Woman rescues 500 abandoned avocado stones to do her bit for the environment

Marissa Hush, 27, has 500 avocado stones that she keeps as ‘pets’.

These aren’t like the rocks you used to give names when you were a kid. Marissa takes each avocado stone and pots it in a plastic cup to transform it into a tree, all in an effort to fight climate change.

Marissa, who’s originally from Sydney but lives in Quy Nhon in Vietnam for eight months of the year, takes unused avocado seeds from cafes and pots them in plastic cups she finds on streets and in beaches.

Each avocado tree will take up to 15 years to grow, but Marissa is dedicated to caring for her rescues like pets.

She said: ‘When I arrived in Vietnam, I started to collect every avocado that I ate. Then I suddenly decided I wanted to grow 500.

‘They have avocado smoothies over here which are really delicious. I was sitting at a café one day and I saw a lady with a massive bag of scraps and avocado seeds and just asked her if I could have them.

‘I just kept going back and getting more and picking up plastic cups from the street. I ride my bike to work so I would stop to collect them and people would give looks to this strange lady going through garbage.

‘It’s a bit like having a pet – I water them, I change their water and every morning I probably spend one hour with them.

‘I love them so much that when I type in avo on my phone, the love heart emoji pops up. I love them so much I have 500 of them.

‘I love them so much I made my English class write about how amazing avocados are. It turns out the kids didn’t love it so much.

‘We have enough space in the house luckily, so my housemate doesn’t mind.’

Marissa’s dwellings are now filled with sprouting avocado plants stacked on every available surface, with each one needing careful care to grow to its full potential.

The teacher has a lot of spare time that she wants to use for something good. Growing 500 avocado trees seemed like a good way to start.

Every Sunday she takes part in a beach clean-up with her friend and housemate, Maverick, so they have plenty of plastic cups to house the avocado seeds.

Marissa doesn’t plan to keep her avocado babies forever. She hopes to take the trees to local cafes, offering them to owners in exchange for the venues becoming more eco-friendly. Steps cafes and restaurants can take include ditching plastic straws and carrier bags.

She also hopes that her actions, which she shares on a Facebook group called Avo Happy Planet, will inspire others to take small steps to be a little more environmentally friendly.

‘I came to Quy Nhon because my best friend was living here and I got very into environmental things,’ Marissa says. ‘He gets the community together to clean up beaches.

‘We have been cleaning up an island which is a fishing village but Asia being Asia, it is hard because it’s very populated but we want to do our bit the time we are here.

‘People should say no to straws to plant the spark in business owner’s minds.

‘A lot of bars are scared to stop using straws because they think people won’t like it, so if people say they don’t want a straw they’ll know people don’t mind.

‘These are small changes everyone should make, which do make a difference.

‘My family love what I do and its spread among my friends – now they send me photos of their shopping with no plastic.

‘Countries like New Zealand have started taking action, they’re planting thousands of trees and it’s so important with everything that’s going on in the Amazon.’

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