What is the connection between COP18 sponsor LovingHut and Taiwan, China?

As mentioned by the COP18 youth delegates in a previous article, ”Loving Hut”, which used Taiwan-made eco-friendly bags at the Conference of Youth (COY8), is a business that, as of early March 2012, had 241 affordable plant-based chain stores in 32 countries worldwide, and Loving Hut's first store in the world was the Taipei Huaining store, established in 2008.

(During the Q&A after Loving Hut's briefing at the conference, it was found that of the young people attending this time, regardless of their reasons, nearly half were vegetarians. The photo shows the young people dining together during a break.)

At the climate change conference where young people from around the world gather in one place, even though everyone's backgrounds are vastly different, we all share the same ideal. That is to actively and squarely face the issue of climate change, and Loving Hut behind it also upholds the same environmental philosophy. It uses non-GMO foods as ingredients and provides low-carbon plant-based vegetarian food. Whether it is main dishes, green tea, or desserts, all are egg-free and dairy-free, reducing the use of any animals. Promoting vegetarianism is one of the ways to respond to climate change: eating less meat reduces the greenhouse gas emissions caused by animal husbandry, especially reducing methane, whose warming effect is 23 times higher than carbon dioxide, and avoiding the clear-cutting of primary forests caused by animal husbandry. A healthy fruit-and-vegetable diet is a good way to reduce greenhouse gases, whether for its positive effects on body and mind or for global warming. The biggest feature of Loving Hut is that although they use plant-based ingredients to make food, for people who are meat-eaters, it does not feel unfamiliar at all; instead, it is so delicious that people feel unusually surprised.

Taiwan's goodwill vegetarian philosophy can be seen as far away as the COY venue in Qatar in the Middle East, and it also makes us young people from Taiwan feel unusually warm. Here, every youth organization or every individual at the venue has different ways of facing climate change and different response strategies. These green ideas born of goodwill are like seeds one after another; through education or persuasion, perhaps one day these seeds will spread to every corner of the world, and at the right time, under the right conditions, they will grow and sprout together.

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