#MoreGunsLessCrime? Less guns, less crime

By Season Ho

Weeks ago, a gunman opened fire at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College in the United States, killing nine people and injuring seven. President Barack Obama commented that these kind of shootings are becoming all too ‘routine’. Yes, indeed. As a Hongkonger living 8,000 miles away from the States – I, too, am becoming numb towards these news headlines.

“Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it … We have become numb to this." 

- Barack Obama

The numbness Obama mentioned is not because people are now apathetic towards human lives, but because these incidents are overly-frequent that Americans started to ‘get used’ to them. Since Obama got reelected in November 2012, there have been 993 mass shooting events in the United States, not including the Umpqua one this time. Almost 300 of them are in 2015.


The Second Amendment and its endless debate

Debates on gun control are heated up after the incident again, same after every other shooting. Obama has been trying to push gun control reform in his administration, only to encounter opposition from the Republican Party.

Like what the President said, mines are made safer when Americans are killed in mine disasters; communities are made safer when Americans are killed in foods and hurricanes. How to make a community safer when Americans are killed by guns? Gun control might be, or should be the best solution, but the Conservatives don’t think so. They continue to wave the flag of The Second Amendment and use the hashtag #moregunslesscrime online to resist any form of gun controls. They want a change on gun laws too – they want more guns.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted back in 1791. It protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms and is part of the first ten amendments contained in the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the right belongs to individuals but the right is not unlimited and does not prohibit all regulation of either firearms or similar devices.


Mental illness – is it really the cause?

As the US presidential election is approaching, candidates of the two sides are holding firmer to their stance towards gun control. GOP candidate Ben Carson said that if he face an active shooter, “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me." By this he means that he can defend himself if he has a gun. “The shooter can only shoot one person at a time," Carson argued. “He cannot shoot a whole group of people. So the idea is overwhelm him so not everybody gets killed."

In fact, arguments from both sides are pretty clear. The Democrats want stricter gun laws, so that when less people own guns and carry guns around, it is less likely for these campus shooting to happen. Just take a look at Australia. After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre that killed 35 people and injured 28, John Howard, Australia’s prime minister at the time, led the drafting of National Firearms Agreement (NFA) which sharply restricted legal ownership of firearms. It also established a registry of all guns owned in the country and required a permit for all new firearm purchases. About 650,000 legally owned guns were peacefully seized, then destroyed, as part of the buyback. The average firearm suicide rate in Australia in the seven years after the bill declined by 57 percent compared with the seven years prior. The average firearm homicide rate went down by about 42 percent.

When the results of stricter gun control seems loud and clear, The Republicans insists that guns itself don’t kill people, it is the person behind the gun that kills people. Thus, they advocates more resources on mental health education. Let’s take a look at the mental health statistics in the US: A report in the American Journal of Public Health, published in February 2015, suggested that only 5 percent of the 120,000 gun-related killings were committed by people diagnosed with mental disorders. When Donald Trump say that “this isn’t guns, this is really about mental illness,” is it really the case?

Even it is really about mental illness, like what Obama has said, America isn’t the only country with mentally-ill people, but it is the only advanced country that has the gun tragedy so frequently.


A problem bigger than terrorism

For every American killed by terrorism in the US and around the world, more than 1,000 died from firearms inside the U.S. during the recent decade with available comparative data. The gun fatalities cover all manners of deal, including homicide, accident and suicide. From 2001 to 2013, there were 3,380 American deaths by terrorism, and 406,496 deaths by firearms in the US, according the to US State Department. Which one, then, should you fear more? Gun ownership or terrorism?

I have tried to think of some new insights on the issue, only to find out that there won’t be any. Nothing wow, nothing new – the only way out is a stricter gun control. Even owning firearm might be one of the fundamental rights of the Americans, the obsession towards gun ownership is quite hard to understand. It is a matter of life and death, it is high time to stop the next episode of tragedy before it happened.

