JANNIE Tay is best known for her luxury watch company, The Hour Glass, and as the face of retail in Singapore as chairman of the Singapore Retail Association, But little is known about her green tendencies - until she recently went public with her Save Our Planet Foundation which aims to plant a billion trees around the world over the next 10 years.
So is Mrs Tay just jumping on the green bandwagon now because it's fashionable? Definitely not, says the former National University of Singapore lecturer in physiology and pharmacology, describing how she first heard about reforestation 10 years ago.
'We had a furniture business in Vietnam at that time, and were taught to replant trees for every one that we cut down; so that was when I found about about reforestation, about replenishing oxygen and carbon absorption,' recalls Mrs Tay, 63.
Her business interests later got her interested in a technology of harvesting tissue cultures of Pawlonia trees in Henan, China. These are fast-growing trees that can reach up to 40-50 feet in eight years. A Chinese professor had pioneered this company which was growing trees from tissue culture and seedlings. Intrigued, Mrs Tay decided to go into a joint venture with that company.
Her heightened environmental consciousness quickly expanded to encompass social and philanthropic aspects when Mrs Tay bought a 3,000 ha coffee plantation in Timor Leste. 'Then we had to start planning for the welfare, education and livelihood of the farmers there,' says the enterprising businesswoman who had by then picked up concepts such as fairtrade coffee and short and long-term crops.
'When my son started taking on more responsibilities in The Hour Glass five years ago, that's when I started looking into wellness businesses and the environment,' she says, describing her journey.
'I started focusing on things that I could do that would leave a more lasting legacy, and also to draw on my academic background in health which is also my family heritage, as my father and grandfather were Chinese sinsehs,' she says. One of Mrs Tay's businesses is setting up the health brand Scientific Tradition that produces products with lingzhi mushrooms.
The Save Our Planet Foundation was seeded three years ago, when she asked friends and family to donate money instead of giving her presents for her 60th birthday. 'We raised about $70,000 then, and that was given to projects in Timor Leste,' she says.
All her interests and connections have finally come together, she says, which is why she publicly revealed her Save Our Planet Foundation this year. 'I see myself as the facilitator and connector. Because now that we've set up the foundation, we're partnering with experts in the various fields to have social ventures and philanthropic enterprises,' she points out.
Wisely, she has also roped in notable experts such as Ashok Khosla, one of world's leading experts on the environment and sustainable development and a former director of the United Nations Environment Programme, to be co-chairman of the Foundation.
'I want to pull different people together, and make the connections,' says Mrs Tay, who has already roped in her daughter to drive the foundation. 'There is no monetary agenda in it for me . . . as I've already spent millions. Although there might be financial returns, but even then, we're talking about many years ahead. It's my way of giving back to the planet,' she says with conviction.
This article was first published in The Business Times on December 19, 2008.
