On October 8th 2004 I bought a new house. Before moving in on December 6th I will be carrying out some renovation work. Given what I need to do my budget is quite restricted. But I thought I would look at what I could do to minimise the environmental impact of the house. I have discovered that most of the major things like solar heating, wind power and rainwater recycling are too expensive and it would take a long time to recuperate costs. But there are quite a few smaller things I can do. Click here for a summary of what I have looked into and what I plan to do, with links to relevant websites.
Click here to find out more about my fungi foray in Dorset. CLIPPER TEAS (Jun04)
I went to see the world’s first Fairtrade tea company – Clipper Teas. Surprisingly, it is based in Dorset on the outskirts of the market town of Beaminster. Not only is the company Fairtrade but 90% of what they sell is organic too. It was set up 20 years ago by Mike and Lorraine Brehme, who started from scratch packing tea from two tea chests in their spare bedroom and selling it to shops and hotels. Clipper Teas now buy 80% of the world’s Fairtrade, organic tea, albeit that this is only a small percentage of the world tea market. They were actually involved at the start of the Fairtrade movement, helping to set criteria for tea for the Fairtrade Foundation (www.fairtrade.org.uk), when it set up in 1992.
In June I discovered a rather unusual company, based in West Dorset. Truffle UK is the first of its kind. It has imported an innovative technique or protocol from New Zealand, which in true truffle tradition is highly secret. In broad terms the protocol reveals how to produce truffles and the company is encouraging people to plant their own Truffieres. I wrote an article on this for the Western Daily Press. THE HALLER FOUNDATION MEETINGS (Jun & Aug 04)
In June 2004, I went to Bamburi just North of Mombasa in Kenya with the idea of crystallising plans for the Haller Foundation. The vision for this newly formed charity is to create sustainable, community-based solutions for landscape restoration, regeneration and conservation. We identified a number of projects that will be the first to benefit from fund-raising initiatives. See Haller Foundation website for more details. In August 2004 Ian Davies, Louise Piper and I - all Trustees of the Haller Foundation - visited the Eden Project. We were taking up their generous offer to give us advice on strategy and fund raising. We met with Tony Kendle and Caroline Digby. Tony has been involved with the Eden project since it's outset and is one of the six foundation directors. Caroline who joined more recently will be working with the mining and minerals sector to establish industry wide best practices in post mining regeneration. From Left to Right: WESTERN DAILY PRESS - FOOD FOR THOUGHT (April-October 2004)
Regular column in the Western Daily Press, called Food for Thought. Published on Fridays, the articles, which took up a full page of the newspaper, cover a different food ingredient each week, from an environmental, social, ethical or health perspective.
One project I have been working on is with Historic Futures - they have developed a unique software solution to enable product traceability throughout complete supply chains at the click of a mouse. Apart from the improved efficiency and cost cutting that this facilitates, I am convinced that full traceability of products and processes will become commonplace in the near future. If you want to know more see www.historicfutures.com STOCKHOLM NETWORK / ECONOMIST CONFERENCE - AN APOLOGY FOR CAPITALISM (Feb04)
An Apology for Capitalism? A Stockholm Network Conference in association with the Economist. I spoke on a panel against the motion: The precautionary principle: is it killing innovation? Opposing me were Benjamin Hunt, author of The Timid Corporation and Bill Durodie, Senior Fellow, King's College, London. SUSTAINABLE FOOD CHAIN WORKSHOP AT STONELEIGH (Jan04)
A one-day workshop, defining the research agenda for sustainable food chains in the UK. Organised by SUS-CHAIN, a major pan-European research project, which is exploring the linkages between food supply chains, sustainable food production and rural development. Sus-Chain is run in the UK by the University of Gloucestershire and IIED (International Institute for Environment & Development)
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.jpg "Truflles in Dorset")
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