想要拯救中国环境的商界母女

    上周，中美气候协议登上了新闻头条，与此同时，香港的一对母女也在讲述自己的宏伟愿景：为中国企业界和消费群体注入环保风气。

    上周二，在香港举行的《财富》“最具影响力女性国际峰会”（Fortune Most Powerful Women International Summit）上，纺织巨头香港溢达集团（Esquel）董事长杨敏德在台上告诉我：“我们希望做一个小小的阿斯彭[研究所]，人们可以在此讨论可持续发展模式2.0。”

    在关于中国日益严重的污染和废弃物问题的讨论中，杨敏德正成为举足轻重的一员。作为哈佛的MBA【同时还拥有麻省理工学院（MIT）数学学位】，杨敏德在过去十年将可持续做法应用于自身工厂。其工厂生产拉尔夫•劳伦（Ralph Lauren）、Banana Republic以及Tommy Hilfiger等品牌的衬衫。杨敏德还在其5.9万名员工（其中大部分为女性）中推行了员工友好实践。如今，她决心将这种思维推广到自己的工厂之外。不过，我们待会儿再来讲这个以及杨敏德的“小阿斯彭”。

    我们先来认识下杨敏德的女儿——现年32岁的潘楚颖。潘楚颖的父亲是Harvey Nichols百货公司零售巨头潘迪生。潘楚颖的青春期是在溢达集团工厂和Harvey Nichols百货公司门店中度过。杨敏德不久前问潘楚颖有没有看谢丽尔•桑德伯格的大作《向前一步》（Lean In），潘楚颖承认自己还没读完——她自身的经历正是书中描写的那样。

    不过，潘楚颖在哈佛学的不是商科，而是哲学。她20多岁时尝试了很多事情，拍过短片，开过快闪店，后来才回到溢达集团，着手振兴其母创建的衬衫品牌。该品牌名为PYE，字母组合反映了杨敏德对数学、利润以及时尚的激情。（买家们注意，潘楚颖目前正在曼哈顿寻找零售空间。）

    潘楚颖向笔者表示，接手PYE“在某种程度上救了我一命。我需要约束，不然我什么都想干。”现在，潘楚颖的工作重心是打造一个围绕经典白衬衫的品牌，主要是针对男性客户。这对母女档上台时都穿着PYE牌白衬衫，并开玩笑称，潘楚颖从小到大，他们母女都没有机会穿相似的衣服。

    同其母亲一样，潘楚颖大谈可持续性。她表示：“我们希望我们的衬衫品牌能分享我们的生活理念。”潘楚颖对客户的承诺是：“保证我们会尽己所能的践行环保理念、道德标准以及可持续性。”

    不过，如今这对母女最注重的是可持续性，并即将扩展到溢达集团之外。他们称，可持续性可追溯到杨敏德从事实业的祖父。本周，杨敏德将主办一场由学术界和其他商界领袖参与的会议，推出一项“The Integral”的倡议。

    Integral意指不断追求完美的佛教理念，力求使企业领导者将注意力集中到如何在严重污染和掠夺式资源开发的中国，发展出更平衡的增长模式。杨敏德此举正当其时，未来30年，中国将有3亿农村人口迁徙到城市，而现有存量房只够容纳其中半数人口（有人估计中国将新建2万到5万座摩天大楼）。中国有220座城市人口将突破百万大关。

    While the US-China climate deal grabbed headlines this week, a mother-daughter team on the ground in Hong Kong were mounting their own ambitious vision: To inject environmental protection into the ethos of China’s business and consumer community.

    “We want to make a little Aspen [Institute] where people can discuss a sustainable development model 2.0,” Marjorie Yang, chair of the textile giant Esque, told me on stage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women International Summit in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

    In discussions of China’s mounting pollution and waste problems, Yang is emerging as a power player. Over the past decade, the Harvard MBA (who also happens to sport an MIT math degree) has applied sustainable practices to her factories, which produce shirts under labels like Ralph Lauren [fortune-stock symbol-, Banana Republic and Tommy Hilfiger. She’s also instituted worker-friendly practices for her 59,000-person (mostly female) workforce. Now she’s bent on taking that thinking beyond her own industry. But more on that—and Yang’s “little Aspen”—in a minute.

    First meet Yang’s daughter—32-year-old Dee Poon, whose father is Harvey Nichols retail tycoon Dickson Poon. Hers was a youth in Esquel factories and Harvey Nichols stores. When her mother recently asked Poon if she had read Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In, Dee confessed she hadn’t finished it—she’d already grown up in that life.

    But Poon studied philosophy, not business, at Harvard. She spent her 20s doing everything from making a short film to opening a pop-up store before returning to Esquel to revitalize the shirt brand her mother founded. The brand is called PYE, a combo of symbols reflecting Marjorie’s passion for math, profits, and fashion. (Note to shoppers—Dee is currently shopping for retail space in Manhattan.)

    Poon told me that taking over PYE “in some ways saved my life. I need a constraint or I want to do everything.” Now her focus is building a brand around classic white shirts, mostly for men. The mother-daughter duo showed up on stage in matching PYE white shirts, joking they had never had a chance to dress alike when Dee was growing up.

    Like her mother, Dee Poon relentlessly talks sustainability. “We want a shirt brand that shares our life philosophy,” she said. Her commitment to customers: “Promising we can be as green and ethical and sustainable as we can be.”

    Now, though, this mother-daughter focus on sustainability—which they say dates back to Yang’s industrialist grandfather—is about to ramp up beyond Esquel. Next week, Yang is hosting a conference with academics and other business leaders to launch an initiative called “The Integral.”

    Named for the Buddhist concept of a continuous pursuit of perfection, Integral seeks to get business leaders to focus attention on how to produce a more balanced model of growth in a country notorious for its damaging pollution and rapacious resource hunger. Yang’s effort comes at a time when China is moving toward urbanizing 300 million people in the next 30 years. Half of the buildings needed to house that population have yet to be built (one estimate has China building 20,000 to 50,000 new skyscrapers)—with 220 cities breaking the one-million-population mark.