The strapline for this website is that 'I wear many hats but they're all green'. The eclectic nature of the work that I do can make it difficult to summarise. Rather than list recent projects in chronological order, I thought I'd take a themed approach.

FOOD AND SUPERMARKETS

I'm currently working with both M&S and Morrisons.  

I started working with M&S in 2002, writing a report for their food division, which they say helped them towards their highly acclaimed Plan A.  But in the last few years the main focus of my work with them has been on packaging issues – I sit on an expert advisory board on this issue and have written a number of consumer briefing sheets.

At Morrisons, I've spent some time looking at their operations including their head office, stores and food factories – one of their strong points is that they produce less food waste than most other stores.  They have a very different structure and customer base to M&S but clearly many of the themes cross over.  I started working with the company in 2008 and have recently been asked to become a member of their new Chemicals Working Group. 

In 2007 I gave a presentation to the European Management team at McDonalds on sustainability in their supply chain.  Despite my critical stance – or perhaps because of it – the company then asked me to speak at their management conference in Chicago.  I was asked to give them a critical insight of their environmental performance. 

At home, I buy pretty well all my food from Somerset Local Food Direct – they sell organic, local and fair trade produce and deliver it on a weekly basis.  It's brilliant because it not only provides me with good quality food but saves me from buying more than I need, which I tend to do when I go to supermarkets. 

On the campaigning front, I sit on the Food Ethics Council, which promotes a cleaner, fairer food system.  And I've chaired a few of their Business Forum meetings, including one on meat and another of food miles. 

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CLEANING AND PERSONAL CARE

Procter & Gamble is my most long-standing client.  I started working with them shortly after the publication of the original Green Consumer Guide in 1988.  

Currently, I sit on advisory panels for them on Cleaning & Detergents and Baby Care products and have spent many hours discussing and debating issues around low temperature washing, biodegradability, phosphates, bleaching, disposable vs reusable nappies and much more.    I've also spoken at P&G Earthday events aimed at promoting greater awareness amongst their staff.

Both Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever have also invited me to speak at conferences.  The Unilever conference was held in Istanbul, which meant I was able to try out a real Turkish bath for the first time – see blog. 

The European Association for detergents and cleaning products is called AISE.  In 2008 they invited me to speak at their annual conference in Croatia, near Dubrovnic.  And in September 2009  I spoke at a conference in Malta hosted by EDANA – the European Association for disposable hygiene products.  

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ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

In 2009 I started working with British Gas on their Generation Green initiative – encouraging greener schools.   Under the banner 'Our Planet, Our Say', I helped them select the greenest school children from all over the country.   We've taken them to see a number of green projects, the first being a plastics recycling plant in Dagenham and the second the Meteorological Office in Exeter.  The idea is to encourage them to come up with some policy recommendations for government, which we're going to take to Downing Street early in 2010.

One energy issue that I'm particularly interested in is biogas – and in particular the use of anaerobic digestion (AD).  In December 2006 I co-organised a chaired a seminar on biogas, pulling together the key players, so they could tell us more about what they were doing.  Since then I have visited waste and AD plants and kept up to date with with issues relating to food and other biodegradable waste.

Another issue that's gets me fired up is the sexy subject of cooling gases for both refrigeration and air conditioning.  In 2008 I helped the Environmental Investigation launch their Chilling Facts campaign highlighting the fact that supermarkets continue to use HFC cooling gases that have a huge global warming impact – when there are technically viable alternatives.  As much as one third of the carbon footprint of a supermarket comes from the cooling gases alone – the energy used to power them is on top.  See blog on Chilling Facts campaign

For the last three years I've been a judge for the overall winner of the Rushlight Awards, promoting renewable energy technologies.  In 2009, I'm also chairing the judges panel for green products and services.  

Another project I carried out for Procter & Gamble was writing a briefing paper on carbon footprinting, which I think is a good thing - and carbon labelling, which I don't.   See link here.

"Thanks for the excellent factsheet on carbon footprinting and labeling - it's great work!"

