LiveSmart BC Community Hero
Entrepreneur paints her world green
Richmond's Susan Lee Hem lives "green" at work, home and play. As an entrepreneur, she buys secondhand university textbooks and sells them to a warehouse.
At home, all of her light bulbs are LED, the heat is turned down at night, clothes are washed in cold water and only biodegradable products are used to clean the house.
"I grow many of my vegetables on my balcony and I'm a huge composter," says Lee Hem. "I teach composting and container gardening through Ladner community centres."
This past summer, Lee Hem, along with a few friends, spent time converting people's backyards into vegetable gardens.
"We felt it was important to teach people how to grow food locally," says the 56-year-old Lee Hem. "This is important to me because I feel that we have given away our ability to be self-sufficient ... to provide for ourselves and we put ourselves at risk when we do that."
She also volunteers at the Terra Nova Rural Park garden club. "In early spring, we planted hundreds of sweet pea seeds and we nurtured those seeds," says Lee Hem.
The flowers were then sold and profits went to support Richmond Fruit Tree Sharing Farm projects.
In the past, Lee Hem ran summer programs for preschoolers at a number of community centres, teaching children about environmental and food issues.
How, she asks, is this next generation going to learn about the importance of growing food if we don't teach them?
"As we become more urbanized, we lose that knowledge," says Lee Hem.
Her "green" lifestyle came naturally to her.
Lee Hem grew up on her family's cocoa and citrus fruit estate in Trinidad, in the Caribbean.
"My aunt always used to say you are nothing without land," says Lee Hem. "My family loved their land and were very respectful of it. It supported the community, the workers and their families, as well as my widowed grandmother and her 12 children."
Lee Hem believes that each and everyone one of us has a responsibility to do whatever it takes to ensure we leave a better world for future generations.
"Everyone of us are co-creators of this world. Until we wake up and become aware of our responsibilities for everything on the planet, we are in trouble of losing it," she says.
