Eugenia Chow: Climate Activism through Education 🇭🇰
For our first AEYN profile, we sat down for a chat with Eugenia Chow, the amazingly prolific student behind the popular @eugreenia account on Instagram (which, along with her blog, acts as the go-to guide for vegans in Hong Kong) and the Everyday Activist podcast, where she discusses how to be a more conscious citizen with change makers from around the world. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Eugenia also co-founded the city’s first Bye Bye Plastic Bags chapter.
Despite being exhausted after her first day of remote learning (Eugenia is starting her first year at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this fall as a Morehead-Cain scholar, after taking a gap year), she still found the energy to hop onto a call with us to talk about how she got started with environmental action. She told us her introduction to sustainability started at a young age with her family, who would — like many Asian families — hoard the plastic bags they got from the supermarkets. “We would reuse old t-shirts and stuff as cloths to clean the tables,” she remembers. “Or even to clean the toilets,” she adds, laughing.
But for her, the real turning point came after her first marine diving experience. After her diving instructor explained how plastic straws can end up in the ocean and harm the local marine life, Eugenia realized how the simple act of disposing our waste can have such a permanent impact.
From there, she began attending socially-conscious events like the Powered by Youth forum run by the Hong Kong-based Kids4Kids charity. While at the forum, she and a few friends launched an initiative that asked restaurants to replace plastic straws with a more sustainable alternative. Eventually, she went vegan and started her blog — “purely because I was sick of people complaining about there not being vegan options, and I wanted to prove people wrong,” she retorts. “But I think the more I got into it, the more I learned about how your diet impacts the environment. And there's so many elements of sustainability that I hadn't really thought about… so I started to share the stuff that I was learning.” Eugenia’s goal is to make her educational platform a place for hopeful solutions and actionable advice that leaves people feeling inspired and optimistic. “I want it to be informative, but also not present environmental issues in a way that’s all doom and gloom,” she told us.
Last year, Eugenia travelled to Berlin for an international conference about future development; there, she spoke about fighting against the plastic economy and making a difference through meaningful action. She recounted how she met other great speakers at the conference. “It was just really cool to learn from them. And I remember after the presentation, a lot of adults came up saying that seeing an 18-year-old girl speaking gave them hope for the future. It was refreshing to see us talking on a stage with adults.”
She also started her podcast, the Everyday Activist, this summer after wishing there was a guide on how to start your own initiatives and become a better environmentalist. “I realized there's so much you can learn from what other people are doing,” she said. “And, to me, I've always believed that activism isn't just going out on the streets, but it can manifest itself in so many different ways.” In just a few months, she’s released ten episodes of interviews with different activists from around the globe.
“Anyone can be an activist and there's no ‘one size fits all’ approach to activism”
Her main takeaway from the past two months was that any approach to environmental activism has to be intersectional and inclusive. After speaking with Lauren Ritchie, a Black environmentalist studying sustainable development at Columbia University, Eugenia recalled being touched by Lauren’s story. “It was just really interesting to hear her experience about how she's the only black face in her entire sustainable development class, and how it's important, when going into any field, to have that kind of representation. Knowing that this is something that you can be a part of as well is crucial.”
Asian Representation
When we asked Eugenia how she’s seen Asians treated in a movement that has historically prioritized westerners, she told us she felt that erasure was a huge problem. “I don't think I personally am held back by the fact that I'm Asian, but I think other communities of color can be, especially when we're talking about things like fashion, for example, or even food. With thrifting, or buying secondhand clothing, for example, a lot of marginalized communities have always been doing this as a necessity, right? But once this whole idea of thrifting or secondhand shopping was adopted by a group of white environmentalists, or your typical zero waste Instagram blogger, it just became a lot more appealing to people. I think that erasure of people who, in some ways, have been more sustainable to begin with — and not acknowledging the origins of certain practices — can happen a lot to marginalised Asian communities.” Eugenia went on further to explain that the vegetarian/vegan movement has similarly disregarded many of the contributions that Buddhist communities have made to the environment by being vegetarian their whole lives.
Recommendations for Asian Youth
For those up-and-coming environmentalists who also want to get involved in green action here in Hong Kong, Eugenia had several recommendations: first, find events nearby run by already-existing groups. She highly recommended Kids4Kids’s PoweredByYouth forum. “It’s a really cool platform because it gives students and youth the platform to make change and to learn about these different issues.”
In addition, she suggests getting involved at school: “Just start with joining your green club! That's where you can learn a lot of things as well.” She also noted, “as much as social media can be harmful, it can also be a really great space for learning and like connecting with other people.” It was actually on Instagram that she found like-minded environmentalists to eventually form the Hong Kong branch of Bye Bye Plastic Bags.
“I think one thing we can do as Asian environmentalists is to lean into that collectivist behavior that is a very clear characteristic of like Asian cultures.”
Future Plans
Although, despite all her work so far, she still doesn’t consider herself a ‘proper activist,’ Eugenia has big plans for the future and for college. “I do want to get more involved in top-down change, and not just doing things from an individual standpoint,” she mentioned, with determination in her voice. “I feel like there’s a lot I still don't know. And I definitely want to have that knowledge to perhaps get involved with policy or to just be more active in demanding change from a systemic point of view.”
We at the AEYN team certainly look forward to seeing what Eugenia gets up to!
Written by Ariane Desrosiers and Sara Tobias
