What lies beyond the dinner table: Part 1 Seafood (Ep. 11)

Initial broadcast - 8:00 pm Friday September 25, 2015, RTHK DAB31

 

To listen to the show's initial broadcast, please visit RTHK's DAB 31.

To listen to the show after the initial broadcast, please visit the archive here. (Skip to 7m45s.)

Every single meal we eat has to come in one way or another from the environment. Pasta, noodles, even dim sum or a sandwich all comes from plants and animals. We begin this week to look at how the environment provides the food we need to keep us alive, and we turn to the seas! Dr. Allen To of the WWF's Footprint Programme joins us to tell us about his work on sustainable seafood. The sea does not have unlimited fish, and at the moment we're over exploiting our seas. To have fish and healthy marine ecosystems in the future, we need to carefully rethink our ways of getting food.

Hong Kong eats a lot of seafood: in Asia we're second only to the Maldives, which is an island nation! We eat more seafood per capita than South Korea or Japan! As a city, we're having an enormous global impact on the oceans. We've already poorly managed our own local seas and depleted our fish. Dr. To explains how our habits haven't changed, and since we have money, we have just moved on to a different regions to buy up fish from somewhere else. This situation poses a dangerous risk to the livelihood of people and ecosystems in developing countries, where fishery management is not yet able to ensure safe fishing practices. Inga explains to us how we're simply not planning for the future, and fishermen, especially in developing areas, simply have a mentality of "catch as much as you can", which is driven by the market value of fish. However, as Allen and Inga discuss, seafood generally has a good "energy to animal protein" conversion rate compared with chicken, beef, or pork, and in that sense it is a more sustainable, environmentally choice, but the way in which we get our seafood needs to have better oversight for future protection. It can all be very confusing!

What can we do?

 The good news is that the WWF has been working to develop a Sustainable Seafood Guide for Hong Kong, which you can have a look at to better understand what good choices you can make. They include both wild caught and farmed seafood. Allen explains how we should try to go for the seafood items in the "green" category, things like farmed filter feeders (muscles, oysters, clams), and to totally avoid things in the "red" category (bluefin tuna, shark fin, wild-caught grouper, South China Sea shrimp!). Another key thing we can do is ask restaurants for an ocean friendly menu, and the WWF has been working closely with restaurants to help them develop this. They have a list of restaurants with an ocean friendly menu, and you can download their app. He points out that no matter what, we should be asking restaurants for this so we raise awareness of this issue and demand for more sustainable seafood.

 

 Another important thing to look for are the ASC (Agriculture Stewardship Council for farmed seafood) and MSC (Marine Stewardship Council for wild caught seafood) certification systems. When you're shopping in the supermarket for fish, you can look for these labels on packages. 

This was one of the most fascinating episodes we made, and we really enjoyed talking with Allen. We hope you enjoy and will become more aware of this pressing issue facing our seas! 

Credits
A special thank you to Dr. Allen To of the WWF's Footprint Programme. 
Producer & Host: Kathryn Davies
Producer & Host: Inga Conti-Jerpe
Host: Fei Hung
Music: Kodomo (Concept 9 & Concept 13, Still Life Album)

Manpower! Walking in Hong Kong (Ep. 10)

Initial broadcast - 8:00 pm Friday September 18, 2015

To listen to the show's initial broadcast, please visit RTHK's DAB 31.

To listen to the show after the initial broadcast, please visit the archive here. (Skip to 7m30s!)

Walking (and cycling!) is one of the greenest forms of transport. You use your own manpower to get around! And every day in Hong Kong as millions of people in Hong Kong move from one place to another, we rely on a complex network of pathways, footbridges, and public transportation. We sit down with Southern District Councillor and Founder/CEO of Designing Hong Kong Paul Zimmerman to discuss how this network is developed and what some problems and solutions are to improving Hong Kong's street for pedestrians. Paul also discusses how designing a good network for us to move around depends on different government departments, and he discusses some underlying problems with our government's management that are holding us back from innovation and solving some of our city's design issues.

