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HAM
HILL
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The memorial column of Ham Hill, in Somerset, is etched firmly in my memory. I
could see it from my bedroom window in the house where I grew up. From boarding school where I went
from the age of eight - and from London when I left home at 18 - I would frequently return and
spend both sunny and rainy afternoons running up and down the quarry hills of this iron age fort,
that dominates the surrounding countryside.
When I returned to live in Somerset in 1995 I moved to the National Trust house at
Tintinhull, which is still in the shadow of Ham Hill but on the
other side to my childhood home. Two of my three sons were born in one of the upstairs bedrooms,
during our 10 years renting the house.
I moved from Tintinhull in 2004 but am still very close to Ham Hill, although it's
no longer visible from my house. I do however have extensive views of the South Somerset
countryside edging over the border into Dorset.
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EARLY
CAREER
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Soon after school I spent a year in Paris – not ‘down and out’ but earning money
from busking, selling flowers and even one job which involved dressing up in silver foil to sell
frying pans and another making ‘pooper scooper’ gloves for Parisian poodles! When I returned
to London my career was no less eclectic. I sold teddy bears at Selfridges, shirts and
jumpers door to door and spent a few months working as an industrial pudding cook at Metal Box
factory.
My first proper job was working at Leo Burnett Advertising in the information
department. My experience there has been extremely helpful in training me how to research – I
remember being so interested in all the strange facts I had to find out that I produced a 'Useless
Fact Sheet', which was circulated around the agency for creative inspiration. The next stop was
working in TV production making commercials and pop videos - but soon discovered this wasn't really
my thing.
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WORLD
TRAVEL
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It was my time travelling in South and Central America that got me hooked on
environmental issues. I was horrified to see rainforests being chopped down, vast slum areas
spreading as rural populations moved to cities and on a more personal level my fellow crew members
on a luxury racing yacht chucking all the boat garbage into the sea!
Of course, many of these trips involved flying. At that time there wasn’t anything
controversial about this. Now, the impact of air travel on climate change is making us think
whether zooming around the planet in this way is acceptable. Here’s the quandary – on the one hand
the experience of travelling may be switching more people onto the perils of global warming. On the
other hand our travelling habits are making the problem worse.
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THE GREEN CONSUMER GUIDE
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I came back from Central America via the East and West coast of the States. Having
learnt to roller skate down Broadway in the rush hour, I continued in London, this time from North
Kensington to Barnes, where I was working with John
Elkington. He and I joined forces in 1986, setting up a company called SustainAbility and
subsequently writing the original Green Consumer Guide, which was
published in 1988.
This book went on to sell over a million copies worldwide and became a number one
best-seller in the UK. I was in and out of TV and radio studies explaining how we are all making
environmental choices in everything we do. And I even presented a mini series called Green Matters
on Richard and Judy's This Morning Programme.
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CAMPAIGNING
CONSULTANT
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On one trip to Newcastle, while filming Green Matters, sometime in 1989, I got an
early taste of campaigning. I was in M&S buying some knickers,
which I'd forgotten to pack. When I got to the till I accepted a receipt but said that I didn't
want a bag. The lady serving me was insistent but I stood my ground even when she fetched the
manager to remonstrate with me – and the queue behind me lengthened. My concern was that the bag
was wasteful and unnecessary. I won the battle and left the store clutching my purchase.
A few weeks later I told this story to the Today newspaper, in a feature about
'greening supermarkets'. They ran a centre page spread headlined 'Green Princess risks arrest in
M&S'. Less than six months on I noticed someone on the tube with an M&S bag on which was
written 'Please reuse this bag for the sake of the environment'.
I never found out if I was responsible for the change in policy but in 2002 I
started advising M&S – carrying out a review of their food division. More recently I've written
consumer briefing papers for them on carrier bags and packaging.
Another client who I've worked with for even longer is Procter & Gamble (P&G), who approached SustainAbility, shortly after
the publication of The Green Consumer Guide in 1988. I've seen a great number of their innovations
on laundry detergents, cleaning products and nappies – their brands include Ariel, Fairy and
Pampers – and currently sit on expert advisory panels for the company.
