On a mission to clean up
Hong Kong’s polluted waters

Panoramic views of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour are stunningly iconic, even serving as the backdrop for many Hollywood movies. Zoom in closer, however, and things aren’t quite as idyllic, especially when it comes to the water quality.

Former marine police officer Tony Fan saw this issue first-hand over his career of more than 30 years, much of which was spent on the city’s waterways. He vividly remembers the scene that often greeted him at the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter. “It is extremely polluted with litter; the water appears black sometimes,” he says.

Fan, 59, became even more disheartened when he witnessed the impact of water pollution. “I saw a lot of sick fish floating and struggling, and a lot of dead fish floating on the surface as well. I’ve also seen sick birds,” he says. “There is a vast quantity of plastic filaments and particles in the water – thousands of microplastics. Some can even be seen by the naked eye, which is mind-boggling.”

After he retired last year, Fan wanted to lend a hand to resolving the issue. So when he heard from a friend that the Clean Waterways Initiative (CWI), a local NGO, had teamed up with HSBC to address marine pollution, Fan immediately jumped on board as captain of one of its boats specially designed to pick up trash from Hong Kong’s harbours. There are currently four of these solar-powered, zero-emissions vessels operating in the city as part of this joint effort, called the HSBC Clean Waterways Programme.

Problem reaches a crisis point

Marine pollution is plaguing the world. About 80 per cent of trash – mostly plastic items – that ends up in the ocean comes from land-based sources such as residential waste disposal, beach litter, sewage outflows, stormwater runoff and industrial activity. Scientists have estimated that by 2050, the oceans could contain more plastic than fish.

As a densely populated city with more than 7 million people, Hong Kong is certainly not immune to this problem. The city’s beaches are awash with litter, showing microplastic levels as high as 5,600 pieces per square metre – 40 per cent higher than the global average.

CWI’s founders, the husband-and-wife team of Angus Harris and Ellen Ogren, felt called to help. “We live in Shek O, down by the beach, and are confronted by the litter-strewn water on a daily basis – plastics, bottles, cans, face masks,” Ogren says.

In addition, Harris’ professional background – as a boat captain, marine electrical technician, and later as manager of a yacht management company where he also worked in boat maintenance – meant he was spending many hours on the water.

“Marine pollution is prevalent and obvious to everyone, really, but when you see it as much as I do, the problem comes to the forefront,” he says.

Driven to leave a better world for the next generation, the couple, who are also parents of two children aged one and three, started brainstorming ways to clean up Hong Kong’s waterways more efficiently, and CWI was born.

Sailing towards litter-free waterways

The NGO was formally established in 2019 with a mission to collect waste from Hong Kong’s heavily polluted waterways and fight plastic pollution. The trash is collected using a fleet of solar-powered, zero-emissions boats designed by Harris.

A fleet of four of these boats – named Wayfoong Explorer, Solar Explorer, Aqua Explorer and Harbour Explorer – does the clean-up work at trash hotspots in Victoria Harbour and Aberdeen Harbour. The main goal, according to Harris and Ogren, is to prevent rubbish and plastic debris in these waterways from making their way into the open sea, where it can harm marine ecosystems.

“There are more than 6,000 marine species living in Hong Kong’s waterways alone, and we just want to ensure they are protected,” Harris says.

Getting the boats constructed was not an easy feat, as the work took place mostly in mainland China and had to be overseen remotely amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I wasn’t able to travel and supervise and build, or look at the detail as it was coming together, so that was really concerning at the time, because I just didn’t have any quality control,” Harris says. “Luckily, we had a really good communication channel with the builders via video calls and photographs, and it all worked out well.”