Over 90% of the waste generated at our buildings comes from building users such as our tenants. In 2021, we introduced the Smart Waste Reduction Challenge, a first in Hong Kong, using smart scales and a digital engagement platform to “gamify” the collective sustainability journey experienced by our employees and tenants. The challenge involved 15 participating teams drawn from 10 office tenants across Taikoo Place, Pacific Place and Citygate as well as the Company’s own offices. The teams engaged 3,400 employees in a six-month workplace waste reduction challenge.
The participating teams:
- Received recommendations on how to optimise the design and layout of their office waste bins.
- Replaced individual desk-side rubbish bins with centralised collection and sorting stations.
- Fitted smart scales under each bin to collect live waste disposal and recycling data.
- Set up display screens to showcase their waste reduction progress in real-time and benchmark this progress against other teams.
Throughout the challenge, we organised online and offline engagement activities to support participating teams in their waste reduction efforts. These included:
- 7 sessions of digital workshops to learn about proper waste sorting and food waste reduction.
- 4 tenant project forums where tenant green teams could share ideas and talk about the challenges they were experiencing.
- A “Waste? No More!” recycling game booth roadshow that reached over 250 employees across Swire Properties’ five participating offices.
At the end of the pilot, the teams with the best waste reduction progress and with the most proactive employee participation were recognised with awards.
Collective Impact of the Challenge
This pilot was supported by the Swire Pacific SD Fund. In the future, we will continue to explore the use of smart technologies to monitor tenant waste generation and tailor our tenant-facing circularity initiatives accordingly.