The Palace Museum Zero Waste Project with Vanke Foundation

16 January 2020—The Palace Museum and Vanke Foundation have launched “The Palace Museum Zero Waste” collaborative project. The Palace Museum’s Director Wang Xudong with Wang Shi, chairman of Vanke Foundation and founder of Vanke Co., Ltd., represented the two parties at the agreement signing and project launch ceremony. Others present at the event included the Palace Museum’s Party Secretary Du Haijiang, Executive-Deputy-Director Li Xiaocheng, and Deputy-Director Lou Wei; Chairman Li Ji of the Forbidden City Cultural Heritage Conservation Foundation; and Vanke Foundation’s trustee Zhou Wei, Chief-Secretary Chen Yimei, and Deputy-Secretary Xie Xiaohui.

This cooperative effort between the Palace Museum and Vanke Foundation is specified in the jointly signed “‘The Palace Museum Zero Waste’ Collaborative Waste Sorting Project Memorandum”. Over a two-year period, the project will progress through two stages, “Zero Waste Administration” and “Zero Waste Tourism”, to equip the Palace Museum as a leader among Zero Waste Museums. The project incorporates publicity campaigns and experiential activities to promote practical aspects of waste sorting among the population at large and the Palace Museum’s visitors.

As one of the most prestigious World Heritage Site, the Palace Museum hopes to create standards and become a model for important international scenic areas and museums in the field of waste sorting. Being future-oriented and maintaining courageous-leadership, Vanke Foundation focuses on influencing the future with the recent goal of promoting “Sustainable Neighborhoods” while advancing environmental protection and neighborhood development, especially through “Neighborhood Waste Management”, on the basis of conceptual and practical experience accumulated in the area of zero waste administration by the headquarters of Vanke Co., Ltd., and the neighborhoods under its property management.

Concurrently, Vanke Foundation will integrate outstanding external resources by inviting teams of specialists from Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture, Yang Design, CanFit Resource Recovery Technologies Inc., Carbonstop, and other organizations to collaborate in this comprehensive, demonstrative waste sorting project through environmental-behavior research, industrial design, carbon emission reduction, and waste sorting with leading technologies.

Translated and edited by Adam J. Ensign and Zhuang Ying