不先修心，何以養性

作者：何樂思

今年八月底，屯門大興邨分別只得11及13的歲男童，與女童性交並以手機拍下影片，令社會嘩然。只是社交網絡不時流傳性愛影片，如有男女在巴士上做出不雅行為、在連鎖服裝店更衣室交歡、在大廈天台口交等等，皆在網上引起熱議，接連震驚社會，甚至震驚得有些麻木之餘， 亦令筆者有感於香港兒童及青少年的性知識貧乏，加上社會、學校及家長亦少作討論，情況令人憂心。

無論是娛樂新聞對女性身材的渲染、美容整容廣告、有關性愛經驗的文字，甚至是無數的免費色情影片等等，有關男女關係的資訊在現今社會已是垂手可得。而性教育除包括生常識，亦包括兩性互相尊重及正確的性價值觀。時下男女依賴網絡摸索性知識，但缺乏合適引導，學校教育亦無深入探討，加上兩性關係及性方面的對錯是非難分，兒童及青少年可說是求助無門。

現時教育局沿用1997年制訂的《學校性教育指引》，指引建議學校把性教育融入各學科課程。然而，這只是一個「建議」－ 實則香港並無任何必修的性教育課程，只靠小學常識課、中學的生物課以及一些講座對有關性的議題「蜻蜓點水」。筆者本以為2008年藝人陳冠希的裸照事件會引起家校對性教育的關注，但隨後事件不了了知，似乎仍未足夠喚起學校關注性教育。18年前，互聯網沒有普及、色情手機程式並未出現，客觀環境差之千里，指引根本追不上青少年成長的需要；教育局沒有將性教育列為必修課程，試問學生的性知識可從何來？香港性教育、研究及治療專業協的學校性教育工作者意見調查結果顯示，多於四成的中學沒有對外邀請認可機構到校提供性教育，只是由老師或班主任講解，或每年舉辦一兩次有關性教育的講座，有些中學甚至對此隻字不提。

幾年前有一宗案件，一名「手機色魔」利用手機交友程式，訛稱自己是婦科女醫生取得少女信任，然後聲稱可憑裸照斷症。少女們紛紛傳送裸照供其檢查發育有否異常，待受害人把裸照上傳，色魔便以裸照恐嚇或誘騙對方，又稱性交可治病，藉詞凌辱女事主。並騙得40多名少女，包括多名學生傳上裸照，並與其中4人非法性交，年紀最小的只得13歲。事件證明青少年不敢向人傾訴性方面的問題，又或者不知跟誰傾訴，性知識貧乏下誤墮色魔圈套。

世界衛生組織在2010年推出《歐洲性教育的標準指引》(Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe)，並在2013年發送到歐洲各個衛生部門。指引提出孩童由出生開始到成年期間應該被灌輸的性知識。例如6-9歲的幼童，應學會「不同的個人選擇－包括組織家庭、懷孕、不孕不育、收養、以及接收避孕的基本資訊」，還有「觸摸自己的身體時的享受和愉悅(自慰及手淫)」。12-15歲時就要獲得各項避孕服務的資訊。香港家長可能會覺得指引過於大膽，向小朋友灌輸這類知識「會不會太早」、會否令孩子變得「早熟」等等。但「上醫治未病」，與其讓他們自己「摸着石頭過河」，更應更早教授少年正確的知識。屯門大興邨的風化案就是好例子，男女童只是11及13歲，若果要在青少年成年後或上大學後才教，就已經太遲。

英國、美國及新加坡等與香港發展程度相若的城市，性教育課程推行已久。又有不少調查發現越來越多青少年從色情影片來得到性知識，英國更有老師及家長在討論應否加設「色情影片教育」，令學生對正常的性愛有所認識，以免學生對性生活有非現實的幻想，解答學生在看色情影片時的各種疑問。

總而言之，香港政府應盡快更新性教育課程，並把其列為必修課，使每間中小學都向學生提供循序漸進的性教育，助學生建立正確價值觀。香港社會關心下一代的教育，卻只限於學業成績或專業知識，忽略了兒童及青少年在個人成長上的需要。家長關心的考試科目及範圍，幾乎成為了孩童學習的惟一指標，但其實兒童成長過程中的各種疑惑，政府、學校、家長及社會各界都應對此更加重視，讓下一代除了在學業成績上出眾，也可以健康正面地成長。

新聞專題 - 為何英超在港如此流行? (Why is the English Premier League so popular in Hong Kong?)

