Celebrity Life

The founder, president and CEO of Omni United is committed to making a difference.

The post How GS Sareen achieved carbon neutrality for his flagship brand, Radar Tyres appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

Food Made Good CEO Heidi Spurrell talks to us about the organisation’s mission to create a network that can help restaurants and the community build a more sustainable future.

According to Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department, most of the territory’s food waste is currently disposed of in landfills. In 2019, around 1,957 tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) were produced daily. In the past few years, the MSW from commercial and industrial sources, including hotels and restaurants, has also drastically increased. Overall, the alarming carbon footprint caused by restaurants is related not only to wastage but to many other factors, including food production, preparation, transportation and supply chains. Food Made Good HK, a sustainability consultancy founded in 2019, is trying to tackle these issues by providing a set of accessible resources for food-service businesses.

Although a grim scenario might seem unavoidable, Heidi Spurrell, the organisation’s CEO in Hong Kong, says that a few simple steps could go a very long way. Here, she talks about her mission, challenges and the unexpected monetary benefits of a green revolution.

In Conversation with Heidi Spurrell of Food Made Good

How was Food Made Good brought to Hong Kong?

I set up Food Made Good HK to support local food businesses that are looking to become more sustainable. The programme was launched globally in 2019 and I took the opportunity to open an office here. We now also have offices in Japan and Greece, with affiliates dotted around the world. I’m excited to announce that Food Made Good HK is Hong Kong’s first dedicated food sustainability organisation to become a B Corp [a certification of social and environmental performance]. We’re now the city’s go-to food sustainability consultancy – and receiving B Corp accreditation last month enhances our credibility and confirms we really are walking the walk.

What’s your mission?

To help the food-service sector operate as sustainably as possible, and ultimately scale this up to create a genuinely more sustainable food system. Increasingly, we’re not only working with the food-service sector, but also with corporations to educate their teams and inspire change – and with food retailers too, to help them formulate achievable goals. The appetite for change is certainly there.

Usually, we begin by auditing a restaurant’s sustainability performance, applying our framework of Society, Sourcing, and Environment. We then provide guidance and recommend practical measures they can implement. We also run monthly events to keep people engaged. And, of course, we host our awards ceremony every year, where we celebrate those restaurants and local heroes championing sustainability and making a difference.

What are the main obstacles you’ve faced in Hong Kong?

We started out during the political unrest and endured through Covid, so it hasn’t been an easy start. However, we see genuine interest from businesses wanting to begin their sustainability journey. What we offer is credible sustainability knowledge-sharing and a platform offering accessible and practical guidance that encourages people to participate – so we’re optimistic.

There’ve been many obstacles. For example, finding good sustainability talent has been tricky, and we’ve had to really dig for localised knowledge when adapting our toolkits for Hong Kong since we don’t have a lot of data here as you might have in other places in the world. Elevating plant-based eating is also a crucial shift to enable sustainable diets, but in Hong Kong, there are real cultural barriers.

Lastly, viable sustainability solutions are being held back by a lack of enabling infrastructure, such as a regular and reliable glass-recycling service.

Tell us about your background.

My interest in food sustainability really blossomed around seven years ago when I was studying for a master’s degree in food policy. It was then that I became more aware of our interconnected food system and the complex challenges we face. When I first started working in food and sustainability, it was a relatively niche field. However, the world is rapidly waking up to the importance of food and its environmental impact – and sustainability has moved to centre stage.

How is Hong Kong doing when it comes to sustainable practices in the F&B industry?

Progress is certainly being made with more and more restaurants and food-service companies putting sustainability at the heart of their business model. Consumers, especially those in the younger age group, are becoming more environmentally aware and are actively seeking plant-based menus and restaurants that practice sustainability. This in turn encourages more restaurants to go green. Of course, there’s still an enormous amount to do to make our food culture more eco-friendly.

Being sustainable is often perceived as an overwhelming and expensive process for restaurants. What is Food Made Good doing in this respect?

Sustainability doesn’t necessarily have to be costly or complicated. It starts with having the right strategy and breaking things down into simple, manageable components. We regularly advise restaurants on small changes that can have a big impact on their environmental footprint. Bringing in an external consultant can be a good way to kick-start change. Going green can even be good for business. For example, one of our restaurants recently installed a high-end water-filtration system that produces refreshing still and sparkling water, eliminating all the expense and effort of importing single-use bottles. The rewards have been amazing, with the system paying for itself in just one month.

