April Lai is a woman with a mission. Every Thursday and Saturday, she spends 2.5/hours at a public trash collection point in the Wan Chai district of Hong Kong, home to some of the city's most colourful nightlife and scores of bars, clubs and restaurants. Her goal: to collect glass. Wine bottles, beer bottles, jam jars, soy sauce bottles - she will take them all. Most of the glass is brought in from a few dozen bars in Wan Chai and in Soho, another bar-studded neighbourhood in this Asian financial hub. And sometimes Hong Kong residents come to her little spot among the skyscrapers to bring their offerings. Each haul from the bars brings in between two and three tons of glass on average - not bad, given that the resources of Green Glass Green, the tiny non-governmental organisation managed by Ms Lai, extend to just a few part-time drivers and volunteers. The destination for this glass is Tiostone Environmental, whose small factory on the outskirts of Hong Kong makes paving stones from trash.