英格蘭足球超級聯賽，即英超，一向在香港都十分流行，熱潮更似乎從未減退。但這幾年來­，無論是西班牙，德國還是意大利的聯賽都愈來愈多人關注，更有不少球星轉會到了那邊的­球隊，究竟是什麼原因令香港球迷在多個頂級聯賽中依然選擇英超？

攝影、剪接、訪問、旁述：何樂思

Produced solely by Season Ho

Original Link: http://goo.gl/dnyX9u

美FB增檢舉功能防用戶自殺

記者/何樂思　編輯/陳衍揚
Original article: http://goo.gl/rttXGE

【本網訊】Facebook化身守護天使？該社交網站早前與美政府、華盛頓大學社工學院及數個防止自殺機構合作，上周三起新增「檢舉自殺」選項。當用家注意到朋友發布有自殺傾向的負面資訊時，可利用新功能去幫助他們。

Facebook會主動聯絡有可疑的當事人。(網上圖片)

若用家看到朋友發布有可疑的更新，用家可在帖子的右上角選項中選擇檢舉(Report Post)，然後Facebook會提供一系列選擇，例如聯絡對方、聯絡其他朋友提供幫助或聯繫自殺求助熱線。然後Facebook會審閱該帖，若他們亦認同內容有可疑，便會主動聯絡當事人。其後，當事人使用Facebook時便會彈出提示，他可以選擇向朋友求助或要求支援，例如致電熱線或聯絡區內專家，以處理其情緒問題或自殺傾向。Facebook亦會提供一些打氣短片，由一些曾企圖自殺的過來人分享經驗。

新增功能可支援手機及桌面版Facebook，但暫時只供美國一半Facebook用家使用，計劃於數月內擴展至全美國。

(《哈芬登郵報》)

Young PR Professionals Competition - How I started my PR career

By Season Ho - Student Category Winner 2014

Original post: http://www.cprfhk.org/2015/02/young-pr-professionals-competition-how-i-started-my-pr-career/

Time flies. It has already been a year since I joined the Young Public Relations Professionals Competition, organized annually by the Council of Public Relations Firms in Hong Kong. Winning the competition kick-started my career in PR and communications. Though I am still an undergraduate student, I am fortunate enough to have worked in different international PR and marketing agencies, where I gained practical experience and found my career path.

The brief of the competition last year was set against a week-long art festival for performance arts on Sai Yeung Choi Street. Entrants have to come up with a six month integrated PR campaign for the event. At the time, my knowledge and understanding of PR came mainly from textbooks and case studies. Once I started working on the PR plan for the competition, I found it quite difficult as I never had a chance to develop such a plan from the beginning to the end. The case studies and examples of successful PR campaigns I read in textbooks were huge, and I finally got a chance to plan a similar one. I spent a lot of time brainstorming what makes a street art festival successful, and my friends and teachers gave me some great, inspiring ideas as well. Finally, I proposed a series of creative events under the campaign, ‘Let Art Out’, which aims to encourage young people to express their feelings, ideas and artistic personality in daily life. I was thrilled to win the award of the competition for the Student Category.

As a part of the award, I got to do a 1.5-month internship with FleishmanHillard. It was my first proper internship with a PR agency. I was in the consumer team and I gained exposure to a wide spectrum of PR work, ranging from product launch and award presentation ceremony, to employee engagement and media roundtables, all of which were eye-opening.

