Ryan the 7-year-old Eco Entrepreneur

Ryan Hickman from Orange County, the United States, is not your average eco entrepreneur. For starters, the seven-year-old founded - and became the CEO of - his own recycling company, Ryan’s Recycling Company, aged just three years old. His road to eco entrepreneurship and philosophy are straightforward: he likes “sorting the cans and bottles” and the idea of “getting paid to help the earth”. 

With the help of his father, Damion, and mother, Andrea, Ryan set up Ryan’s Recycling Company in 2012, and has been the CEO of a sustainable green business since. Four years on, Ryan’s business is as strong as his determination to help the earth, with approximately 49,000 pounds of waste recycled for 40 customers spanning over five neighbourhoods. With the revenue, Ryan has been able to save up around USD10,000 for his college tuition, with USD1,600 donated to charity - so successful and in multiple ways sustainable is Ryan’s Recycling Company that it puts many of us grown-ups to shame. 

We had a quick chat with Ryan, whose current long-term goal is to buy a real garbage truck and continue recycling through his adulthood, and his supportive father Damion, also the graphic designer behind Ryan’s Recycling Company’s website, business cards and flyers. 

1. Why did it occur to you to found a recycling company on that fateful day when you went to a local recycling centre with your parents in 2012? 

I don’t remember why since I was only 3 but I really like sorting the cans and bottles and getting paid to help the earth.

2. What were your exact wordings when you said you wanted to become the owner of a recycling company?
(Dad answers this one) Ryan said he wanted to start collecting recyclables from all the neighbors because he figured every hour could save cans and bottles for him.

3. Tell us a bit about the division of labour within Ryan's Recycling Company?
My mom, dad and I do all the recycling. Oh, and my grandma too. My dad drives me to the recycling center and my mom helps too. My dad lifts all the heavy stuff in and out of the truck.

4. What was the neighbours' response when you handed out plastic bags for them to save their recyclables for you?
Most of our neighbors save cans and bottles for us and they are so happy to save them for me.

5. How do you juggle your job as CEO and school?
I recycle a little bit at school too and I like to think about recycling even when I’m at school but I get my homework done and like hanging out at school with my friends.

6. What are the future plans for Ryan's Recycling Company?
I want to buy a real garbage truck some day and I want to continue recycling until I’m an adult.

7. Your advice for anyone who might want to start their own recycling company?
It’s hard work but it’s worth it. My mom says it’s important to wash my hands after recycling. Anyone can recycle and it’s good for the environment.

8. What's the best thing about being Ryan Hickman right now?
I’m happy to be cleaning up the world and it’s pretty cool that all people checking out my story are interested in my recycling.

http://ryansrecycling.com/ 

Marcel Heijnen: The Accidental Cat Photographer

You would have heard of Dutch photographer Marcel Heijnen, dubbed by the SCMP as the ‘cat photographer’, not least because of the buzz he created, unwittingly, with his Chinese Whiskers photo series depicting Hong Kong’s shops cats (IG: @chinesewhiskers). Heijnen and his newly acquired title as the cat photographer is all over the place, making headlines as far as the Guardian, the Metro, and Al Jazeera. 

Admittedly, cats in their effortlessly dignified, imperial posture are fun to watch, but amidst that oohing and ahhing, and the emotional resonance we draw from the photos, haven’t we forgotten to ask who is that man, often allowed nothing more than 10 seconds to press the shutter before the good-natured cats hopped over to him for attention? Who is that man that can be seen carrying a glass panel around, working on a series that tricked people into thinking it is nothing more than a photoshopped creation? And who is that man, who claims he does nothing full-time, because he believes that if you do things with a passion, then one thing will lead to another in this world, where opportunities abound?

On a quest to find out more about Marcel Heijnen, I had the Dutch photographer and visual artist sitting with me on a random flight of staircase in Sai Ying Pun, speaking about the power of a photograph that catches your attention for longer than half a second, Jeremy Irons and Irish potato farmer, the peculiar beauty unique to Hong Kong, and, well, cats. 

