Sustainability in life
- Why Focus
- Our Goal
Sustainable development is a significant issue with a very broad scope. Our foundation’s actions in this field strive to be small scale and involve many participants, starting from the development of lifestyle habits, and thereby dispelling the misconception that ordinary, small actions will not have an impact on overall sustainable development.
Our overall goal is to improve and protect water and land resources through various subtle and extensive actions.
- Our Work
We chose the restaurant as our laboratory because food and eating is a vital part of all our lives.
With three meals a day, there are 21 opportunities each week for customers to participate in sustainable development actions.
- Restaurant as laboratory
– In the city center restaruant
We have implmented:
Rooftop gardens
Encouraging businesses to use limited spaces to grow herbs and sprouts that can be directly used by restaurants on their terraces, backyards, balconies, or even indoors. We encourage guests to consume more vegetables grown at the restaurant, jointly understanding the environmental significance of reducing the carbon footprint of transportation.
Use of eco-friendly takeaway utensils
Encouraging businesses to use biodegradable corn-based utensils, paper-based eco-friendly utensils, cloth wraps, and encouraging customers to get used to using these seemingly “inconvenient” items, jointly committing to and supporting the reduction of excessive packaging in takeout trash, use of old wooden furniture.
Encourage businesses to identify ecological and environmental issues that can be improved in the surrounding natural environment, and integrate these with the restaurant’s own conditions to create a mutually beneficial ecological harmony.
If Love Second-hand Market
Additionally, the foundation has organized the If Love Second-hand Market, which supports local original designs, provides a platform for designers, and donates a portion of the proceeds to the Love Volunteer Club. Over 316 volunteers from different social strata, with ages ranging from 16 to 37 and an average age of 26.5, have registered, and 200 people have participated in our activities designed to help.
Since the first event, our If Love second-hand market has seen growth, with an increasing number of attendees and interested individuals. The number of stalls has increased from 20 to 30, and the total raised has grown… from a few hundred yuan to thousands of yuan. These numbers represent the market’s growth month by month.
Meaningful Moments
The little stall owners came to the scene early, designed their stalls with the help of their parents, and started selling them in a clear way.
Some of them took out their favorite toys, books, clothes, and even “sold” their own knowledge, teaching everyone to use balloons as puppies to raise money for the sunshine baby.
The three most powerful little girls stood from morning to afternoon, and raised a total of more than 500 yuan for charity!
In late August 2012, this love extended to the Wu Guan Tang Vegetarian restaurant in Suzhou, where the Sunshine Love Market continues to be held, spreading the concept of love and generosity further and further. The proceeds from the Sunshine Love Market will be entirely donated to the Sunshine Babies at the Suzhou Industrial Park Boai School (official website: https://jsboai.sipedu.org/)
– Restaruant in the countryside
Wu Guan Tang Vegetarian in Suzhou, covering 1200 square meters with a lake on three sides:
We support the restaurant in conducting monthly environmental protection activities, releasing snails, loaches, and other organisms with ecological purifying effects into the lake. This not only protects the lives that would have been consumed as food, allowing them to return to nature and thrive, but also helps restore the clarity of the lake water, which was previously affected by the growth of harmful water hyacinths due to sedimentation issues. These environmental protection activities have been carried out 61 times, attracting nearly ten thousand participants and gaining high recognition and attention from the local government.
We also support the restaurant in cultivating vegetables on its terrace and encourage customers to adopt self-cultivation practices. Through this mutual participation, healthy soil is cultivated and witnessed through the continuous growth of radishes in clear water.
- Manor House and Self-owned land as laboratory
Oxford Manor Hotel, spread over 48,000 square meters with extensive forest and green spaces:
We support the estate in leveraging its environmental advantages to offer meditation experiences, allowing guests to experience environmental protection in a completely vegetarian dining and living environment.
Additionally, we support the estate in using organic fertilizer made from nearby horse manure for small-scale self-cultivated vegetable gardens. We encourage guests to consume only seasonal organic vegetables grown on-site during meditation experiences, and the accommodation features entirely vegetarian bedding to demonstrate that traditional duck and goose down bedding can be replaced with equally warm and comfortable options.
Wu Guan Tang Vegetarian in Hangzhou, situated in an 8000-square-meter wetland park:
We support the restaurant in utilizing the advantage of being surrounded by lake water to implement a whole-house hydronic heating system in its initial construction plan. Additionally, we continue to conduct life-releasing environmental protection activities, allowing life to be returned to its natural habitat, which contributes to improving water quality.
- School as laboratory
We believe that cultivating good sustainable living habits from childhood will benefit for life.
We also believe that changing the lifestyle habits of adults is very challenging, but starting with children can lead and educate a family in a new way of life, which is well worth try.
