mobile phone/gameboy, or sleeping. I often have the feeling that this is a city deprived of sleep!
And if someone is reading, you can be sure it's a celebrity magazine, a computer manual or a comic book. Whatever happened to readers??
And where are the working class intellectuals of former times?

One of the good things about growing up in the 60s is that my family had no idea what college was about. Nobody in my family had ever been to college or even cared to finish high school in most cases. So years later as an adult when I got a chance to study, I was still under the illusion that I was supposed to improve my mind and understanding of life. I studied what I wanted to and pursued a rather eccentric, off-again, on-again non-program according to whatever personal pull I felt toward various subjects and ideas. I don’t think vocation or future employment even crossed my mind once in the process.

Working at odd jobs during the day, taking long sabbaticals from work to go out with friends, reading and writing at night. The point being that I was having a helluva good time, was absolutely exhilarated with learning and with escaping the intellectual darkness of my family Anyway, that spun me off into an orbit and an intellectual trajectory that I consider uniquely mine, one I feel that I really own, one that fits me like a good pair of shoes. I don’t know if that is even possible today. Do you? The only people I am meeting who have grown their own consciousness and intellectual lives to their own specifications did it while studying in prison. Do you have to go to prison these days to get a real education?
Most of my friends back then were not college graduates, but had read extensively and we could discuss ANYTHING, Marx, Freud, or Adorno. They read stuff that today college students can't even access, unless they are doing a Ph.D on that subject.

In any event, I read the whole time, and so did my mates. Extra money went to books.. If we had no money we went to libraries. One could have some pretty fascinating conversations there with old dope fiends, unemployed factory workers…and yeah, ex cons. So what is it today? Why do I meet so few young people who have this curiosity? It’s a strange generation-one so afflicted with technology. Addicted to gadgets, which is so passive in a way. Afraid of nature, of the night, of different kinds of people. Of course education couldn’t be worse, even at junior high level. Nothing is taught. Studying for a degree that teaches people how to become good slaves to the system.

Buy less...live better

Ownership can be a burden. Once you buy something, you have to carry it around, fix it, remember where you put it, and keep it clean. "He who owns little is little owned" (Henry David Thoreau)

How to stop buying and reduce your ecological footprint on the planet?
It's actually not difficult!

1)
Practice reverse snobbery. Express contempt for people who mindlessly buy things. This has two benefits: It raises the act of not buying things to a lofty moral height, from which you can denigrate others, and you get to enjoy the irony of simultaneously being a snob while making fun of other snobs.

2)
Go to shopping malls and department stores and briefly let your materialistic impulses loose. Try on a bunch of sweaters and choose three or four. Add a few ties or scarves. Walk around for a few minutes enjoying your stack of loot. Then put it back on the shelf and walk out. Think about how unnecessary that stuff is. You probably already have something just like it. What a relief to not have more junk around the house.

3)
Get satisfaction from money saved, not money spent. You will be able to work less and still live comfortably.

4)
Become a scrounger. Old bicycles, furniture, building materials, vehicles, books and clothing are everywhere, once you start looking. Become skilled at resurrecting old stuff and finding uses for it. Take pride in being an eccentric recycler.

5)
Look for barter opportunities. Swap.

6)
Consider having a "buy nothing Christmas" this year. You can find details at BuyNothingChristmas.org.

Plastic bags levy

HK lawmakers are closer to passing an environmental levy to cut plastic bag use in Hong Kong. “No Plastic Bag Day” campaigns may become permanent. According to a report released recently by Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department, Hong Kong throws out over 8 billion plastic shopping bags every year (that’s more than 3 bags per person a day).

The proposed plan will work in phases—chain or large supermarkets will be among the first retailers required to charge HK 50 cents for each plastic bag. This alone is predicted to cut plastic bag use in Hong Kong by a billion in just one year.

Though i am in favour of this tax, i can't stop thinking that it comes short of hitting the nail on the head.
A more effective move would be to ban all non-bio-degradable bags, so that retailers would switch to the slightly more expensive bio-degradable ones, and charge consumers 50 cents to recoup the cost.
We would buy only the bags we need as bin-liners, and learn to bring our own bag.

One more note: why stop at plastic bags?? HK lawmakers should tax the even more common litter elements: styrofoam cups and lunch boxes (from every fast food outlet), and plastic bottles.
Such a tax would force fast-food outlets to opt for recycled cardboard boxes instead of styrofoam ones, or to give a discount to people who bring their own re-usable lunch box.
Most office workers have coffee in disposable cups from the same coffee shop everyday. If they were charged for the cup, they would certainly start bringing their own flask!

And if the government were serious about the environment, it would set clear guidelines for the import of goods, requiring producers to reduce excessive packaging. There is no reason why fruit should be individually wrapped in a styrofoam mesh, or consumer products come in fancy boxes twice as big as the product itself. As most goods are imported, it would not hurt the local economy (the usual excuse for inaction!)

Faking it

The South China Morning Post recently published an article that decried the rapid spread of fake degrees and qualifications in Asia.

I believe that instead of focusing on the many obvious objections that could be made against fake degrees, it might be more instructive to ask what are the conditions that make the fake possible.

Ackbar Abbas defined the fake as a suspect object, one that makes us take a suspicious and critical attitude at the system of such objects, in this case the commodification of education, the transformation of education into a commercial relationship.

When education becomes essentially something with exchange value, something to be bought and sold, inevitably the 'sign' (that is the degree) starts to replace the 'thing'.

As an educator with 15 years experience in teaching at university level, I have become totally disillusioned about the sustainability of such a system. The universities I have worked for doled out MA degrees to students who can’t even write a short essay but had the money to pay for it. How many students actually fail to bring home the degree they pay for? Universities can’t be selective when their goal is customer’s satisfaction.

The current system fails motivated students, motivated educators and ultimately, and ironically, the market they bend backward to please. As there is no longer any correlation between knowledge and degrees, the difference between the original and the fake lies only in the latter’s cheaper price.

I have long stopped to be impressed by a string of academic qualifications after a person’s name. In my eyes they are fashion accessories, like the ubiquitous LV bag. You can’t buy taste, you can’t buy knowledge. I have more respect for people with a genuine thirst for knowledge, the bus conductor who reads a Chinese classic during his break, the domestic helper who reads a history book, while her employer with an MBA (must-buy-accessory) watches the Apprentice on DVD.