1. What was Marcel Heijnen like as a boy?

Quite independent, as my parents told me. I was alone for five years before my sister came along. My dad is a graphic designer, so I got interested in design quite early on. He was also an amateur photographer. We had a dark room at home, so that’s probably how I first got interested in photography. I was trained as a print-maker, so there was a lot of time spent in the dark room, lots of physical messing around with film. I came from the analogue era, and I did my last film shoot in 2004, when I was in Japan. But for the rest of the last 10 years it’s been all digital. 

2. What brought you to Asia in 1992? 

I used to work for Philips electronics as a graphic designer. I did that for three years in Singapore, another three years in Hong Kong. I took a sabbatical from my design job. I didn’t have a clear plan, but I wanted to work on music. I finished an album that year, I called it Residue. At the same time I knew that I wanted to do something with visual arts, and photography would be a logical step. I had a lot of nice photos, but nothing as consistent as a series that I could call my own voice, visually. 

I participated in a very intensive workshop in Singapore which was very instrumental in getting me started. There was a format of five days, full-on, with mentors, setting yourself with projects, shooting all day, meeting sessions at night. I did a little project that was kind of related to Residue. It became a project about interiors of houses in progress on the same stretch. The cool thing about that workshop is that you do that for five days, there will be a presentation, and a year later you do a reunion show. That’s actually very powerful, because during that year, you have access to one of your mentors, and you’ll have an exhibition that you work towards. That year inspired me to start thinking what I want to do.

3. Tell us a bit more about your Residue photography series? 

I had a Residue-like image that I shot of windows in France a long time ago. It had the building, the reflection, the textures, all the elements. I kept on coming back to that image, which was shot five years prior. I told my mentor that I wanted to do a series. Everyone seemed to like that image. I have thousands of images of textured walls, of reflections and bubbles, but that image was something special, so I wanted to do more. And then the problem came: I started meditating on how to do more of that? How am I supposed to find that stuff? You can’t go through the city to look for something that is textured and reflected at the same time. 

And then it occurred to me that I could bring glass around. I started just messing around, and later finding - just by experimenting - what kinds of textures work, and what time of day to shoot. I realised that I’m restricted to using just the last 10 minutes of daylight, because during the night it is too dark, and during the day, everything is so clear and bright that it will be a very obvious kind of image, and I want the merging of background and the reflection - I wanted the image to show as if the textures are eating away the buildings. That’s more or less the theme: the impermanence of cities. 

I started replicating it in other cities. The response was very positive from the start. Within a few months I had a solo show, I started taking it to art fairs and doing limited-edition things. I then met Sarah Greene, founder of the Blue Lotus Gallery, who suggested that I did a book, and the rest of the things just started snowballing, not as crazy as the cat series, but at least I got to know some publishers, so when I did the cat series everything became easier. The first edition of the book is very successful, it’s been sold out already. The Residue series gives me enough credibility with publishers, and created a path for me. The series defines me more as an artist - it’s more unconventional and unique - but I don’t mind that people now think I’m a cat photographer. I’ve been branded by the South China Morning Post as the cat photographer, I’ll take it just fine. It’s a different audience.

4. What were the surprising finds from when you were working on the Chinese Whiskers series? 

I went with a Cantonese speaker, who is also the translator for the book, to interview some owners to get a little bit more information. The belief, about why the cats were there in the first place, was to catch mice. But the cats looked very comfortable, and well-fed too because they’re a bit fat, which makes it hardly convincing that they are mousers. What I didn't know is the fact that the cats are there to repel mice. I never knew that story. If you put a cat in the store, and the mouse is in the back lane, it probably won’t go into the store because it smells a cat, and then it would go to the neighbouring store. It makes sense that there are so many stores with cats, because if your store is along a stretch, and all your neighbours have a cat, you’ll need to have a cat too, as otherwise all the mice will be going to your store! That was quite an eye-opener for me. 

