HEDRICK Kwan is like the magazine article you read at the hairdresser's about green living come to life. While you go home and make dinner out of meticulously cut carrot stars and shaved asparagus, he's taking the trimmings you would normally throw out and turning them into vegetable stock.

If you say you don't know how to do that, he'll tell you. One part vegetable peels and one part water; boil over the lowest fire for two hours; filter and freeze to use anytime.

"The stock is tasty and the vegetable bits that are technically still edible do not go to waste," says Mr Kwan, who runs Plantvisionz, a gardening business.