The effectiveness of community green stations : a case study on the Sha Tin and the Eastern community green stations

Abstract

In order to relieve pressure on landfills and instil a green living culture into the community, the Hong Kong Government is now progressively developing Community Green Stations (CGSs) in each of the 18 districts. CGSs serve as a place to strengthen environmental education and facilitate the collection of recyclables at the district level. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of CGSs by conducting a case study on two established CGSs, the Sha Tin and the Eastern CGSs. To achieve these aims, two sets of questionnaires were distributed to 50 visitors of the Eastern CGS and 200 residents of both Sha Tin and Eastern districts respectively starting from Early-January 2017 to Early-February 2017. Also, site visits to the Sha Tin CGS were conducted on 19th and 30th of October in 2016 and that to the Eastern CGS were on 3rd and 7th of January in 2017. Concerning the environmental education service and waste recycling service provided by CGSs, the visitors gave average ratings of 3.58, 4.13 and 3.32 out of 5 to the performance of the exhibitions, the educational activities and the recycling facilities respectively. Although the visitors tended to be satisfied with the services, there is plenty of room for improvement discovered. A more important finding that deserves our attention is the lack of popularity of CGSs, particularly the Sha Tin CGS setting up in remote area of the district. The poor accessibility of CGSs or locating further away from where the citizens live was proved to have negative impact on the publicity of CGSs. The questionnaire results showed there was a statistically significant association between the MTR travelling time the respondents needed and whether they have heard of CGSs (p < 0.05). In view of the key results of this study, recommendations were given for CGSs’ future development as well as the Government’s policies. It is believed that the lessons learnt can be generalized to a wider context of environmental education and waste recycling development in Hong Kong.