I’m also quite endeared by the fact that a lot of the shop owners genuinely love their cats. To be honest, my perception of Chinese people’s treatment of animals hasn’t always been positive. I remember 20, 30 years ago, I was in Guangzhou and there would be dog meat in the markets; and there are still a lot of shops around here in Sai Ying Pun that sell shark’s fin, which isn’t particularly nice to animals either. But then there are these shop owners who are very loving towards their cats - they interact with the cats, they’re amused by the cats, they’re amused by the fact that I’m taking photos of their cats. 

The shop cats have it all figured out. They know that they don’t actually need to do anything. They do their job just by sitting there and getting fed, while the people around them work really hard. So the cats are the real shop owners. They are very ‘Zen’, very sedate and at ease despite the activities going on inside the stores, boxes being moved around. My only challenge was when the cats noticed me, they would come to me because they like attention. At times when I saw a beautiful spot, and when they saw me, especially when I lowered myself, they’d go, “Oh that guy is going to pet me!”, and they’d come over and I’d lost my shot.

5. Are you a cat person too? 

I’ve always had cats. Since I was about 10 my parents have had a cat, and I was crazy about the cat. When I moved out on my own at around 21, I adopted cats straight away. When I moved to Singapore, within no time, there would be a stray cat coming to my house and I’d let it in - I ended up having five cats. When I left Singapore, I left them with a friend. But I’ve just adopted a kitten here. On New Year’s Eve, someone found a kitten at a bar, and I took the kitten in. I’m co-sharing the cat with a friend because I travel quite a bit, I don’t want to be restricted by having a cat here, and I don’t have a social network so much to have people coming to my apartment to feed it when I’m away. Then I found this friend who lives just around the corner and wanted the cat. We’ll have the cat one week each, and when I’m travelling someone will be there to take care of the cat. 

6. What is photography to you? 

It’s about capturing change, capturing things that are disappearing or things that don’t exist anymore. I know it’s a cliché, capturing a moment, but in a lot of my works, such as the cat series and Residue, despite them not being visually similar (although you can argue there are textures in there), I was capturing things that are disappearing. The cat series isn’t just about cats, it’s more about the stores, it’s more about the environment. I’ve recently started a new series about dogs in garages, and with that I think I’m getting closer to my Residue series, because those textures are really raw.

7. Your definition of a good photography? 

In this day and age, a good photograph is one that makes you stop to look at it for longer than a half-second. When everyone is scrolling and it just stops you in your tracks, and you think about it for a little bit. A good photograph is a photograph that evokes response, whether it be sadness or happiness, such as how the cat photos bring a smile on people’s face, and that’s, for me, a really nice thing to be happening - at least my photos have done something for people.

8. What does it take to be a good photographer? 

Patience. Preparation. I think it’s very important to think in series and stories, not in individual images or simply the beauty of the image itself. I’m used to taking photos while travelling around, trying to take a nice shot, but at one point you’ll need a narrative, you’ll need a slight signature and consistency of your materials within a series.

9. Do you remember your first time in Hong Kong? What were the things that got you wondering? 

It was probably 1989, I was here for work. I was given a nice hotel room, I’d never stayed in a nice hotel room before. I had a view of the city’s skyline from the hotel room, it was just an overload of visual excitement. I had a nice Hong Kong colleague, who was adamant on showing me the city. He took me out almost every day, showed me the Walled City of Kowloon. I still have some slides of the outside of the Walled City. If I had known that it was going to be torn down, I would have taken more shots. 

10. What are the aspects of Hong Kong that intrigue you? 

Density, textures, contrast of city and nature. The water, the mountains, the high buildings, the density, the messiness - there’s no city quite like it. Hong Kong is an impressive city, especially for someone from Europe who is not used to this kind of scale. Take the hills and water out of the cityscape, then it would probably not be a very pretty city, but the fact that you always see green hills behind the buildings is just amazing. Hong Kong is beautiful, in a strange way. You have all these alleyways, staircases, that is just beautiful. I like the fact that Hong Kong is still very raw and messy. Even in areas with skyscrapers and glass-and-steel buildings, on ground level there’d still be a market, where people are cutting meat or cleaning fish, people doing things in back alleys…even Singapore isn’t like that anymore. Singapore is much more manicured.

