Married to a cause, Rachel Pang Hoi-yan and Hui Fai promote environmental issues
A husband-and-wife team has taken environmental advocacy to a new level
Many people are advocates of green living but Rachel Pang Hoi-yan and Hui Fai take it to another level. Not content with maintaining an eco-friendly home, the husband and wife spend much of their free time working on projects to help others live a greener life and raise awareness of how wasteful activities hurt the environment.
Most recently, 37-year-old Pang has been developing a mobile phone app that shows the locations of more than 700 water fountains across the city in an effort to encourage residents to consume less bottled water. It required tedious data entry, which took up much of her time after work, says Pang, a lawyer specialising in intellectual property. But she can't abide unnecessary use of bottled water because it generates so much plastic waste.
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"So many plastic bottles end up in landfills every year. Yet MTR Corporation, a public company, has not installed any water fountains in its stations, although it rents spaces to retailers who sell all kinds of beverages," she says.
It took some effort to gather the list of water fountains. "I asked the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) for a full list and they only acceded to my request after legal legislator Dennis Kwok Wing-hang intervened," Pang says.
After she placed the sites of LCSD water fountains on Google Maps, a software developer offered to help her put the list on a mobile app so people would know where to find the nearest fountain if they were thirsty, or needed to refill their own bottles. Pang estimates there are more than 1,000 fountains in the city.
Hui and Pang walk the talk. They poke around rubbish collection points to pick up usable furniture, avoid supermarkets in favour of market stalls and grocery shops, and pick up plastic rubbish when they go on beach walks. The couple also try to spread the message about adopting a responsible, sustainable lifestyle.
Four years ago, they set up a Facebook campaign against the consumption of shark's fin, which quickly attracted 30,000 likes. The media attention it gathered helped convince Citibank to suspend a credit card promotion that offered discounts for orders of shark's fin at Maxim's restaurants.