Overall, my time at FleishmanHillard turned out to be so much more fruitful and unforgettable than I had expected. By physically going to work full-time and interacting with people and clients in real life situations, I was able to acquire various new skills, not to mention the lunch-time staff training sessions and the awesome Give Me Five parties we had in the office. I had fun at FleishmanHillard.

Afterwards I moved to JWT for another 2-month summer internship where I acquired other client-servicing skills. Working in an advertising agency is quite different, but still it is all about communication.

Right now, I am working as a part-time intern in Edelman’s corporate and finance team. Thanks to previous agency experience, I am more equipped with essential PR skills and I am more confident in taking up new challenges. The work environment, corporate culture, the people - almost everything is very innovative and youthful at Edelman. I am so glad to have accumulated such valuable work experience before graduation and I have treasured every second of it. What is better than doing what you love, and loving what you do?

Looking back, 2014 was really a life-changing year. Since I won the Young PR Professional Competition, I have embarked on a journey that brought me to the real PR world, which convinced me to start my career in PR. I would say that the internship opportunity lined up by CPRFHK as part of the prize is extremely helpful for university students, whether they are from PR, journalism, communication or other marketing related disciplines. I highly recommend interested students to give it a try. 2015 might be the year for you to kick-start your PR career. Game on!

Hong Kong Model United Nations 2015 Opening Speech

by Season Ho

Dear honourable guests, advisors and students,

On behalf of the Hong Kong Model United Nations Club, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to all of you for supporting our Hong Kong Model United Nations 2015. Thank you Ms Annie Wu, Ms Elsie Leung, Mr. J Ian Burchett and Mr. Patrick Mansier, for sparing the time out of your busy schedule to join our ceremony.

With this edition there starts a new cycle in the life of HKMUN. We strive to offer you an unforgettable experience, by relying on the experience of the past editions, further enhancing the features that made HKMUN such a special project and, at the same time, introducing new and unconventional approaches to MUN’s.

The story of HKMUN started in 2005 with a handful of people who wanted to establish the first international MUN in Hong Kong and a landmark for MUNs in the region. Despite setbacks and unavoidable circumstances, they achieved their goal by organizing the first HKMUN in 2005 to the best of their abilities. It was built with hard work, driven by ambition and professionalism and supported with the help of friends and family. It achieved its purpose as a promoter of the core values of the UN, a forum for young professionals to exchange ideas, but it also became much more: it became a community, a family where bonds are created and shared for a lifetime. In spite of the passing of time and its continuous expansion, HKMUN remains faithful to its original values – professionalism, equality, integrity, commitment to excellence, high levels of academic achievement and social integration.

The theme proposed for this year’s conference challenges you to go an extra mile in the service of humanity. We live in an era of great uncertainty, but also one of profound opportunity for us to make a difference for the sake of others. The human family grows ever so steadily, with more than seven billion members, and this provides us with an opportunity to communicate, collaborate, and find a common ground in order to shape the future that we want and need.

Model UN conferences constitute such a unique experience because, while recreating the work and functioning of the UN and other organisations, as well as the fascinating universe of international relations, they also offer the opportunity for innovation. MUNs help create the premises where fresh ideas can be exchanged and out-of-the-box solutions can be tested for some of the most challenging international issues. On some occasions, they constitute examples of cooperation and creativity that should be taken into account by the “real diplomats”. On other occasions, they present the delegates with the bitter shortcomings of the current state of international affairs that they will have to address as future diplomats. Notwithstanding the outcome, the experience that the participants acquire is invaluable.

Distinguished participants, I strongly encourage you to take full advantage of the opportunity brought forward by HKMUN. I encourage you to be creative, test the limits of current international relations, while remaining realistic, learn as much as you can from this experience and bear these lessons in mind when entrusted with real decision-making power in your future careers.