11. Your favourite places in Hong Kong? 

I love the area around here. I’m right between Sai Ying Pun and Sheung Wan. I walk one way and I’ll be on Tai Ping Shan Street, with all the galleries along Hollywood Road; if I go the other way then it’s the more traditional face of Hong Kong. I also enjoy the fact that you can take the MTR, and within half an hour you’ll find yourself in areas like Sham Shui Po, which are still very raw and interesting. I went the other day to To Kwa Wan, and it felt like a totally different world - I could have been in China. It was industrial and messy, very different to Central Hong Kong.

12. What’s the best thing about being Marcel Heijnen right now? 

The freedom. The freedom of doing what I want to do, not needing to worry about things too much. I’ve got a few income streams so that I can start doing the things that I want to do. Very often, because I do things with a passion, they turn into another little income stream.

People who’ve known me the longest always ask me, “So now you’re doing photography, guess photography is your full-time thing?” And my response is, invariably, “I don’t do anything full-time!” just to annoy people a little bit. But the question is, why does it have be full-time? When people ask me what do I do full-time, my reply would be, “Depends on which day you’re asking.” Take today, I shot some portraits, I’m doing an interview, I’ll need to take my cat to the vet, and tomorrow it will be something else. I watched an interview with Jeremy Irons, who said this whole thing of work is just an invention. In the past, depending on where you lived, assuming if you were Irish, you would plant potatoes and then you would play music for a long time. You can have fun, and then you’ll get the harvest. That wasn’t a job kind of thing. You might have fewer choices in those days, but life was more relaxed and healthier and happier.

Apparently, my character profile according to some spiritual people is that I’ll start something, get it running for a while until I get bored with it, and I’ll go start something else again. You’ll figure out your weaknesses and strengths after a while. You’ll learn to trust the flow, that you’ll stumble upon new projects. This cat series is a total coincidence. I’d just moved to Hong Kong, a week later, I saw this cat in a shop. The photo became a series, and a year later the series became a book, and later there was an exhibition, and a lot of articles about it. It wasn’t a planned thing, it wasn’t like I planned to move to Hong Kong to shoot cats in shops. If you’re flexible enough, and willing to go with the flow and see what happens, you’ll start to see that things will actually happen. it’s a mix of doing the things you like to do, and responding to your surroundings.

*Hong Kong Shop Cats is available at all major bookstores and Blue Lotus Gallery. 

Motherly Love, Naturally (II)

As a parent, do you think about the nature of manufacturing practice that goes behind the products you buy for your child, or the environmental impact the products could cause, leaving indelible carbon footprints in the future that you hope your child will thrive? Victoria Chuard does, and she reckons many parents are in the same mind too. Her advice on starting a more sustainable lifestyle and parenting practice? ‘Shop locally when you can, choose handmade when you can, choose reusable when you can.’ Because changes in our consumption pattern can go a long way. 

Tell us the interesting stories of the brands you source from? 

So many of the brands we work with were borne of the everyday problems that parents face. NumNum and EZPZ mats were invented in the kitchen by baby-led weaning parents who came up with these innovative products to allow their little ones to enjoy food with less mess and more fun. Wrapsody's wraps are hand-batiked by women in Indonesia who are paid fair wages and they have such great wraps for HK's hot, humid climate. BlaBla Kids' dolls have such life in them - I don't know what it is about them, but it's the only doll that my son ever attached to and I've heard similar things from many other parents as well. They are hand-woven by village folk in Peru with the finest Peruvian cotton. All Things Jill's products are the epitome of handmade, wholesome skincare products that are both gentle and smell so wonderful. I use her cloth diaper-safe bum balm for nappy changes, but it also moisturises so well that I used it to heal my son's cradle cap, baby acne and irritated skin too. This one balm was useful for so many skin ailments - less really is often more!

Which is your favourite product? 

