In the age of Kindles, dying newspapers and online media (guilty as charged!), the annual Hong Kong Book Fair is a rather romantic if not slightly anachronistic event, attracting a million visitors this year alone.
But the book fair hasn’t done a very good job of touting the value of hard copies: Oriental Daily revealed that thousands of brand-new books – including magazines and textbooks — were being wantonly discarded after the fair’s end.
To add insult to injury, barely used bookshelves were also left to be sent off to the West New Territories Landfill, having apparently served their purpose during the weeklong event.
An employee of the local publishing company Subculture, which exhibited at the fair, told Oriental Daily that it’s not the first time the book fair has been so wasteful.
He said that the problem lies in the fact that publishers find it too expensive to ship unsold books back to where they came from, and even if they did do so, they would have to pay for the goods’ storage.
Oriental Daily footage showed people sifting through discarded books to bring items back home.
Waste not, want not!
Photos: Screenshots via hk.on.cc
