Just Do It! Sisters Act

DB students Dhaanya and Reaha Ganeriwal are challenging all of us to do better, and standing up for climate change action, one Friday at a time. Elizabeth Kerr reports.

PHOTOS BY Baljit Gidwani - www.evoqueportraits.com & Sheetal Ganeriwal

"Did you know Hong Kong is the third biggest per capita consumer of beef in the world? Ahead of the United States?” demands Dhaanya Ganeriwal, easily one of Hong Kong’s youngest climate action activists.

She baffles at that statistic, one of the factoids she shares with passers-by after she and her sister Reaha assault them with her climate action challenge board as part of their Friday strikes – now in their third year. Oh, Dhaanya is 10 years old.

It’s a couple of days away from the end of the school year, but Dhaanya and nine-year-old Reaha have found the time to wander down towards the ferry pier for a chat about their busy schedule. No, it’s not packed with summer reading or music lessons that will look good on high school admissions applications, but they do have a couple of speaking engagements about climate action coming up.

Demands for action have morphed from din to dull roar in recent years, most often spearheaded by the literal children who have to deal with the increasingly visible fallout of climate change. Dhaanya and Reaha have somehow found time to do their weekly strikes, push Starbucks for an explanation about its HK$4 surcharge for non-dairy milk (they started a petition to get the fee for “making the right choice” dropped), and participate in a TEDx talk at Chinese University of Hong Kong. What did you do this week?

CLIMATE ACTION STRIKES

Dhaanya and Reaha are now climate action veterans.They’ve been striking every Friday for over 150 weeks. “We stand out with our boards and ask people to pick a number, say number one, which is a five-minute shower. Then we talk to them about how a shorter, cooler shower is good for the environment,” Dhaanya says. It’s safe to assume the girls themselves do all 10 actions on the board, which includes waste reduction and education. “We don’t do this one, girl,” says Reaha, pointing at the “shop local” food tag. They do, however, upcycle (they’re fans of Retykle), and buy clothes made of recycled materials. And they drink tap water.

Aside from a few cases of smart mouthed “adults” unfairly sparring with them (“Some people try to bully us and talk to us like we’re climate scientists. We’re 11 and nine,” scoffs Reaha), and overenthusiastic security guards chasing away “panhandlers” (not a good look Hong Kong), they’ve been met mostly with positive responses from people at DB Plaza, the North Plaza and occasionally the Central Waterfront when they approach with their signboards.

“Some people ignore us, but just as many participate and take a pledge. Then they come back the next week and ask what else they can do. It’s really quite thrilling,” says Dhaanya. She then launches into a story about an elderly Tung Chung couple who they saw every week when they lived in the area. The couple were clearly supportive of what Dhaanya and Reaha were doing but language was a barrier. Fortunately, their mum, who speaks simplified Cantonese, stepped in one Friday to translate. The next week they saw the couple with their own food containers and cloth shopping bag. “Little changes like that add up and it was really exciting to see we could have an impact,” says Dhaanya. They’ve also gotten great support from their parents, and from Discovery College, where they go to school. Their extra-curricular actives often wind up on the school’s The Explorer page.

TWEEN TALK

Dhaanya was born in her parents’ hometown of Mumbai, and left as an infant when her banker dad was relocated to Singapore. Reaha was born there, and after two years in the Lion City the family moved to Hong Kong where they’ve been for the last eight.

Despite their eco-warrior status, Dhaanya and Reaha are most definitely pre-teen sisters. They constantly jump in with extra details during a story, a story, and they sweetly finish each other’s sentences. There’s almost a riot of vindication when I agree that despite being frequently mistaken for twins, they look nothing alike.

Dhaanya is a self-confessed bookworm (she’s read both Helen Keller and Anne Frank biographies) who plays rugby and has an interest in architecture. Her earliest role model was Martin Luther King Jr, followed shortly by David Attenborough.

Reaha isn’t as bookish, but she is working through David Walliams’ Gangsta Granny. She fiddles around with a gym set in her bedroom and would love to be a gymnast, but wonders, “What would I do after that?” One thing the sisters do share are ridiculously long lashes that peek out above their masks.

@MYGREENMANTRA

The lashes and, of course, @MyGreenMantra (check them out on Instagram), the name they’ve given to their strike action. Dhaanya’s epiphany came at around seven years, when an image of a turtle strangling on plastic six-pack rings set her on her path. After asking her parents a few questions and digging into some kid-friendly research (which has since expanded), she hit the street.

“I was really tired of hearing news about plastic, and pollution and climate change, and how governments weren’t doing anything about it, so I thought, ‘Why can’t I?’ We made some signboards and went outside.” Ever the curious little sister, “When she went out, I was all, ‘Where are you going? I want to join,’” recalls Reaha. “At first I just held the signs but as I learnt more, I got into it.”

That eventually gave birth to @MyGreenMantra. “Mantra is a Sanskrit word for ‘chant’ and when repeated becomes a habit,” Reaha says. “We want everyone to make climate action a habit.” And she really wants to get away from the linear economy that has put us where we are. “We produce, produce, produce, use, use, use, and waste, waste, waste. We’d love Hong Kong to be a role model of sustainability and the circular economy, which is where you produce something and then make it into something else when you’re done with it.”

BEING THE CHANGE

To that end the girls plan on beating the drum on climate change this summer. They’re off to a smashing start, following a June 18 TEDx event, where they were two of 11 speakers talking about how one person can create a ripple that leads to bigger change. “It was awesome. There were about 100 or 200 people…” Dhaanya says gleefully.

The activism continues this month, with Dhaanya and Reaha featuring alongside a couple of their teachers in a Cable TV-produced short, which aims to increase awareness in local communities. The show airs on Channel 77 Open TV at 7.30 pm on July 2 (in English with subtitles), and after a week it will be posted on the Cablewish Facebook page. Watch out too for an Encompass Hong Kong event in August, at which the girls will be talking to other local school kids about climate change (with a translator for maximum impact).

Dhaanya and Reaha count Dana Winograd at Plastic Free Seas as someone to aspire to, but the most obvious comparison is Greta Thunberg, who’s not hopeful enough for the Ganeriwal girls.

“We’re doing what we can at our level. We don’t want to chase other people’s expectations,” reasons Reaha. “And besides, we should be enjoying our lives, not cleaning up the mess generations before us made. We don’t want our kids living like this.”

Dhaanya listens on, nodding, before finishing the thought. “We know individual actions can’t change the world, but enough of them together, as a community, can.”