Aug
21
2021
A production stage manager at a theme park, Helen Wu is in her 40s and she is both childless and a committed environmentalist. Since her wedding last year, her friends and colleagues have repeatedly asked her when she will have a baby, but her answer doesn’t change. “No,” she says. “As I grow older, more …read more
Aug
3
2021
Lung Lung Thun is one of the rare breed of women watch collectors. She researches the history of individual watches. She discusses watches, she understands watches and she buys watches – often larger men’s watches with complicated mechanical movements. She recently bought her first vintage Patek Philippe – the 3970 – a wildly expensive perpetual …read more
Jul
29
2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought Hong Kong’s world-famous tailoring industry to its knees, says Stanton Ho, co-founder of the local menswear establishment Refinery. Dressy social occasions have been lost in the dust of lock-downs and social-distancing rules. Nine-to-six office rules and dress codes have changed, perhaps forever.
Jul
27
2021
As plastics horror stories pile up, consumers across the developed world are turning away from the modern convenience of plastic bags and plastic packaging, or at least trying to avoid single-use plastic as much as they can. There have been too many dead whales found with bellies full of disposable bags, boxes and bottles; too many …read more
Jul
9
2021
Over the centuries, Hong Kong’s lush subtropical woodlands have been burned, accidentally and deliberately – cut down for fuel, slashed to make way for agriculture, flattened by typhoons, replanted to stabilise hillsides, cut down to make way for development, devastated by insect plagues and replanted again. Whatever happens, they keep coming back.
Jun
8
2021
Pineapple leaves, fungus fibres, sugarcane, cactus: all botanical elements used in the production of various kinds of plant-based leather. Inspired by the environmentally-sustainable thinking now sweeping the world, these so-called “vegan” leathers have become increasingly popular alternatives to hide leather.
May
24
2021
The different directions are as sharp as the angles on a multi-faceted brilliant. Pandora, the Danish company that makes the world’s most jewellery pieces, mostly inexpensive High Street ware, has announced it will no longer use naturally-mined diamonds.
May
16
2021
The robot arm zooms back and forth in the workshop of LifeArt in Hong Kong, shaping a sheet of thick, hard cardboard into a modern and environmentally kind cardboard coffin, or eco-coffin. Wilson Tong, chief representative of LifeArt, the only manufacturer of eco-friendly cardboard caskets and coffins in Hong Kong, believes they are the way …read more
Apr
26
2021
Ever-creeping climate change is spelling the end of the lawn as we know it. Environmentalists everywhere see the neat and weed-free grass lawn as an ecological disaster in an age of ever-increasing heat, shrinking water resources and increasingly scarce wild habitat.
Apr
2
2021
Alex Metcalfe started experimenting with no-alcohol beer about five years ago. Originally from Britain, he now lives in Hong Kong’s leafy Sai Kung district with his wife and two small children and he works as a teacher in a Hong Kong school. “I started drinking no-alcohol beer because I wanted to reduce my alcohol intake,” he …read more