Common Sense

Common Sense and Viewpoints
1. Unpopular community facilities – 2011 AL

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Think about! – Locate unpopular facilities in residential areas
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What kinds of facilities are unpopular?

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Why many people in community oppose these facilities? What are their arguments?

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How to strike a balance between the residents’ viewpoints and the needs of constructing some unpopular community facilities?

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How to persuade the residents to accept unpopular facilities in their neighborhoods?

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Why are there facilities necessary to be built? Where can they be located?

New Concept: Not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY)
 NIMBY occurs when communities acknowledge the need for extra public facilities (including waste treatment facilities, power plants, prisons, drug rehabilitation centres, etc.), but refuse to allow these facilities to be sited in their “backyards.”
 NIMBY is often used pejoratively – it is sometimes referred to as the “NIMBY syndrome,” or
“NIMBY disease.”
 Why does the NIMBY syndrome emerge with regards to unpopular facilities?
 Health concerns
 Affect the nearby organizations (e.g. schools, shops
 Nuisance factor
 Lack of trust
 Social stigma of living next to a the unpopular facilities (reputation)

 NIMBY residents are often described negatively as selfish, irrational, and ignorant.
 But, others view NIMBY positively
 Democratic
 Citizens bring local knowledge that can improve the decision-making process
 Residents are often rational rather than irrational

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2. Learning languages and Cultures - 2011

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contain

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Think about:
 What aspects will we concern when learning a language?

 How can we creatively practice the language skills in daily life?

 How can people immerse into other cultures by staying in their countries?

 How can we learn language with the aid of Internet?

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3. Exotic Pets/ Strange and Unusual Pets - 2011

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Think about:
 Keeping Exotic Pets (strange and unusual pets)
Advantages
Disadvantages

 What is the attitude of Hongkongers towards exotic pets nowadays? Do they enjoy in keeping them and why do they do so?

 Examples of exotic pets:

 What kind of exotic pets are most suitable for Hong Kong?

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 What should we consider before keeping a pet?

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Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA)
 Aim:
Animals are living creatures which like humans, are able to feel pain, hunger and thirst. We should not inflict any suffering upon our fellow creatures just because they can't speak.
Our mission through the millennium is " To promote kindness to animals, to protect their health and welfare, to prevent cruelty and through education, to inspire in the community a deep respect for life so that all living creatures may live together in harmony."
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How does the SPCA act to achieve these aims?
The SPCA believes that animals deserve our protection, compassion and respect. We aim to prevent their suffering wherever we can through
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Collection and rescue of abandoned, sick and injured animals.
Investigation of complaints of cruelty.
Acceptance of unwanted pets to ease the stray problem and animal suffering.
Provision of low-cost desexing for cats and dogs to prevent unwanted litters.
Rehoming of unwanted pets whenever possible.
Hospitalization of homeless animals whenever possible, providing as necessary basic veterinary care, treatment of disease or major surgery.
Public education on responsible pet ownership and animal welfare issues.
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4. Wildlife Conservation – Consumption of Shark Fin – 2009 AL

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Typically Endangered Animals

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Think about:
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Why is the shark fin so popular in Hong Kong?

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How does Hong Kong contribute to the wildlife conservation?
 Entertainment/Tourism X Wildlife Conservation X Education
 Hong Kong Wetland Park
Our Objectives
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To demonstrate the diversity of Hong Kong's wetland ecosystem and highlight the need to conserve them;

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To create a visitor attraction of international status, catering both for the general public and visitors, and also for those with ‘special’ interest in wildlife and ecology; 

To provide an attraction which will diversify visitor experience in Hong Kong for overseas visitors;

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To serve the recreational needs of local residents;

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To provide a facility that will both complement and supplement those offered at the Mai Po Marshes Nature Reserve;

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To provide opportunities for education and public awareness.

 Ocean Park - Ocean Park Conservation Foundation
OPCFHK has not only combined the missions of its forerunners to promote conservation activities for dolphins, whales and giant pandas, but also expanded to other animals such as birds, reptiles and amphibians of Asia. It looks for achieving the wildlife sustainability and biodiversity through advocation, facilitation and participation in the conservation of wildlife and habitats with research and education in Asia.