It's generally understood that I'm a campaigning consultant. Judging from the
feedback I get from clients and the briefs for speaking engagements, I believe I have a reputation
for being out-spoken and challenging. But I've found that companies generally appreciate this
because it helps them get a real understanding of the issues. This quote from McDonalds, in 2007, gives an idea of what I mean:
“We encouraged her to be provocative because we want to be challenged to create
game-changing social and environmental policies and programs. And she sure delivered. She has
strong opinions about McDonalds, and she's not afraid to vocalize them."
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WRITING AND SPEECHES
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John Elkington and I have written eight
books together, a couple of which since I left SustainAbility in 1995. But in 2007, my first book
was published that I'd written on my own – The New Green Consumer Guide. It was nearly 20 years on
from the original book and was radically different, not least because so much has changed in the
intervening period.
In the past few years I've also written columns for BBC Online and the Western Daily Press, as well as set up a blog,
written numerous newspaper articles, particularly for the Telegraph, where I've become a regular
contributor.
I've also been all over the world making speeches – in
New Zealand, Brazil, America, as well in Europe, including Turkey and Croatia. I managed to stay a
little longer in Istanbul, with some friends, experiencing the delights of having a Turkish bath
and listening to the calls to prayer from the Blue Mosque. And in Dubrovnik I was delighted to see
the swallows dive-bombing the feral cats over the walls of a city that not long ago had been
experiencing real bombs.
The sorts of speeches I’ve done can be quite eclectic. My sister was particularly
impressed when I told her that I'd made the key note speech at the Green Funeral Exhibition. She said that they should write this
on my gravestone when I die – but I told her I didn't want a stone, so it'll have to go on my
internet memorial site instead, when the time comes. Another event I did in 2007 was a Question
Time style debate, sharing a platform with David Miliband, when he was Environment Minister, as
well as the Director of the National Trust.
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MANY HATS
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The strap line on my website says 'I wear many hats but they're all green'.
Sometimes when I'm at a meeting or conference and have to summarise what I do, I have to think
quite carefully about which hat I'm wearing. Apart from writing books and advising companies here
are a few things I've been involved in over the past few years.
In 2005, working with Bulmers, I spent a lot
of time researching the potential of using fruit fly maggots as chicken feed – to replace fish
meal.
In 2006, I joined forces with my local council and organised a conference on biogas, essentially highlighting the potential of anaerobic digestion (AD) for
dealing with food waste and producing electricity and fuel. There's now a lot of interest in this
and new initiatives being set up all over the country.
In 2008 I was approached by the Environmental
Investigation Agency (EIA) who wanted to highlight the climate change impacts of supermarket
refrigeration. I suggested that we carry out a survey of the supermarkets and rank them on how well
they are doing on the issue. This was done and early in 2009 the EIA launched the Chilling Facts website with the results – and many of the
supermarkets are now moving towards more climate-friendly refrigeration.
I've also sat on eco-labelling boards
since they were conceived, been a director of an ethical supermarket chain and a green investment
trust – Jupiter Global Green, sat on the board of the Ecos Trust, which promotes green building and
am still a member of the Food Ethics Council.
One of the things that I’m most proud of is helping to set up a charity called
Haller. It was inspired by Dr. Rene Haller, a Swiss
agronomist, who has lived in Kenya for over 50 years. I met him in the early 1990s, in Nairobi –
we'd both received a UN Award for outstanding environmental
achievement. He asked me to come and see the rehabilitation of a cement quarry on the Kenyan
coast, just North of Mombasa. I realised that his creative and innovative eco-system approach could
be applied in many other situations.
In 1996 I spent six weeks carrying out an environmental review of the cement
factory, where Rene was working, which meant I got to know him well. A few years later, he
recommended me to Louise Piper, who was similarly inspired by his work and wanted to set up a
charity to support it. Called Haller, this organisation is based in the UK but supporting
sustainable community projects, primarily in Kenya. This includes farmer training programmes, dam
building, biogas, health projects and reforestation.
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