GETTING STARTED

In 1985 I went on holiday to New York for a couple of weeks but it was more than 18 months before I returned to the UK. In the intervening time I’d sailed to the Carribbean through a hurricane, crewed on yachts – including one with Teddy Kennedy on board, studied Spanish in Guatamala, hitch-hiked in Panama and returned to New York via New Mexico, the Grand Canyon and Los Angeles.

Shortly after I returned at the end of 1986, I started working with John Elkington at an environmental organization called Earthlife, based in Belgrave Square. But my time there was short-lived because the organization folded and the various projects it was running were taken over by others or used as a platform to spawn new initiatives. One of those was SustainAbility, which John and I set up from a back room in his house in Barnes.

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THE GREEN CONSUMER GUIDE

The first project I worked on was a book called Green Pages (1987), which was sub-titled ‘the business of saving the world’. It looked at the business opportunities that were emerging from environmental pressures and turned out to be a pre-cursor to The Green Consumer Guide (1988), which was galvanizing people to use their consumer power to get companies to improve their environmental performance.

The Green Consumer Guide was the right book at the right time. There were eleven print runs in the first few weeks, it became a number one best-seller and stayed in the top ten non-fiction best-seller list for 44 weeks. Even more surprising for us was its success overseas. It came out in about 20 countries and went on to sell around a million copies worldwide.

When I first called the supermarkets and asked them about what green measures they’d taken, they didn’t know what I was talking about. A few months after The Green Consumer Guide was published, they’d all appointed environmental managers. And there was fierce competition between the leading stores about who was the most green. This came out in the form of newspaper advertisements claiming to be the green, greener or greenest grocer, following our ranking in The Green Consumer’s Supermarket Shopping Guide, which came out in 1989.

We followed this with The Young Green Consumer Guide, which was published in 1990 and followed by The Greenest School Competition. Also with a consumer message we wrote Holidays that don’t Cost the Earth (1992), as we wanted to target the tourism sector, which has a significant environmental impact. And along with Peter Knight, we wrote The Green Business Guide (1991) – advising our business audience on what they should be doing.

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CONSULTANCY

When John and I set up SustainAbility we thought that big businesses would find our campaigning approach threatening and steer clear. Actually, it was the reverse. The success of The Green Consumer Guide, meant that companies came towards us asking what they should be doing to appeal to the green consumer audience.

We started carrying out environmental audits of companies – looking at what impacts they were having and then advising them on creating policies and strategies to deal with them. Quite quickly we managed to build up a blue chip client list including companies like British Airways, Dow, HSBC, ICI, Procter & Gamble and Shell.

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ECO-LABELLING

Another area of interest was eco-labelling. We had a number of people approach us to suggest that we set up our own scheme giving a ‘green consumer’ endorsement to products and services. We realized that this wasn’t practical or desirable and could take over our whole operations, so I was happy to join a government initiative exploring how to approach eco-labeling.

This evolved into the UK Eco-Labeling Board, which ran the UK part of the EC Eco-Labeling Scheme. And this was followed by the Advisory Committee on Consumer Products and the Environment (ACCPE), where I was vice-chair.

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OTHER EVENTS

During this time I also became a director of Out of the World, a small chain of ethical supermarkets. I presented a slot, called Green Matters, on ITV’s This Morning Programme presented by Richard & Judy, as well as appeared on numerous TV and radio programmes talking about green consumer issues.

And in 1989, John and I were elected to the UN Global 500 Roll of Honour, for our ‘outstanding environment achievements’.

On a personal front, I married Edward Bryant in 1991. He was working as a Barrister, with chambers in Temple. At the end of 1994 we moved down to Somerset and on New Year’s Day 1995 had our first son – Connor. I sold out of SustainAbility and began working from home, which starts the next period – The Tintinhull Years – 1995-2004.

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MILESTONES  - 1986-1994

EARTHLIFE 1986

Through Earthlife's wide range of projects it aimed to promote the shift to technologies, lifestyles and economies based on the sustainable use of the planet's resources. It's main campaign was to raise a large sum of money to underwrite the conservation of one of Africa's richest rainforests in the Cameroon. I started working with John Elkington at Earthlife in 1986 on the publication Green Pages. In 1987 we then moved to John's house in Barnes, from where we set up SustainAbility.

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GREEN CONSUMER WEEK 1988

Green Consumer Week was organised in September 1988 to coincide with the publication of The Green Consumer Guide. We encouraged organisations and members of the public around the country to promote the idea of 'green consumerism' - to use their consumer power to promote environmental improvements.

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GREEN SHOPPING DAY 1989

In 1989 we organised Green Shopping Day to coincide with the launch of The Green Consumer's Supermarket Shopping Guide. The idea was to give people an opportunity to become a green consumer. There were different green consumer activities organised around the country and a Green Consumer Action list drawn up.

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UN GLOBAL AWARDS 1989

In 1989 both John Elkington and I were elected to the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honour for outstanding environmental achievement. In 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, I joined the Global 500 Committee, which was set up to promote the work of the award winning laureates from around the world. See Global 500 website for more information.

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BRAND NEW PRODUCT DESIGN 1989

Brand New was a product design consultancy owned by the Michael Peters Group. It produced a successful report categorising green consumers from dark to light green and joined forces with SustainAbility, letting us have space in their offices. Dorothy Mackenzie from Brand New now runs Dragon Brands which also specialises in new product design.

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THE KITCHEN THAT COOKS WITHOUT ROASTING THE PLANET 1990

Co-organised by SustainAbility and Friends of the Earth, The Green Kitchen exhibition stand was the 'first step towards a Green House of the Future exhibit' at the 1990 Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition. Following on from the successful 'green consumer' campaign, it showed how green housekeeping can turn your kitchen into a powerhouse for change.

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THE GREENEST SCHOOL COMPETITION 1992

The Greenest School Competition was sponsored by Varta Batteries. Launched in 1990 it was linked to The Young Green Consumer Guide, encouraging school children to carry out an environmental audit of their school. Lots of entries were received and the best ones had not only carried out and presented an excellent audit of their schools but identified areas where improvements could be made. One bunch of children discovered that their school was wasting £20,000 per annum heating the school at night!

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THE HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA 1992

SustainAbility set up a committee to organise The Holiday Extravaganza in 1992 to co-incide with the launch of Holidays that Don't Cost the Earth. The event was attended by about 150 people, including Douglas Adams and Dilly Keene and took place at the Porchester Baths. Food was prepared by Neil Grossman (brother of Lloyd) and there was dancing, quizzes, raffles and even holiday snaps.

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