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 Hong Kong Geopark (optional) – Eco Tourism
 To protect precious geological heritage
 To spread knowledge of Earth Science
 To promote sustainable social and economic development through geo-tourism

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Optional short Article – 2006 AL

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5. Minimum wage - 2011

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Think about:
 What is the purpose of the minimum wage?

 The effect of minimum wage law

Workers

Enterprises

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Society

 What actions were taken by the companies to deal with the minimum wage?

 Is it necessary to have the law of minimum wage?

Yes

No

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6. Busking (Performers on streets) – 2011 AL

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Think about:
 Busking:
Advantages

Disadvantages

 Why is busking not particularly popular in Hong Kong?

 Do you think Hong Kong will enjoy more performance on the streets and why?

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 What else can the government do to raise the artistic awareness of the citizens?
1. Education

2.

Society/Public

 Is it possible to have more performance on the streets in Hong Kong?

Yes

No

 What else did the government do to raise the ‘soft power’ in Hong Kong

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7. Separated Family – 2011 AL

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Think about
 Why do the couples live apart nowadays?

 What problem will it bring?

Personal/Interpersonal

Societal

 What are the advantages and limitations of using Internet to cope with this situation?
Advantages

Limitations

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8. Students’ Performance in School – 2011 AL

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Think about
 In what aspect do the students not behave well enough?

 What measures can be introduced to encourage behavior as well as what actions should be taken to penalize students who behave badly?

Reward

Penalty / Punishment

 Apart from the above, what else can the school do to encourage behavior among students?

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Which one would you prefer, reward and punishment? (Think about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as well)

Reward

Punishment / Penalty

Advantage

Disadvantage

 How can these measures help the students when they leave school and get a job?

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9. Waste Problem in Hong Kong – 2011 AL

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Think about
 Why do Hong Kong people and business waste so much compared to other countries?

 Possible solutions
 Composting:
One solution for dealing with food waste would be to set up a composting facility to separate food waste, especially fruits and vegetables, and other biodegradable material from other waste and convert it into both biogas, which can be used to generate electricity, and compost, which can be sold to small farmers and gardens to enrich the soil.
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Why do Hong Kong people and business produce so much waste?

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How does food waste detrimentally affect our environment?

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Are there any campaigns and organizations encouraging citizens to cut down food waste? Page 35

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How can we make good use of the product of composting?

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Thick creatively:
How can we practically introduce this method in Hong Kong?

Apart from composting, how can the supermarkets in Hong Kong deal with the leftover food?

Incineration:
Another solution would to build an incineration. Hong Kong used to have one but it was closed down by 1997. Incineration generates heat by burning waste and reduces each tones of waste to one fifth of a tone of ash, which must be dumped in a landfill. There are problems with this, however. The burning process produces air pollutants, the ash must be transported to a landfill, and the ash is considered hazardous and therefore may need special landfills. Although incinerator technology is much cleaner than in the post, residents in areas near possible incinerator sites worry that an incinerator would affect their, view and property prices.
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Why were all incinerators closed down by 1997?

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of incineration in residential area of Hong
Kong?
Advantages
Disadvantages

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Recycling: Hong Kong is already separating 49% of its municipal solid waste for recycling and the government hopes to increase this to 54% by 2015. The Hong Kong government has been pushing recycling with some success with housing estates, schools, restaurant, the electronics industry and other. The amount of municipal solid waste recovered more than doubled in the decade from 1999 to 2009, from just over 1.5 million tones to almost
3.2 million tones. Paper, metals and plastics make up about 93% of the recovered waste.
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What is the slogan we always advocate?

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What other materials does our government encourage us to recycle?

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Why does the development of recycling business in Hong Kong lag behind the other
Asian countries (e.g. Japan and Korea)?

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What are the difficulties of recycling business in Hong Kong?

How can some companies support the recycling? Is it effective?

