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18 November 2024
Stepping into Rosie Chan’s workstation at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), I was warmly greeted by her bright smile. As I reached out for a handshake, I was taken aback by what the lady, with hair cascading down to her waist, was holding – a box full of crawling bugs. As soon as we settled in, she enthusiastically gave a detailed introduction to the insects. “The Black Soldier fly has a lot to like about it. Its larvae have a feeding stage of around a month, during which they simply keep eating. As they mature, their melanin can be extracted for use in semiconductors.” What’s more, Rosie, Founder of startup company JAPJAP Zero Waste, is ‘nurturing’ them to fight against food waste.
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Food waste has long been the pain point of Hong Kong. In 2022, approximately 11,130 tonnes of municipal solid waste were disposed of in landfills daily, and food waste constitutes the largest portion at about 30%, amounting to 3,300 tonnes. To put this into perspective, this amount is equivalent to the weight of about 220 double-decker buses.
Photo: Rosie Chan
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JAPJAP processing machines have been set up in schools
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Rosie is a member of the class of 2022 in PolyU’s Environment and Interior Design programme. Having spent much of her undergraduate years confined at home due to the pandemic, she became attached to the idea of sustainable living, which eventually led to her invention of a one-stop food waste collection and processing machine for the final-year interdisciplinary Integrated Capstone Project. The machine deploys the larvae of Black Soldier fly to consume food waste, and upon completing its life cycle, the biomass can be repurposed into raw materials and animal feed.
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Rosie’s machine is made from upcycled plastic pallets and adopts a plastic Lego-like brick structure, allowing it to fit in spaces of varying ceiling heights and sizes. With this flexibility, on-site food waste processing is made possible. “Say, in a residential estate with approximately 20,000 inhabitants, only around 200 square feet of space would be enough to house the machinery required to manage all the food waste.” Currently, Rosie and her team are developing AI and IoT systems to accurately monitor parameters such as temperature, humidity, and weight, in an effort to ensure the machine operates at optimal efficiency.
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Coming from a design discipline but without scientific research background, Rosie recounted moments when she felt underestimated. Yet, with her perseverance and faith, JAPJAP is steadily progressing through collaborations with professionals from environmental science, computer science and mechanical engineering. To date, the startup has received numerous awards and funding in the innovation and technology sector, not only instilling a sense of mission in the young entrepreneur but also reaffirming her aspiration to “enhancing people’s lives through design.”
In early November this year, Rosie was invited to share her insights and experience at the Sustainability Conference organised by Chinachem Group. Serving as an effective exchange platform, the conference brought together experts from the government, commercial sector, academia, as well as youth and startup entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds to discuss viable solutions to issues facing our planet. -
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