It has got to have been 2-3 weeks since my last update on this. Travel, Chinese New Year, and plans to move my surfboard works to Tap Mun have really taken the best of me over the last few weeks. I just came back this morning from my last trip for a good month and now I can finally get back to working on this effort. So previously on January 16th I had the chance to speak at the Hong Kong Legislative Council about my thoughts and feelings about our current waste management system. Limited to just a few minutes, there wasn’t really much one could say. Add to that being my first time at it, well let's just say I learned a lot! But I did get the chance after the presentation for an additional question to the government officials attending that meeting. I took the opportunity to invite the attending Mr. Wong Hon-Meng of the Environmental Protection Department to join a small group of students from a local school and a few visiting university students from the USA on a small mangrove clean-up excursion in AFCD's Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park. Unfortunately, he was not able to attend although I did get a phone call from the EPD the following day. Hopefully this means I have at least got their attention and today I finally began getting in touch with the person from the EPD who has followed up with me. Also over the last couple weeks I received a letter from Patrick Lai of the AFCD whom this petition is directed to. In the letter he informs me that the AFCD does "...plan to include a theme on "Threats to the Marine Ecosystem" in the exhibition hall of the proposed visitor centre". However, there were not any details included other than him mentioning "...this theme will surely cover marine littering". I appreciate their response, but we need to know a lot more than this because, based on my experience over the last 15 years, we probably will just end up seeing a couple sentences mentioning "trash is bad" in the "fine print". It would hardly be anything that would achieve the result of getting people to shake their heads and realise the damage we are causing every day in Hong Kong and it's nearby waters with our worst in the world habits. In the ideal solution, "Shock and Awe" is what we need to see in Hong Kong to get people to wake-up. The waste that exists on our shores and in our waters is a direct result of the failure of our current waste management system since it would not be there if our current system was functioning sufficiently. We are the only ones to blame since, if I remember right, the EPD's own study indicated that 80% of the waste is coming from our own land based sources, not from mainland China. Pushing forward, my plans are to finish surveying the waste in AFCD's Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park and add the respective photos to my waste map https://makarasurf.com/content/shaping-change/#mapping-waste. Please remember you can also send me your own photos with location to include in the waste map either by email to hello@makarasurf.com or simple go to my facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/makarasurf) and post them there. After this, I will let the guerrilla out" a little to try to draw more attention to our plight. Details to follow a little later on this... One thing you could do please is also show your support to another petition that recently started rolling with the goal to end the senseless plastic packaging of produce in all supermarkets in Hong Kong. Please head over to: https://www.change.org/p/wellcome-parknshop-citysuper-stop-wrapping-our-produce-in-plastic-100-000-signatures-needed-cantonese-included and please add your name to their battle! Thanks! -Chris