Waste-disposal charges: The government has acknowledged that there needs to be wastedisposal charges based on volume if we are to make serious progress in reducing solid municipal waste. The imposition of a waste-disposal charge had an immediate effect on construction waste in 2006, when the government began charging being only a small fraction of what was being charged in other cities around world, there was a 36% reduction in construction waste going to landfills in the first tear. There is no question that charges work, both to reduce waste volume and to increase government revenues to help pay for waste disposal.
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What are the advantages and disadvantages of introducing MSW charging scheme
Hong Kong?
Advantages
Disadvantages

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 Optional article

Key Challenges on the Environmental Policy in Hong Kong
Currently, the solid waste both from household and commerce is a headache to
HKSAR Government. And as the information mentioned on the lecture, the
Environmental Protection Department (EDP) established different facilities for collecting, transferring, treating and disposing of wide range of waste types. For the solid waste, three strategic landfills are used to deal with this growing problem.
However, from the report Waste Statistics for 2011 released by EDP, about 13,458 tonnes of waste were dumped into the three landfills in Hong Kong every day and
8,996 tonnes of them were Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). Meanwhile, according to the estimation from EDP, the first landfill will be full in 2014 while the other two in
2018. This unquestionably presents a thorny challenge to our government on how to effectively deal with the waste problem. Also, the lack of enough support on the recycling industry in Hong Kong is another factor influencing the effective and sustainable waste management in Hong Kong. Furthermore, within the municipal solid waste in 2011, there was 42.3% and 34.9% of food waste generated from household and commerce & industry sector respectively. We can also see the problem of food waste is another important issue our government cannot neglect on account of its large proportion in the waste from both household and commerce. Because of the previous comment on the issue of food waste via
Facebook platform, I would love to focus on the waste disposal charging scheme and the recycling industry in Hong Kong.

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In order to lighten the burden on the landfills, the Environmental Protection
Department has already decided to launch MSW charging scheme by 2016 and stage a public consultation in 2013. Under this plan, Hongkongers need to pay about HK$2 for –liter garbage bag (about $45 for each family) and meanwhile the fly-tipping will be punished with fines. In my opinion, the intention of this scheme is good and it does help to alleviate the burden of those landfills. From the experience of Korea and Taipei, once the waste charging is implemented, the waste disposal rate sharply dropped by 27.4% for the former region and 37.8% for the latter one. Nevertheless, only by a well-managed enforcement can this scheme be beneficial to the citizens and the environment.

The first concern that comes to my mind is the fee citizens need to pay. In the compulsory rates, citizens need to pay for the waste disposal. If the government introduces this charging, will it be a double tax to the citizens and increase their financial burden? I do think the government needs to modify the current content of the rates or simply remove the waste disposal charging in it. On the other hand, I think there is another kind of dilemma since the garbage tax may not be affordable to the underprivileged and even grass-root class if it is set too high and this will just increase their financial burden. As a result, impoverished citizens may simply store the garbage at home, leading to a deterioration of hygiene in the estates. Also, mushroom cases of illegal fly-dumping may result from the avoidance of paying the waste disposal fee of citizens. On the contrary, the eco-awareness of cutting waste among citizens cannot be effectively raised once the fee is too low. Therefore, for
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the household aspect, the government should implement a variable rate charging.
The payment is coupled with the amount of solid waste generated by the citizens and this strictly obeys to the fair principle of user pay. Also, regular review and reflection are required to modify the enforcement of the scheme and finely adjust the waste disposal fee with the considerate of the financial condition of the citizens while implementing this scheme.

As the above mentioned, illegal fly-tipping is another possible outcome of the scheme the government needs to seriously deal with. So as to ensure the effectiveness of this scheme, it is inevitable to reduce the number of rubbish bins on the streets as what Taipei government did after introducing the Per Bag Trash
Collection Charging Scheme. Needless to say, alongside with the waste disposal charging scheme, the government ought to enact a penalty system to pose a deterrent effect among citizens, warning them not to illegally dump the garbage.
But I would think the promotion and education is also of paramount important. In fact, the EDP launched a voluntary Municipal Solid Waste Charging Trial Scheme for three months in 2006 and about 25,000 households put their recyclable waste into the separation bins and used the “food waste bags” delivered by the EDP to separate the leftover food. From this experience, it was found that the lack of promotion of this scheme in the estates was one of the main reasons of low participation from the residents. Therefore, the government cannot just focus on the penalty but she also needs to lay more emphasis on the education and promotion to the citizens. The EDP should make good use of the internet and TV
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commercials to educate citizens to report illegal fly dumping and large-scale promotion can also be stage in different estates to encourage public support and participation to the scheme. In school, government should also enhance the instillation of “user pay” principal and eco-concept to the students. Such kind of promotion is very important. Korea is a typical example to illustrate it. With the sufficient promotion and education to citizens, the fly tipping has dropped significantly, from one million cases in 1995(first year of the charging scheme) to about one hundred thousand cases in recent years.

