News & Stories

While HKUST is renowned for its research and academic acumen, many do not know about its efforts to be one of the greenest universities in Hong Kong.  In the past year, HKUST has continued hard work to be an environmental champion, and have achieved much in this regard. Among the environmental milestones for this year are several community-driven initiatives. The HKUST Green Team, a 100% student and staff-driven initiative, launched a Lunch Boxes Go Green Campaign, encouraging the community to bring reusable containers when buying takeaway food. A strong response saw more than 2,500 disposable boxes saved.

Prof. Arthur LAU, Co-director of Environmental Management and Technology Program, was invited by MTR Corporation Ltd. to shoot an educational video clip on MTR's water-recycling measures.

Two new recycling programs were launched in the fall semester, Styrofoam and electronic and electrical waste recycling on campus.

According to Professor Brian Mak, Associate Professor in HKUST’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, a recent survey indicated that Hong Kong is home to around 50,000 people who are either totally deaf or are hearing-impaired. However, the kind of support this community requires is not currently available. “The number of professional sign language interpreters [in Hong Kong] is low – only about 54 in total,” Professor Mak explained. For their final year project, three Computer Science and Engineering undergraduates decided to use the skills they had developed at HKUST to tackle this problem. The app developed by Ken Ka-wai Lai, Mary Ming-fong Leung and Kelvin Wai-chiu Yung translates Chinese sentences keyed into a phone into video sequences illustrating how to sign the words.

Our HKUST Library has been spending great effort in promoting sustainability through their operations.

To utilize the natural resources and reduce the operational cost of the orphanages, a group of HKUST students from Connect service learning program have spent the last two summers there to help build a solar energy system as the country is shiny for most of the time during the year.

The HKUST Global Days of Changemaking (rebranded from HKUST Service Learning Day) with the aim to mobilize all HKUST members to take action and solve social problems in their communities to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Students, faculty, staff and alumni in Hong Kong or those currently living overseas can engage in various changemaking efforts coordinated by HKUST Connect to contribute to initiatives that improve their communities.

Committed to developing an environmentally-friendly campus, HKUST, a world-class research university on science and technology, aims to take a leadership role in demonstrating and promoting sustainability to the wider community. A notable example is the seawater-cooled central chilling system adopted by HKUST from its earliest days to provide air-conditioning for the main Academic Building. This pioneering technology has since been extended to the new eight-story Cheng Yu Tung Building (CYT) by expanding the capacity of the original chiller plant to create a district cooling system, thereby maximizing efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint.