Getting to Know the story of Hong Kong #ecostorerefill Partner Store
A lot of us may be familiar with Jenny Tam and have met her in person when she dropped off your ecostore products at MTR stations. Jenny is the founder of AwareStore, a smart vegan, a long-time ecostore retailer, and also the first to offer a refill of ecostore products in Hong Kong.
Jenny holds a unique view regarding waste reduction and environmental protection. She emphasizes that education is crucial for customers to learn about what it means to love the planet and themselves, so when she founded AwareStore and set up its website, providing scientific and authentic insights has always been her focus. When you visit AwareStore website, you will discover plenty of detailed product information and relevant resources for reading.
In these past few years, Jenny saw many positive changes to the way people view and engage in an eco-friendly lifestyle and the increased availability of both public and private eco programs of different forms. Today, we have the honor of having Jenny spend some time with us and telling us more about her and AwareStore.
1. When did you begin your zero-waste journey? What inspired you to embark on it?
Jenny: I think I am born eco-minded, having later realized that I myself started spontaneously sorting paper waste at home during my secondary school years. However, during the 20 years after that, I, like most people in Hong Kong, needed to live a metropolitan-style / fast-paced life so being eco-conscious or not was longer on my mind that much. At full-time jobs, before I started AwareStore I did always find the paper use and handling methods at the workplace were problematic as we used a lot of printing paper and there weren’t proper recycling initiatives most of the time.
2. Tell us a bit more about The AwareStore: What products are available at the store? What are some upcoming plans for the store?
Jenny: AwareStore meant to and continues to offer eco-friendly alternatives and primarily non-food supplies to busy households in Hong Kong. Our upcoming project is to revamp our website to give customers a better shopping experience. We hope we can partake in more pop-up stores where we can meet new and old customers face-to-face for the rest of the year as we decided not to do that many in the past 2 years.
3. AwareStore is the first retailer in Hong Kong offering to refill ecostore products, what made you take that big step?
Jenny: Are we!? We are honored! For us, it was not that big of a step, as many customers were already asking us if they could return their empty ecostore bottles and would have welcomed the refill idea. So as soon as ecostore offered refills we started incorporating them into our operation.
4. Having worked with ecostore for many years, what do you think about us as a brand and what do you love about it?
Jenny: I have loved ecostore products and concepts since the first day I found them and I continue to value how they make sure their products are both effective, eco-minded, and reasonably priced. Hopefully, their core values remain unchanged in the coming years.
5. When it comes to protecting our environment and reducing waste, how can we and Hong Kong do better? Where are the opportunities and what changes would you like to see in this city in the future?
Jenny: I always think education is of the utmost importance: when we are made aware of the consequences of excessive waste, we tend not to buy so many unnecessary things, both edible and non-edible ones. In addition to EPD’s GREEN@COMMUNITY initiatives, I think the government should coordinate/allow community centers to hold flea-market-style events weekly to let people in the neighborhoods exchange and trade second-hand goods. And I would love to see our organic farms in the New Territories areas expand in size and number so more local produce can be supplied locally and Hong Kong people can go visit them and spend time there during their weekends or leisure times.
English (New Zealand) 
香港中文