Oh that's hard. But if I had to pick one, I would probably say I've had the most fun with NumNum Dips. We wanted to try baby-led weaning, which means you try to avoid spoon-feeding when introducing solids, and instead give them foods of different flavours and textures for them to explore themselves and try as and when they are ready. When you start solids at five or six months old, you have to steam or bake or mash foods until they are mushy so that they can easily swallow (if it makes its way into their mouths!), but at that age they're not coordinated enough to perform the scooping motion needed for a spoon nor use their lips to empty the spoon in their mouths. You're more likely to get food flung across the room and plastered onto your wall than in their tummies! 

Our very first experiment with solids was a baked sweet potato that we then mashed, and we gave him the NumNum Dip to try it with. To my utter surprise, he stabbed at the sweet potato in his bowl, the sweet potato stuck to the NumNum and then all of that went straight into his mouth! Not going to lie, there was a bit of fumbling and some of it did end up in his hair when he missed his mouth, but he was using a utensil without any help or direction! It was amazing! I have been raving to other parents who want to practise baby-led weaning ever since, and we are so glad every day that we chose BLW over spoon-feeding. 

What is your definition of sustainable living and a sustainable future? 

Firstly, I think it's important to say that you should strive to do better, but don't beat yourself up if you don't or can't. Sure, there are people who can live and produce zero garbage, but you don't have to go to those extremes to make a difference in your life, in other people's lives or for the Earth. I've come across cloth diapering mums a few times who sought reassurance when they wanted to use disposables overnight because they have a heavy wetter who happens to sleep solidly for several hours (and if your baby does that, hallelujah, let the kid sleep!), and I say to them, you're already doing a great thing for the environment and your baby's health by using cloth diapers at all, don't beat yourself up because you can't use it 100% of the time. 

So, I think what I'm trying to say is, the small changes you make to your lifestyle has a bigger impact than you probably give yourself credit for, and you just need to keep pushing to make those small changes in a few different aspects of your life. My latest fascination is with essential oils and I've started replacing store-bought hand soap and the like with homemade hand soap in glass jars that I can reuse over and over again! 

Your advice on the first easy step towards sustainable, organic living? 

We have an increasing amount and variety of healthier, more sustainable options available to us today than we did half a decade ago, so it's really up to us now to choose better. We buy organic food for our babies, why shouldn't we care just as much about what goes on their skin, the quality of the materials of their clothes, what their food is stored in? Shop locally when you can, choose handmade when you can, choose reusable when you can. These are all things you can do in Hong Kong without compromising on convenience or safety or value. People often associate organic with 'expensive' or 'inconvenient', but it doesn't have to be the case, and that's something that we strive to help with at Petit Tippi! 

What’s the best thing about being the founder of Petit Tippi? 

I've met so many great parents, some really inspirational and talented mums and dads on my adventure with Petit Tippi, and that's probably the biggest take-away for me. So far, we've only ever gotten positive feedback from our fans and customers, and it really means so much to me to be able to connect, and in some cases help them. Starting this business has pushed me to test my personal and professional limits, and has also pushed me to meet people who have given me a lot of great support in my journey as a new mother and entrepreneur. I am an active member of the breastfeeding, cloth diapering, baby wearing, baby led weaning, baby sign language groups in Hong Kong, so if any of those areas interest you, I would love to give back and share my experiences, my door/inbox is wide open :)

Motherly Love, Naturally

Call it love or maternal instinct, as a mum, you'd naturally want the best for your baby, from the food she eats, the diaper she uses, the balm her delicate little bum is moisturised with, to the sustainable future she will walk into as a proud and responsible adult one day. Victoria Chuard is no different, except that she goes that extra mile to ensure that mums in Hong Kong are able to care for their little ones in a natural and environmentally responsible way, while contributing to a more sustainable future. And so Petit Tippi was born, on the same day Chuard’s son was born.