There are many challenges facing pedestrians. In addition to the up-and-down-up-and-down elevation changes necessary for crossing major roads over footbridges, our streets are crowded. 

Pedestrians squeeze by between a shop and busy street (Queen's Rd. Central)

What sadly ends up happening: Pedestrians spill over into street and on-coming traffic! 

We discuss how you have to re-think priorities not based on who has money, but by simply counting heads (a kind of public space democracy!). But until government departments cooperate better, it's difficult to make innovative solutions and an overall better city design.

Please get involved!

If there are dangerous intersections that you know about or areas that need improvement, you can report them to www.missinglinks.hk. Paul talked about how it can sometimes take 10 years to get changes implemented, while other times for "standard" solutions, the improvements can happen quickly. 

 

Green Engineering (Ep. 9)

Initial broadcast - 8:00 pm Friday September 11, 2015

To listen to the show's initial broadcast, please visit RTHK's DAB 31.

To listen to the show after the initial broadcast, please visit the archive here. (Skip to 6m30s!)

(Photo K. Davies)

In this episode, our researcher Inga Conti-Jerpe interviews green engineer Dr. Sam C. M. Hui from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Hong Kong. He shared with us about the impact buildings actually have in Hong Kong on the  environment, since we live in a highly dense urban environment. Not only are buildings one of the largest "users" of energy consumption, but they also play a role in how comfortable our environment is. Due to our urban environment and modern conveniences we live in what Dr. Hui explains is an "urban heat island", meaning our urban temperature is higher than our countryside because of the heat our buildings emit and how heat is reflected off concrete. Plants, for example, would convert sunlight instead into biomass, but in our concrete jungles are temperatures are just getting hotter and hotter. Dr. Hui explains the benefits of heat-combating greening. And thank goodness we have Inga to help us breakdown the science of it all!

More information about the "urban heat island" effect can be found here.

Hong Kong has its first "zero carbon building", which is in Kowloon Bay.

Inga, Kathryn, and Prof. Sam Hui

Hiking Hong Kong - Homage to our Countryside! (Ep. 8)

Initial broadcast - 8:00 pm Friday September 4, 2015

To listen to the show's initial broadcast, please visit RTHK's DAB 31.

To listen to the show after the initial broadcast, please visit the archive here. (Skip to 6m45s!)

(Photo by K. Davies)

This episode celebrates Hong Kong's country parks and countryside: Hong Kong is a wonderful place for hiking! We sit down with three experienced hike leaders, Paul Christensen (Hong Kong Hikers), Annie Chow (Hike HK Meetup), and Daisy Linas (Hong Kong Hiking Meetup). Our guests all come from diverse backgrounds, but they all volunteer their time to take any and everyone out on organized group hikes. They tell us about some of the beautiful places you can go hiking in Hong Kong, and share about the importance of keeping secret places secret! We also discuss some of the challenges facing the country parks, including the country park enclaves and trail management. They all conclude, though, that the best part of joining an organized group hike is that they have a meal or happy hour after!

Countryside for Everyone

Join Hiking Groups

Hong Kong Hikers - Traditionally a week-day hiking group to avoid the crowds on weekends. There are usually 1-3 hikes a week.

Hong Kong Hiking Meetup - Perhaps Hong Kong’s biggest hiking group (15,000 members!). Daily hikes: workout hikes, leisure hikes, long distance hikes. Everything!

Hike HK Meetup - Also offers a mix of different kinds of hikes, as well as some different types of activities like snorkeling.

These organized group hikes will provide a detailed description of what to expect and how to come prepared (no jeans!). You only have to find your way usually to an MTR station meeting point, and the organizer leads the rest of the way, so you can just enjoy the view! It’s a great way to learn about new places or routes, as the leaders are experienced with the areas.

What’s really nice about these groups is how welcoming they are. The hiking leaders do their best to accommodate everyone and go at a pace suitable for the whole group. They care to share the hiking experience and countryside with everyone.