Is there a market for wearing VR headsets to visit "Cloud Park"?, Shanghai Park will have over a thousand parks during the 14th Five Year Plan period | Shanghai | Cloud Park

As of the end of 2022, Shanghai has included 670 types of parks under the management of the urban and rural park directory, including 438 urban parks, 172 pocket parks, 59 rural parks, and 1 theme park. By the end of 2025, Shanghai will add more than 600 new parks through construction or renovation, bringing the total number of parks to over 1000.

How can the landscaping industry assist Shanghai in building a "park city"? How can we contribute to the implementation of the "dual carbon" goals? At the 19th China International Landscape Industry Trade Expo, which opened on June 29th, many enterprises were eager to give it a try and rubbed their hands together.

Strolling the park without leaving home

Wearing a virtual reality head mounted display device, Mianqing Park, built and opened earlier this year, is immediately visible along the Ring Ecological Park. By controlling the controller, you can explore the main attractions of the park as if you are in it.

In the "Shanglvji" ecological landscape industry metaverse jointly developed by the Shanghai Landscape Industry Association and 360 Group, there are nearly 20 parks and green spaces in Shanghai that can be visited without leaving home, including the Shanghai Botanical Garden Bonsai Specialty Park, Shanghai Fish Lake Island, and Taipingqiao Public Green Space.

Zhang Rui, Secretary General of the Shanghai Landscape Industry Association, introduced that this product was originally mainly open to professionals in the landscape industry, providing enterprises with an immersive landscape and product display tool, solving the problem of limited number of venues for offline observation and exchange, and significantly reducing the travel costs of related activities and the impact of frequent observation and exchange activities on parks and green spaces.

But as development deepens, the public welfare value of this product gradually highlights, and people hope to create a "cloud park" platform on the basis of "Shanglvji", which is open to citizens and tourists for free.

"In recent years, Shanghai has vigorously promoted the construction of a 'park city', but due to factors such as time and space, many excellent public ecological products cannot be explored by citizens and tourists." Zhang Rui said, especially in some remote suburban parks, parks and green spaces within the planning scope of the urban ecological park belt, and some parks and green spaces that shoulder responsibilities such as cultural heritage and biodiversity protection and hope to control passenger flow within a reasonable range.

If the product quality is excellent, it can satisfy the curiosity of some citizens and tourists who cannot come to the site to check in, and can also appropriately reduce the passenger flow pressure of some parks and green spaces with relatively weak tourist carrying capacity.

At present, the "Shanglvji" open to the public is still being optimized and improved, and the first batch of "Cloud Parks" are expected to be launched in October this year.

"Foreign garbage" turning waste into treasure

In Ziqi Donglai Park in Jiading District and Zhongxing Park in Jing'an District, outdoor fitness centers and children's amusement parks are popular among surrounding residents, with a high frequency of use. However, what many people do not know is that many fitness and amusement facilities are products of turning waste into treasure, with "foreign garbage" in their raw materials.

Xu Yixin, the Marketing Manager of Kangpan Amusement Facilities Co., Ltd., pointed to a multifunctional children's amusement facility in the center of the booth and said, "75% of the raw materials for the platform bottom plate are plastic products from marine fishing after consumption, and all the raw materials for the columns come from waste textiles and waste plastics. The core layer of the board used to build the cabin and baffle is 100% made of recyclable food packaging materials."

Danish Kangpan Company currently only has factories for related products in the United States and Czech Republic, so all recyclable raw materials are sourced from nearby sources.

"This is considered one of the core competitiveness of products in foreign consumer markets, and the stronger the environmental attributes, the greater the possibility of being recognized by consumers." Xu Yixin said that the rising trend of park and green space construction in China not only opens up a broader market for fitness and amusement facilities, but also creates opportunities for the "rebirth" of more recyclable waste. It is hoped that in the future, local garbage will be present in fitness and amusement facilities in Shanghai's park and green space.

The "annoyance" of local closed-loop

The Nongcai Wo exhibition booth provides four ways out of garden waste: crushing it into cylindrical shapes for fuel, crushing it into thin wood pieces for soil cover, crushing it into wood chips for fermentation as an organic medium for regulating soil, and mixing it with glue, asphalt and other materials in proportion to squeeze it into bricks and boards.

According to Zhu Jingshui, the general manager of Dama Environmental Technology Co., Ltd., with the increase in the number of landscaping projects, the amount of garden waste generated will also grow rapidly. "Shanghai currently has about 2 million tons per year, and it may double in the coming years."

Previously, the conventional disposal method for garden waste was to cut and crush it before incineration, but this method could not stimulate the enthusiasm of market participants and was not environmentally friendly.

However, Zhu Jingshui candidly stated that in terms of the four types of garden waste they are currently showcasing, fuel rods still have the highest market share, followed by soil cover. The market acceptance of organic media, bricks, and boards is still very limited.

"The main reason why the latter two options are not feasible is that they belong to deep processing, which requires higher requirements for production sites and environmental protection. In addition, with lower output value, it is difficult to implement them in cities like Shanghai, where every inch of land is worth every penny. In contrast, fuel rods and soil coverings that can be produced through rough processing can better control production costs and develop faster." Zhu Jingshui said that even so, Shanghai's soil coverings also have many "troubles".

In recent years, the landscape industry in Shanghai has required a large amount of soil cover, but the products purchased are all from other provinces and cities or even imported from abroad. The raw materials for these products are all locally sourced, not locally generated garden waste in Shanghai. I hope that Shanghai can establish a local closed-loop system for the disposal of garden waste, achieving self-sufficiency in soil cover materials. This local closed-loop system can also reduce the logistics cost and carbon emissions of Shanghai's garden waste transportation and disposal.