In a two-week series, we chat with Chuard on being an eco-conscious mum, which eventually led her to found the one-stop online shop for natural, organic and eco-friendly baby products. Read on if you’re a parent who celebrates cloth diapers, breastfeeding, and baby-led weaning, but find the availability of desirable products in this city rather dismal. 

When and why did you found Petit Tippi? Have you always been eco-conscious?

Not at all! I think that as a kid growing up in Canada, you're taught to "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" a lot in school, which is great, but I don't think I was any more or less eco-conscious than the next gal. When I was pregnant with my son in 2014, I did a lot of baby products research and I was frustrated with the very limited options in Hong Kong. The Millennial parents of today in Europe and North America are way ahead of the curve in terms of going back to basics in childrearing and what some refer to as "attachment parenting" - natural remedies, breastfeeding, babywearing, cloth diapering, baby-led weaning and the like (and we do practise all of the above in our household). 

I wound up in a lot of Facebook groups where mums would get together and group-buy products from North America or Europe, and I thought, if I'm doing all this research for the best products for my own baby, I'm sure there are parents here who are looking for the same things as me, and this group-buying that I was participating in was really my proof of concept. So, I started contacting all the brands that I had started buying stuff from for my own baby and that's how the ball got rolling. Our first brand to join the Petit Tippi family was AppleCheeks Cloth Diapers and we actually got our first order the day my son was born! It felt like I gave birth to two babies that day, but I also immediately started freaking out about how I was actually going to fulfil the order :D That's life!

Why did it occur to you to set up a one-stop shop for natural, organic and eco-friendly baby products? 

All the major retailers carry some natural, organic and/or eco-friendly products, but you really have to dig through what they've got to find the good stuff. There just isn't the same focus on those offerings in Hong Kong and I'm sure parents don't have time or want to trek across town for a bit of chemical-free bum cream, especially if you don't live on the island, and that's why we've put such focus on building a beautiful, usable and robust online retail space. I've done all the research already, so why not make it easy and readily available at the click of a button for other parents to make better choices? When I started buying products for my son in Hong Kong, I found myself feeling more often than not, that retailers here were only concerned about carrying the biggest, best-selling brands and even then only their flagship products that they knew would sell fast. That wasn't good enough for me, and it shouldn't be good enough for other parents.

How does Petit Tippi help mums and babies create a more sustainable future? 

At face value, using a lot of the products that we provide will allow each and every one of us to do a small part in saving the environment. Cloth diapers are a great example. Disposables take up to 500 years to decompose in a landfill, not to mention the poop that you're supposed to throw in the toilet but everyone throws in the trash that doesn't get treated properly. In two years a child creates up to two tonnes worth of dirty nappies! Those are crazy numbers! We don't cloth diaper 100% of the time, but just in comparing with my friends how much faster they went through their disposable diapers than in our household, I do get a warm fuzzy feeling about doing my bit, however small, in saving the environment. Not to mention saving my wallet, too! For new parents, we also make baby hampers, big and small, to set you on your way to a healthier, more sustainable path from the get-go! 

Who do you source from, and why? 

As much as we can, we source from the brands that we represent directly. In dealing with the company directly, I have built a relationship with the companies we retail for, and a lot of them are also start-ups by mums and dads like us, in search of what's better for our children. Some of them have also created really awesome communities amongst their customers and retailers (AppleCheeks's group called Peace, Love, AppleCheeks is one of my personal favourites on FB, so much love and support in that group!) which I think is really great. It does mean that I have to take care of shipping and transportation and storage and marketing and everything else on my own instead of with a distributor, but to me it's so much more than just buying and selling product, it's also about mutual trust and respect for what we are trying to achieve, and if I can get a better price at the end of the day for my customers, that's a great result for everyone!

Savouring Hong Kong’s Secret Kitchens

As an expat in Hong Kong, chances are you experience constant cravings for that authentic taste and texture of your mum’s cooking back home. The truth is, despite being an international cosmopolitan offering a plethora of cuisines from the world over, Hong Kong is still just not ‘home’. What if we tell you that you could dine in the home of your fellow countrymen and eat off their dining table the comfort food that you’ve grown up with?

