Live Greener Tips

Here are our top tips to easily help the environment by making less of an impact! Easy Peasy!

No plastic drink bottles. Use a re-usable water bottle and fill up at home or work. (Klean Kanteen bottles are great, for example!) 

Make your own tea or other drinks. When you buy drinks in single-use plastic bottles, the whole plastic bottle just gets thrown away or recycled. A very long process for packaging that you only needed for about a minute of pleasure!

Bring your own. Bring your own take-away container (e.g. a Glaslock container), use your own fork (not plastic), and bring your own mug when getting food on the go! All these can be rewashed and reused endless times, whereas plastic take-away things can only be used once. So there’s a lot of energy that goes into manufacturing the packaging, transporting the packaging, and then processing the waste from it (either recycling or going into the landfill). All of this is unnecessary! Just bring your own!

Eat seasonally - Eat locally. It takes a lot of energy to provide the same vegetables and fruits year-round because when they're not in season nearby they have to be shipped from far away. But fruits and vegetables naturally don’t just grow throughout the whole year! Some seasons are better for certain fruits and vegetables, which means the farmers have to put less resources into growing them.

- Summer vegetables in Hong Kong: lettuce, eggplants, okra (ladyfingers), bitter melon, gourds, water spinach, Chinese spinach (Ong Choi), water melon, rock melon (cantaloupe)

- Winter vegetables in Hong Kong: tomatoes (Yep! They don’t like all the summer rain!), carrots, broccoli, choi sum, bok choi

Eat Veggies - Less Meat. A lot of energy goes into raising meat (cows, pigs, chickens) to eat. They have to be fed a lot, and drink a lot of water. Then when they’re slaughtered, the meat has to be kept cool, which uses electricity. To get the meat to us in Hong Kong, it has to be transported long distances (even from Brazil or America!). Transportation takes fossil fuels for trucks and planes, and it pollutes the air. Vegetables are a better alternative and make less of an impact on the environment.

Less packaging. Wherever possible when shopping -- and sadly it’s not very easy -- choose options that have less packaging or more easily recycled packaging. For example, at Shiu Shing Hong soap

shop (130a Jervois St.) in Sheung Wan, you can return the bottles to them and they will reuse or refill the bottle! Or, when buying laundry detergent, choose a type that comes in a boxed package that’s more easily recycled and broken down than the plastic bottles that liquid detergent comes in.  Buy in large quantities so that the ratio between product and container is better.

Better transportation. Whenever possible, even if only now and then, try to take better forms of transportation.  Private cars < taxis < minibuses < buses < MTR < bicycling < walking! And remember, never idle your car! Idling creates just as much pollution as driving, so turn off your engine as much as possible!

Close the door! Keep doors and windows closed when you’re running the air conditioner to help reduce how much the AC has to work and thereby reduce the energy you use! Shame on Hong Kong retail businesses for doing such a poor job at this and acting like energy is free and comes at no cost when they leave their doors open and the AC blasting outside.

What are your tips or suggestions for living a greener lifestyle? Please share!