Ioannis Hatzopoulos, P&G - Dec08

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FINANCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Between 2001 and 2006 I was a Non-Executive Director of Jupiter Global Green Investment Trust.   There were two main principles for investments.  The first was to identify companies that were producing, developing or promoting green products and services.  And the second were 'best in class' companies, that were sustainability leaders in their sector.  In 2006 the fund was rolled into a new investment trust, with a new board of directors. 

In 2008 I worked with Numis Investment Bank helping them identify potential opportunities in renewable and clean technologies for them to raise capital for. 

Triodos Bank, voted most sustainable bank of the year, asked me to make a key note presentation at their AGM.  And I work closely with their MD, Charles Middleton, because he chairs Haller, the charity I co-founded. 

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MOVING HOUSE AND ECO-RENOVATION

My home in Somerset is not as beautiful as the National Trust house at Tintinhull, where my family lived for nearly 10 years between 1995-2004.  However, it's on a hill, has extensive views over English countryside and I love it.  

When I bought it in 2004 there was a lot of work to do on a restricted budget, but I also wanted to minimise the environmental impact of my new home.  What I discovered was that most of the major things like solar heating, wind power and rainwater harvesting were too expensive, but that there were quite a lot of smaller things I could do.  These included energy efficient lighting throughout, using second hand and reclaimed fixtures and fitting and putting individual thermostats and reflector panels on radiators. 

All the renovation work on the house had ceased by the beginning of 2006 when I started researching and writing The New Green Consumer Guide, which included lots of information on eco-renovation.  This made me realise that there were many things I would have done differently if I started the process again.  My biggest mistake was installing an aga – obviously not great because it's on all the time.  Now I only have it on for very few months in the year – and I'm planning to get rid of it in the next phase of eco-renovation which I hope to start in 2010.

For the past few years I've sat on the board of the Ecos Trust, formerly known as the Somerset Trust for Sustainable Development.  This is a charity promoting sustainable building projects and lobbying for stronger regional policies on this issue.  They also have a membership – it's worth joining – and run training courses on eco-building issues.   I am now a Patron of the organisation. 

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HALLER CHARITY - KENYA

In 2004, I co-founded Haller, a charity promoting sustainable communities in Kenya – see Affiliations.   In 2009, the Haller board, including me, went to see how some of the projects started by the organisation, just North of Mombasa, were progressing.   We saw Haller's agricultural training courses in progress, their medical centre advising on malaria prevention, newly built dams, the environmental education centre and most impressively some communities applying the Haller approach.  We also planted trees to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the organisation – and as a tribute to the founding director, Louise Piper, who has passed over  the reigns to our new director, Niduk Wijayasingha-Watson.

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THE NEW GREEN CONSUMER GUIDE

Writing The New Green Consumer Guide, nearly 20 years on from the original Green Consumer Guide made me aware about how much had changed in the intervening period.

 In 1988 green issues were moving out of the fringe into the mainstream and the world was worrying about the hole in the ozone layer and just waking up to the perils of climate change.  And the task for the earlier guide was principally to help people make connections between the things they buy or do on a daily basis, whereas with the latest edition the challenge was to help people through the myriad of choices and conflicting information.

Some of the quotes about  The New Green Consumer Guide give an idea of the style and content:

   "The guide is wildly opinionated but rigorously researched and, best of all, it explodes with surprises."

"What an excellent read. Just my sort of book.... bite sized chunks.....lots of pics.....and masses of controversy. "

"She has a knack of explaining things in a simple and direct way and then presenting her own chosen path through the maze without insisting it should be the reader's choice." 

"I found the New Green Consumer Guide  fascinating, humorous and very useful."

"A really interesting book that dispels quite a few myths!"

When researching The New Green Consumer Guide I found the section on green death particularly caught my attention.  As a result I wrote a few articles on this subject and was subsequently asked to be the key note speaker at the Green Funeral Exhibition.  I try to keep abreast of this issue and have a number of ideas on what I'd like to happen to me when I die.  One approach that I think is particularly intriguing is resomation, which, in short, is a water alternative to the fire of cremation.  But given that this is not yet available in the UK, I'm looking at a shallow burial in an Ecopod coffin. 

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