Nonetheless, I think the government lays too much emphasis on the waste disposal charging scheme. In fact, I think the recycling industry should be considered first.
Even though citizens are charged for their garbage, where will all those trash end up in? They still end up in being buried in the landfill. Therefore, I think the government should also prioritize the development of the recycling industry and this should be hand in hand with the waste disposal charging scheme. According to the report Waste Statistics for 2011 released by EDP, there were 3,019.3 thousand tones of recovered recyclable materials by type in Hong Kong. However, only 1% recycling was in Hong Kong while the rest were exported to mainland China and this rubbish export industry was worth HK$8.2 billion. In other word, there is almost no any recycling in Hong Kong. Then, I would think why the government does not provide more support to the recycling industry in Hong Kong, rather to export the garbage to Mainland China. In fact, I think the recycling in Hong Kong still remains on a knowledge level rather than an action level. We all know the
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slogan of “Blue for Paper, Yellow for Aluminum Cans, and Brown for Plastic Bottle”, but we seldom put it into practice. Under the lack of any pragmatic actions from government to support recycling, this may not be particularly surprising. Recycling industry, in fact, is still a business and its development is limited by the high land cost and lack of economic incentives. The government should provide more subsidies and preferential benefits to the recycling industry on the aspect of land supply, supporting facilities and economy. Also, the government should meanwhile establish a systematic recycling channel for citizens to effectively deliver the garbage to the recycling companies. With the joint effort of the recycling industry and the waste disposal charging scheme, I think we can deal with the solid waste from its root.
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Reducing the amount of waste we produce: This is a solution we can all be a part of. We see changes in the number of people carrying reusable shopping bags, and the government is working with manufacturers and food providers to reduce packaging and food waste, but the fastest way to get companies to change their behavior is for us, their customers, to change out behavior.

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Critical thinking: Are the business sectors always eco-unfriendly?

Yes

No

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Yes

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No

How can the citizens be more eco-friendly with 4R?

Reuse

Recycle

Replace

Reduce
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10. Energy Issue – 2009 AL and 2008 AL (Compulsory self-study part)

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Note
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In the aspect of energy conservation, do Hong Kong people stay in the knowledge level or reach to action level?
Do you think the energy education in Hong Kong is sufficient and why? If not, how can we improve it?
Which kind(s) of the renewable energy are/is suitable for Hong Kong to produce green power? Think about the structure of the city and geographic location.
How can a person, a building and a society efficiently save energy?

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11. Facebook and social networking service – 2011 AL

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Think about:
 What are the functions of Facebook? Please List them out.

 How can Facebook contribute to personal life, business sectors and political aspect?

Personal life Business sectors Political aspect Page 52

 New Concept: Social Product Innovation
* How does social media apply to product development and innovation?
 It’s open innovation combined with the Internet.
 Social media or social technology enables
 Knowledge sharing
 Collaboration
 Open discussion
 Relationship building
For people with common interest, needs and problems
 So, Social media + Product Development = Social Innovation
 Type one: Public Networks, Wikis, Blogs, Linkedin Groups, Facbook, Twitter, Custom sites
 Crowdsourcing Ideas
 Fine Tuning Product Concepts
 Soliciting Feedback
 Driving Innovation
 Type two: Secure networks within an organization that can also be shared with partners and suppliers, Share Points, Video Conferencing, Shared Workspaces, Custom Portals, Instant
Messaging, and Electronic Whiteboarding
 Collective Problem Solving
 Collaboration
 Knowledge sharing
 Resource Identification
 Benefits of Social Product Innovation
 Gain more and better product ideas
 Faster time to market
 Faster product adoption
 Lower development cost

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 Then, what are the problems associated with Facebook?

 How can Facebook be a kind of teaching tool in school and a learning platform?

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