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MOVING
HOUSE - ECO-RENOVATIONS
 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.
 FUNGI
FORAY (Sep04)
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.
TRUFFLES
IN DORSET (Jun04)
 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:
Ian Davies, Tony Kendle, Caroline Digby, Me(!) and Louise Piper
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.
 HISTORIC
FUTURES
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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2004
HIGHLIGHTS
To Kenya
setting up the 
