Plans for a zero-waste kitchen cooked up in flames

By Louna Larose

The school spends nothing on renovating the revolting bathrooms but spends an absurd amount to revamp the kitchen and make it “zero-waste.”

Seven million Hong Kong dollars. That is enough to buy 700 Macbook Pros with the fancy touch bars! What is next? Flying Gordan Ramsay from the UK to our school? I guess that is where our $166k annual school fees are going to — building a not-worth-it kitchen.

Renaissance College (RCHK) has been working with Ryde Architecture company to renovate the old school kitchen. The process involved taking apart an entire room, smashing down a couple of walls, and throwing out “old” equipment.

“The amount of money is very simple, we spent seven million dollars,” says Samuel Hureau, Renaissance College’s business manager.

No, the amount of money spent is ridiculous. When I was told the amount I was completely shocked. The money could have been used for much better purposes, like upgrading the bathroom system, fixing broken facilities, or even a huge school-wide cleaning.

Parents I talked to were even more outraged by the spendings — half of their hard-earned money goes to their children’s school fees, only to be spent on unnecessary kitchens.

A parent of an RCHK student commented, “If the company selected received HKD 7 million on it, I hope they managed to pay for a nice holiday or buy an Aston Martin with the profits [...] I am disappointed that my school fees have been used to fund this… ”

In the process of building the kitchen, the school was committed to the idea of being “zero-waste.” But was this really the case?

The correct definition is to be able to produce and consume a product without discharging anything that negatively impacts the environment, which is paradoxical to what these kitchens actually did.

Winnie Pau, a Year 11 student who was as involved in the planning and designing of the kitchen as I was, noted that sustainability was not a strong focus in the process, that “it was more of a focus in the actual kitchen rather than the process of getting to that stage.”

I can offer my own experience because I was directly involved with the process from start to finish. From participating in class to attending external meetings. A few classmates were in charge of clearing out all the equipment from the cabinets. All I remember and all I could complain about for two weeks was the colossal amount of “old” equipment that we were told to throw away in rubbish bags, even if the equipment was perfectly usable. What a waste.

Not only did the kitchen not reach its zero-waste goal, but many people in the RCHK community were not satisfied with the design outcome. Phoebe King, a design teacher heavily involved in the project, who stated that the goal was, “to stand out from other ESF food tech rooms.” However, this does not seem to be the case. A visual arts scholar from RCHK said, “I really do not like the colour scheme, it reminds me of bathrooms.”

The earlier RCHK parent elaborated: “The colour scheme is much brighter than it was when it was first shown to use, the colours are overused in the space, and the shelving is all over the place. This kitchen does not inspire me to spend any time in it. Thank goodness we have FoodPanda.”

Take a look for yourself, below are images of before and after.

Some may say that this new, fancy kitchen will lead to more publicity for our school. It is true — we will not be ashamed of the photos we post on Facebook or Instagram. But was seven million Hong Kong dollars really worth it? Could it not have been done with a much lower budget? Another company that RCHK asked to make a proposal was PhilDesign which had only a four million dollar budget. This shows that the designs could have easily been done zero-waste at a much lower budget. It was completely unnecessary and wasteful since it will not even be used often.

The only way to make this kitchen worth it is by offering more opportunities and enforce more zero-waste practices. Give students more chances to utilize it. Offer extracurricular activities, school projects, and competitions. The new kitchen will not be a waste only if we spice things up a bit.