To conclude, I sincerely hope that you will remain mindful of the fact that even if this conference is a simulation, the problems that you are invited to address are very real. They are not simply numbers in a chart, data in a report or an interesting doctrine; they are or will be part of the everyday reality of actual people. Therefore, they need to be addressed with wisdom, utmost care and perfect awareness of the impact that they will have on the lives and destinies of real people.

I welcome you all and wish you the best of luck in the hope that you achieve what you came looking for in HKMUN 2015.

Learnings of Crisis & Issue Management

by Season Ho

Original post: http://edelmanhkinterns.tumblr.com/post/110057080402/learnings-of-crisis-issue-management

Before stepping into the PR industry, when I browse the websites of international big PR agencies, I always wonder what the 24-hour crisis hotline is for. What elements are so urgent to a company that requires immediate follow-ups? During my internship at Edelman, I have the opportunity to learn and explore more. I gradually understand how important it is for a corporate organization to prepare for any reputational risks. Hence, crisis planning and reputation management is crucial.

In the new age of digital media, the possibility that companies facing risk become much higher in particularly information can spread widely via various social media platforms. At Edelman, we have a specialized practice to help our clients from media training to rapid-response crisis management.

As an intern, I am grateful to have the opportunity to participate in some issue management projects. When companies unable to respond or address to the issue, it escalates quickly when you are least prepared for it. The damage to corporate reputation sometimes is irreparable.
Here are some areas that I have learned through providing different training, trend monitoring and strategy development to help a company to get prepared for crises.

Crisis Preparedness

How to prepare for crisis? It’s important to understand what could be a crisis for an Organization. It is critical to have a clear, consistent, and widely-understood management approach how to handle crisis and also when receiving lots of media enquiries and how to respond to the media.

Edelman has tailor-made training to match the needs and culture of each organization. During my internship, I received different kinds of trainings including media training & crisis planning. The program includes training programs for CEO/Senior Executives or often spokesperson such as Corporate Communication Director. Crisis training will have real-time crisis simulations to test plan and response time. Simulated web sites, inbound calls and faxes are also used to mimic reality. Some others include training specializing in financial media, especially for broadcast media interviews. We also helped our clients recognize that media trainings are a long term investment in their brands and helped the spokesperson of the company to handle a variety of media interviews and public speaking situations.

Senior executives are extremely aware of the need to be better prepared to manage any kind of risks in order to protect their organizations and reputations. We always hear the old saying ‘prevention is better than cure’, but in the case of having training, I think it is ‘precaution as important as cure’!

In picture with Ray Rudowski, Asia Pacific Regional Director in Crisis Planning & Training.

Trend Monitoring

Responses have to be made quickly when it comes to issue management. However, before responding to the issue, one must not overlook the importance of trend monitoring. I have involved in doing research and monitoring for issues and crisis. Trend monitoring is important as every client wants to know what people are saying about the company, and how ‘heated’ the issue is especially in this boundless internet world.

The monitoring includes traditional news monitoring, social media monitoring and opposition desk research. Through all these searches and monitoring, we can accurately identify the stakeholders and strategic plan can be made in a more efficient way. I still remember helping my team to do media monitoring for a client that required monitoring as a region not just a market. As an international PR agency, we utilized our global network to work together with offices in US and UK to provide a 24-hour media monitoring across different regions. This is the first time I feel I am working for a truly global organization. While maintaining close and active communication with the US and UK teams, we are able to gain quantitative and qualitative insight into media coverage for our client’s business. With this basic trend monitoring and research, substantial support is provided for defining the problems and assessing risk. Doing the trend monitoring also helped me to better understand client profiles and the development of the issue, it also exposed me to different media outlets around the world. In fact, doing monitoring is one of my favorite tasks at work!

As the old saying, ‘no news is good news’. Yet, situated in such a digital age, issues and crisis are sometimes inevitable. Edelman helps organization to prepare and deal with it. Reading the successful examples of the global Edelman team in dealing with issues and crisis, except feeling impressed, I am also looking forward to learn more from this practice. We don’t have to be afraid of the words ‘issue’ or ‘ crisis’ as long as there is a good team backing you up, and Edelman, the Team Dragon Boat, is surely the one.

