Spirit of Hong Kong Awards: start-up turns to tech to tackle urban waste

Inconvenience is one of the biggest obstacles to recycling, a challenge that prompted a Hongkonger to establish a one-stop recycling service.

Jorch Wong Ching-hei left advertising in 2019 and started The Loops Hong Kong after finding that recycling different materials often required travelling to different collection points.

With no prior background in the industry, he contacted recycling operators, visited plants and learned how paper, plastics and metals were processed.

Wong also taught himself coding, spending about a year learning online before creating an early version of the platform used to arrange collections.

The Loops is a finalist for the Spirit of Sustainability Award in this year’s Spirit of Hong Kong Awards, co-organised by Sino Group and the South China Morning Post.

Its original door-to-door service sought to remove one common barrier by allowing customers to place various recyclables together, leaving the sorting to Wong’s team. Today, the company accepts more than 40 categories of recyclable materials.

“We try to solve a very real problem with every service we introduce. We do a lot of research and speak to customers first to make sure the need really exists,” said Wong.

That approach led the company to tackle harder-to-handle waste.

Hong Kong’s move towards waste-to-energy treatment has opened another area of business for The Loops.

Wong said liquid-heavy waste can reduce the efficiency of incineration, creating demand for companies that can separate liquids from packaging before disposal.

Instead of discarding the packaging, The Loops cleans them and routes the materials back into recycling channels, reducing overall incineration volume. Drinks, dairy products, cosmetics and other liquid-filled goods are among the products it processes.

The company is also using technology to address another major challenge facing businesses. While many firms know they generate large amounts of rubbish, few have detailed information about what is being thrown away.

Its newest service uses cameras and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse clients’ waste streams. The system categorises rubbish, estimates recyclable proportions, and tracks when and where specific waste is generated.

Wong said these insights help companies figure out where recycling points were needed most.

Cathay Group, which nominated The Loops for the award, has worked with the company on specialised recycling and an AI-assisted waste audit of its airport lounge operations.

Technology has also been used to make a traditionally labour-intensive industry more transparent. Corporate customers can access collection records and reports through the company’s system, while service packages and prices are set out in advance.

Although the government shelved the twice-delayed waste-charging scheme in 2024 because of insufficient social support, Wong remained optimistic about its eventual roll-out.

“Hong Kong remains behind several Asian cities in using charging to encourage waste reduction, while such a policy could also make recycling more attractive to households and businesses,” he said. “I think it will happen sooner or later. It’s really a matter of when.”

Running the company has required the same willingness to learn that got him started, with machinery, software, repairs, sales and operations all demanding new skills.

“The hardest part is that you have to keep learning,” he said.

The Spirit of Hong Kong Awards were established in 2013 to recognise society’s unsung heroes and organisations whose work might escape public attention.