PlateCulture is designed with precisely the answer to nostalgia in mind. To start with, PlateCulture is a social network where self-proclaimed home chefs and culinary enthusiasts gather to offer a delicious menu at their home – anything from Korean to Italian, French, Mexican, Indian, Iranian and Cantonese – for interested individuals to sign up for the experience. With the numerous weekly offerings, available in all nooks and crannies of Hong Kong, you’re literally spoilt for choice. 

Alternatively, if you confess to be savvy at the stove, you may sign up as a chef and dish up home dishes that you reckon needs wider recognition, or for the sheer joy of sharing a hearty meal with like-minded individuals. Remember also to create a fancy name for your account, because with Spanish homecooking in Wanchai, Indian flavours in the Mid-levels, and Middle-Eastern vegan feast on Lamma Island, competition among proud home chefs is fierce!

The meals on offer range from HKD100 to HKD500-plus per guest, which is fab to start with, considering there’s no queuing and crammed elbow-to-elbow space involved. 

Maternal Instinct of Trees

Not so long ago, when you go around telling people that trees do ‘talk’ to each other, you’d be sneered at or frowned upon as if you’ve just flown over the cuckoo’s nest. But as the debate surrounding the wood wide web – a kind of underground Internet linking the roots of different plants by mycelium, a mass of thin threads that make up most of the bodies of fungus – became increasingly heated and at the same time interesting, you can’t brush off the suggestion of communication among trees so easily.

If you’re on the more liberal end of the debate, you’d want to know that Suzanne Simard, an experienced forest ecologist with three decades of research work on Canada’s forests under her belt, is suggesting that trees do recognise their offspring. This may sound a tad too nerdy on the surface, but let’s hear her out.

“Now, we know we all favour our own children, and I wondered, could Douglas fir recognise its own kin, like mama grizzly and her cubs? So we set about an experiment, and we grew mother trees with kin and stranger’s seedlings. And it turns out they do recognise their kin. Mother trees colonise their kin with bigger mycorrhizal networks. They send them more carbon below ground. They even reduce their own root competition to make elbow room for their kids. When mother trees are injured or dying, they also send messages of wisdom on to the next generation of seedlings. So we’ve used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal network and into her neighbouring seedlings, not only carbon but also defence signals. And these two compounds have increased the resistance of those seedlings to future stresses. So trees talk.”

And that is that: trees talk.

Intrigued and curious to find out more? The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World by German forest ranger Peter Wohlleben might prove to be an eye-opener. 

Let's Talk about Breastfeeding

Image: BuzzFeed 

You’d have heard of UNICEF’s ‘Say Yes to Breastfeeding’ campaign, initiated in tandem with the Food and Health Bureau and the Department of Health to promote breastfeeding-friendly workplaces and public places. The pledge to support breastfeeding in public places was supported by 64 restaurants citywide, including 20 McDonald’s branches. Likewise, you should be no stranger to the Department of Health’s promotion and support of breastfeeding by launching a document called ‘Breastfeeding Policy of the Department of Health’ last year, also promising to train staff at health centres and hospitals to respond accordingly. You might have been among those who applauded and cried tears of joy: it’s finally happening in Hong Kong! 

But nope. According to SCMP, mother of two and teacher at an ESF school, Amanda O’Halloran was blasted by three nurses for breastfeeding and therefore upsetting other patients, while she was sitting in a waiting room at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. What O’Halloran encountered was by no means a singular incident, as hours after she posted about it online, she saw a deluge of angry messages in support of her, from mothers who have had similar frustrating experiences while breastfeeding in public.

To be fair, the stubborn refusal to accept breastfeeding as just the most natural way to feed a hungry baby is pretty universal. What boggles the mind is, how hard is it for people to see breastfeeding as just that? If we were all fed with our mothers’ breastmilk for various lengths of time after our birth, who are we to stop others from getting fed by the same means?

If you’re nodding in agreement, sign the pledge here and lend your support to UNICEF’s #SayYesToBreastfeeding campaign.