In a city-state with packed landfills and a low recycling rate, the Hong Kong East Community Green Station is an attempt to rethink Hong Kong’s approach to waste. The project sits on a 0.8-acre site beneath an elevated expressway in Shau Kei Wan, a neighborhood on the east side of Hong Kong Island with a mix of residential, commercial, and industrial properties. Built with recycled and sustainable materials, the site includes recycling facilities as well as educational and community spaces that are meant to expose citizens to the importance of waste reduction.
The Ecovillage at Currumbin is an innovative 110-hectare (272 ac), 144-unit residential community that showcases best practices in ecologically sustainable residential development. Conceived and implemented with minimal resources by a small group of individuals who wished to inspire improved practices in land development, the project is being developed on degraded farmland on the exurban fringe of Gold Coast City, a major resort city on Queensland’s Pacific Ocean coast. The project site is seven minutes from the shore. The developer, Landmatters Currumbin Valley Property Ltd., has rehabilitated the site and is protecting its environmental integrity and biodiversity by preserving 50 percent of it as an environmental reserve, netting 80 percent of the property as open space.