北韓網絡「與世隔絕」九小時

北韓網絡「與世隔絕」九小時
24/12/2014 港聞
記者/何樂思　編輯/張浚浩

Original report at: http://goo.gl/6CxcYx

【本網訊】北韓網絡系統疑遭駭客入侵，中斷逾九小時，受影響網絡現逐漸回復正常。美國白宮和國務院拒絕透露是否美國政府所為，中國政府則否認參與。有網絡保安專家形容，「北韓猶如在世界的網絡地圖上被除掉」。

索尼早前因一部有關刺殺金正恩的電影，受到駭客攻擊，美國指北韓是始作俑者，北韓否應，反指美國的指控缺乏實質證據。美國總統奧巴馬揚言，華府會為是次攻擊「提出相應的回應」，但未有透露詳情。

瘋傳數據加重負荷

事發在當地周二，北韓網絡懷疑受到駭客入侵，網路中斷長達9小時31分鐘。美國互聯網服務供應公司Arbor Networks表示，其系統在當地時間周六至周一，偵測到針對北韓的網絡攻擊，懷疑駭客不停傳輸大量數據到北韓網絡，令其負荷過重，一度中斷。

北韓網絡小 易被癱瘓
Arbor Networks網絡保安部總監Dan Holden表示，北韓網絡規模較小、連線有限，攻擊其網絡至癱瘓相對簡單，不能一口咬定事件與美國政府有關。他又表示，北韓互聯網並不精密，任何一個因不能看這部電影而失落的人也可發動攻擊。

網絡保安公司CloudFlare主席Matthew Prince亦表示，是次網絡攻擊是在一人能力範圍以內，故未能肯定是否網絡攻擊。

北韓為世界上其中一個最少網絡連線的國家，只有少部份民眾才能使用電腦，雖然擁有寬頻網絡，但只有少部份獲批准的民眾才可使用全球性網頁（World Wide Web），其餘只可連接國內的內聯網。此外，雖然超過一百萬人正使用手提電話，但網絡只供北韓的幾個主要城市使用，不可以打電話出國或接聽國外電話。

（CNN）

Green Café Alliance failed to go green

by Season Ho and Dennis Hung

The Green Cafe Alliance is committed to encouraging the public to reduce waste and to use less disposable cutlery. Its members, however, were recently found to have gone back on the commitments they made. The Environmental Protection Department admitted failing to monitor the Alliance's work,

while most Alliance members declined to comment on its effectiveness.

Our reporter visited 5 shops of each member café chains of the Alliance, and discovered that green measures were not implemented. Disposable cutlery is readily available at coffee bars without any member of staff monitoring the consumption. Most cafes are using paper cups even for dine-in orders, and no reminder to use less disposable cutlery has been given by any of their staff.

At Starbucks cafés, for example, there is no reminder at all to remind customers to think twice before taking disposable cutlery, except ‘green tips’ like “Help us save the environment! Please use less disposable utensils!” posted up somewhere near the coffee bar.

Disposable cutlery is distributed freely in some café with a reminder next to it.

Is the Alliance ‘just a gimmick’?

Some frequent customers expressed that they have never heard of the Alliance. Alice Chan, a loyal customer of Pacific Coffee Company, said that it is usually the customer who asked to replace paper cups with mugs but not the baristas, ‘most of the time, they give us paper cups even for dine-in orders, perhaps they don’t want to do the washing-up or they are just too busy to do so’.

Another customer, Ben Chan, said he never received any green tips or promotion during his visits to the cafés.

Asked if he thought that the cafés are eco-friendly enough, Chan described them as ‘completely not eco-friendly”, and added: “I doubt whether the Alliance is just a gimmick used by the government.”