Is the future of the F&B industry connected to sustainable practices?

Absolutely. Food production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions with more than half those emissions caused by conventional livestock farming. As consumers become increasingly aware of climate change, environmental issues and the social damage of exploitative trading practices, they’ll demand more sustainable food. Food waste and recycling are important topics when it comes to working towards a more sustainable future. What are some urgent and necessary steps in this regard? Currently, around 30 percent of all garbage going into Hong Kong landfills is food waste. This can be dramatically reduced in food businesses by simple measures such as reducing portion sizes and better ordering and storage. The Hong Kong government’s recent waste-charging legislation is a step in the right direction. There’s also an urgent need to reduce plastic packaging and disposable cutlery.

The post Food Made Good CEO Heidi Spurrell on Her Mission and a More Sustainable Future appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Former Next Gen candidate, Ng Yi-Xian, speaks to the second-generation business developer at engineering firm Ichi Seiki who's championing for real change.

The post The Peak Next Gen: For Kia Jiehui, business development at Ichi Seiki goes hand in hand with sustainability appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

Picking up from our sustainability special last issue, the editors of WOW Singapore and Thailand address the subject as collectors themselves.

The post The WOW Conversation: Sustainability in Watchmaking appeared first on LUXUO.

Local sustainability-minded brand Wear Earthero launches two signature capsules this month with a focus on bringing new life to vintage designer goods, and upcycling locally sourced deadstock fabrics into wearable art. 

Wear Earthero (pronounced “Earth-hero") is a subsidiary of Earthero Project, an eco-community with a focus on providing sustainable services and education to schools and corporations. This year, the group launched two capsules to promote local artistic talent, and to bring more awareness to sustainability and heritage. 

About the brand

Founder Bertha Shum explains, “I never planned to start a clothing line, but, while writing and reading more about sustainability, I often come across various concepts about how polluting and environmentally unfriendly the fashion industry is. That’s when I started thinking about upcycling deadstock fabrics locally. 

“By chance, really, I came across this Facebook post a friend shared about a huge sale on deadstock fabric. I decided to pay a visit to Sham Shui Po to check it out. Chatting with the owner, I found out that it’s very common for fabric sellers to have just a few yards or scraps of fabric left after designers purchased enough. Often, those fabrics are hard to sell as it’s not scalable. The leftover will usually be disposed.” 

Working intimately with a team of seamstresses in a small studio in Sham Shui Po, Shum designs each piece of her collection in small matches, creating illustrations, patterns and labels using silkscreen printing to reduce their carbon footprint as much as possible. This process ensures that there’s minimal waste, and that all pieces are indeed, limited edition.  

The exhibition

The first capsule by Wear Earthero is titled “Classics Reimagined” — a collection of vintage wearables freshly embellished with incredibly detailed art by local artist Viki Chan.  

Their second, “Wear Earthero Art-isan Collective”, was a platform that gathered young artists in the city to express their interpretations of local culture and conscious living. Each artist was given a piece of deadstock fabric to paint on; the pieces were then assembled by the seamstresses in Sham Shui Po into stylish kimono jackets to be auctioned off with a respective NFT. 

Bids ended in mid-January with all jackets successfully auctioned off. A portion of each sale was donated to charities J Life Foundation and Green Sense. 

Learn more about Wear Earthero here.

The post Wear Earthero Launches Exhibition Featuring Upcycled, Wearable Art appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Charlz Ng is an entrepreneur with a heart of gold. Having spent years cultivating a community within the fitness and wellness space with the launch of the IRIS Festival, he's now made his mark in F&B with the opening of a new venture called CARBON.

"Sustainability is one of my main ethos in life," he says. Running a restaurant sustainably is expensive and challenging, but Ng, his co-founders and the team all believe that it's the future of operations and that it's up to this generation to protect the environment.

Ng is conscious about how his choices affect the planet – from choosing to drive BMW's all-electric iX, purchasing clothes and brands that are sustainably manufactured, to implementing food waste initiatives at CARBON.

We follow Ng around for a day to see how he finds an escape through sports, and how sustainability plays a major role in every aspect of his life.

The post A Day in the Life of Charlz Ng appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Food is on its way to becoming better than ever, and these titans of industry help us get there quicker.

The post This duo is tackling food security one Asian food start-up at a time appeared first on The Peak Magazine.