'Waste not, want not,' minimalists say

She didn't expect that the move would lift the curtain on the ongoing story of how she and many other young Chinese enthusiastically lead and promote a lifestyle that aims to minimize waste.

Diligence and thrift are time-honored traditional Chinese virtues. Su's family is a good example of this, according to the native of Weihai, Shandong province. Although they have little formal "green" knowledge, her parents lead a very environmentally friendly life.

For example, the family has used the same hair dryer for more than a decade, and Su remembers many of her mother's clothes from as far back as kindergarten. "As long as something can still be used, my mother will not replace it with a new item," she said.

Before going to Canada six years ago, Su thought Western countries performed well in terms of environmental protection. "What I found, however, was far from my expectations," she said, citing excessive packaging and waste in supermarkets as examples.

The waste is so bad that a lot of edible food is dumped in trash bins outside supermarkets, she said. Despite that fact, she sees a prejudice against Chinese people from an environmental perspective.

Many dramas from the United States show young Chinese leading extravagant lives, while environmental news related to the country, though positive in itself, often attracts negative comments online, she said.

The idea of launching an environmental vlog came when she failed to find many examples of such content on Chinese social media platforms, though it is common on the internet in the West.

She probably would not have put the idea into practice so quickly if she hadn't been mistaken as Japanese again in March last year, when she was cleaning up an area strewn with litter while taking a walk.

A Canadian man, who stopped running and joined her, asked if she was from Japan. Dressed in regular clothes, she could find no reason for the mistake. "I suddenly realized that it's hard to break the prejudice," she said.