Former staff admitted difficulties in working out green measures

Viann Chan Wai-yan, a former barista of Starbucks Coffee, said there are some internal green guidelines for frontline staff.  Firstly, staff should ask customers to use coffee mugs rather than paper cups proactively when they are dining in. Secondly, staff should take the initiative to remind customers to use less disposable cutlery, as well as tissue paper even if they are recyclable.

However, she admitted that it is difficult to check frontline staff in all branches for compliance with the guidelines, as they are just some voluntary incentives. ‘Not a must and not something compulsory for the staffs,’ she added.

Disposable paper and plastic cups are used even for dine-in orders.

Lack of communication shown between café groups and the government

The reporter tried to contact all 6 member café groups of the Alliance. Pret A Manger expressed that they have already stopped working with the EPD on this campaign in 2011, one year after the Alliance was formed.

Wincy So, the PR officer of Starbucks Coffee, highlighted their other green initiatives without giving any concrete response the effectiveness of the Alliance. They claimed that they only use disposable cutlery for takeaway orders, and it is their ‘usual practice’ to use mugs for dine-in orders. Also, she highlighted that Starbucks was ‘invited’ by the EPDas one of the members of the Alliance instead of initiating it

Meanwhile, the staff of Causeway Bay’s McCafé emphasised that they have been encouraging customers to use less paper cups by giving $3 back to those who brought their own cup or own tumbler, and that they also help frequent customers to store their tumblers and cups in the café.

Nevertheless, other 3 café groups, including agnès b. CAFÉ L.P.G., Caffé HABITU, and Pacific Coffee Company, declined to comment on the issue.

The Environmental Protection Department, which initiated the formation of the Alliance, admitted its failure to monitor the Alliance’s progress in fulfilling its objective. "Our role is to merely motivate waste reduction and to encourage green practices in the industry," said Emily Ip, the spokesperson of EPD in a phone interview. She also explained that there are no updates as to the Alliance’s progress because it was formed "long time ago".

Legislator suggests complete ban on disposable cutlery in café

Responding to the ineffectiveness of the Alliance, vice chairman of the Panel on Environmental Affairs, Kenneth Chan Ka-lok, doubted whether the Alliance is really promoting green living. “If the Alliance really wants to promote waste reduction, the cafes should not provide any disposable cutlery to their customers. This is the most direct and effective way to reduce waste.”

He also suggested restaurants to charge for the disposable cutlery taken by customers, and urged the government to do better in monitoring the progress of these campaigns.

According to the report on USA today, in the US, Starbucks alone sells over 4 million coffee drinks daily, and approximately 3 billion Starbucks coffee cups are sent to the landfill each year. In Hong Kong, where there is an annual amount of 5 million tonnes of municipal solid waste generated according to the Environment Bureau, reducing solid waste from the source is necessary. The massive amount of waste generated by the catering industry has become an increasing concern in the city which is famous for her variety of foods and beverages.

The Green Café Alliance was formed in 2010, under the "Minimising Waste, Maximising the Future" campaign organised by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD). Six café groups, including agnès b. CAFÉ L.P.G., Caffé HABITU, McCafé, Pacific Coffee Company, Pret A Manger and Starbucks Coffee Hong Kong, are members of the Alliance, with a total of more than 400 stores. As reported in an official press release dated 11 July, 2010 when the GCA is formed, it seeks to "encourage members of the public to use less disposable cutlery, reduce waste and to share green tips with them."

	agnès b. CAFÉ L.P.G.	Caffé HABITU	McCafé	Pacific Coffee Company	Pret A Manger	Starbucks Coffee
No. of Stores	10+	17+	98+	190+	15+	130+
From the visits of our reporters
Using mugs for dine-in orders	✔	✔	✔	X	X	X
Providing green tips in the cafés	X	X	X	X	✔	✔
Reminding customers to think twice before using disposable cutlery	X	X	X	X	X	X
Other voluntary green measures (not included in the GCA commitment)
Discount for customers who brought their own cups	X	X	X	✔	X	✔
Using biodegradable materials for disposable cutlery	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