School of Communication’s Integrated Communication Management Year 4 students Fafa Cheng, Be Cheung, Marco Chung, Whitney Fung and Ada Luk promoted the idea of their social enterprise Cardboard Maker through a short film which earned them the Best Multimedia Award at the Asia Social Innovation Award event. Through the film, they hope to turn the public’s negative perception of scavengers around.

In 2017, there was a shift in the Mainland recycling policy that led to some local recycling firms to stop collecting waste paper at one point, which brought the matter to the attention of the team. “Many people don’t think scavenging is a real job. They have formed a negative impression of scavengers, who are most overlooked by society,” Marco stated.

In order to change the public’s attitude towards scavengers and raise social awareness, the team named their social enterprise Cardboard Maker. They hope primary and secondary schools will make an effort to organise cardboard recycling workshops for students, and will gradually open those workshops to the public. All the proceeds of the workshops will go towards assisting scavengers to improve their work conditions and provide them with sufficient equipment to improve their livelihood.

The students collaboratively produced a three-minute animation that introduces the vision and logistics of Cardboard Maker. The content and techniques of the short film were commended by the judges. 

The narrator of the short film, Be said, “We really want to thank our teachers for encouraging us to join the competition and providing valuable feedback so that we could apply what we have learned in class and receive recognition for our hard work.”  Marco continued, “Our team was very surprised to win the award. We hope that we can put our plan into action if we have the resources and the ability in the future.”

To watch the promotional video of Cardboard Maker, please click here. 

The annual Asia Social Innovation Award event aims to promote social entrepreneurship and provide a platform for cross-country networking and expertise exchanges for idea-stage entrepreneurs, to assist with their implementation of ideas and innovations.