Machine recycles newspaper as festive wrapping paper

A gift just isn't complete without some kind of wrapping paper. As you can imagine, a gift-giving occasion such as Chinese New Year requires a lot the stuff. And by a lot, I mean 1,600 trees and 170,000 litres of petrol worth to meet Hong Kong's wrapping paper demands alone. To raise awareness of this issue, the Instant Newspaper Recycler was introduced at Sun Hung Kai's East Point City. Pop newspaper in, get wrapping people out… voila! Not only does the free-to-use machine bring a topical problem to light, it also encourages recycling. Check it out.

Using the Instant Newspaper Recycler is simple – visitors feed newspapers into the 2.4 metre red box and wait a few moments. Soon the newspaper pages are given back to the visitor covered in a festive new year design. There are in fact three designs that you may be presented with, each one cleverly including a recycling symbol somewhere in the pattern.

The Green Room Verdict: The project aims to encourage more recycling, and you've got to admit, it's a pretty neat result. We hope to see more ideas like these which are the perfect combo of creativity and ecological concern. Happy Chinese new year!