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I'm on holiday in August so there won't be lots of new blogs to look at. Back at my desk properly at the beginning of September.

Prince Charles talking to trees (07jul07)

I was sitting just behind Prince Charles and Al Gore at the Business in the Community Awards dinner and wondered whether my image would be appearing in newspapers as a hazy blur over their shoulders.

Prince Charles made an excellent case for saving the forests

But I had a clear view of how Prince Charles reacted to Rory Bremner’s impersonations. The one that particularly amused me was Bremner singing in Prince Charles’s voice his own version of Doctor Dolittle’s ‘Talking to the Animals’.

In this case he was ‘Talking to the Vegetables’. The Princes’ body language showed that there was some trepidation about what was coming - but when it came he was amused.

What particularly pleased me was Prince Charles’s passionate plea for the rainforests. He described their beauty, deplored their destruction and implored world wide action to save them.

With 1700 people at the Albert Hall, it was an impressive event. Sponsored by M&S – I sat between Flic Allen-Howard, their Director of Communications and Mike Barry, Head of CSR.

So I had a chance to get some first hand details about Plan A and how it started. I was intrigued to learn that the name for the initiative came from a brainstorming session. They picked up on one of Stuart Rose’s common sayings - ‘there’s no plan B’.

I’m afraid that the Daily Telegraph House and Garden Fair were not so aware about threats to the planet. I found a kitchen display and challenged the man in charge about designing the cooker next door to the fridge (this means the fridge has to work harder to keep cool and therefore uses more electricity).

He was rather baffled by anyone taking an interest in these things.

More switched on was Sally Storey from John Cullen Lighting. Although her display didn’t appear to use energy efficient bulbs, she did offer information on LED lighting and where it would be suitable - for example as a direct replacement for halogen bulbs.

On the last day of the show I came to speak about The New Green Consumer Guide in the open theatre at the Exhibition. I’m not sure I was quite as popular as the Gardener’s question time event that followed - green fingers wins over green lifestyles!

But having lunch with Sue Crewe, Editor of House & Garden magazine there was no shortage of interest. And on another tack, she said it could be a big day in her life – like many others she has made a commitment to give up cigarettes to coincide with the ban on smoking in public places.

Posted originally on Telegraph Blogs by Julia Hailes on 07 Jul 2007 at 12:48

Comments [2]

Tags: Prince Charles, Green issues, Al Gore, environmentalism, Rainforests, Business in the Community Awards

Waste disposal is not for seagulls (30jun07)

I love the Brighton buses. Every stop has a sign telling you how long it is before your bus arrives. I also rather liked the sound of seagulls when I woke in the morning a stone’s throw from Brighton beach. But I discovered that residents are not so keen. I had thought that bird-related complaints would be about their droppings but actually the concern was that the gulls tear open rubbish bags and leave a horrendous mess behind.

Let's not leave waste management to the gulls

Of course there is a solution to this. Currently Brighton Council’s recycling lorries don’t collect food waste. But if there was a weekly collection of food (from lidded bins), the seagulls wouldn’t have such a feast. And the rich organic material could be converted into biogas to power the refuse vehicles and perhaps even the wonderful Brighton buses too.

The day after this book signing trip to Brighton (organised by City Books) I tried out my ideas on packaging and waste issues at a lunch session of the Resources Recovery Forum (organised by Resources not Waste) – a group of industry experts on the subject. I started with an explanation of why I think the Women’s Institute (www.womens-institute.co.uk ) have got it wrong with their campaign encouraging people to choose biodegradable and recyclable packaging.

There were strong views around the table about the disadvantages of biodegradable plastics – not only because the rotting process releases greenhouse gases but because they’re fouling up plastic recycling schemes. Although the Forum were enthusiastic at finding a consumer voice explaining why plastic bags are actually better than paper bags. I should point out that I did make it clear that we need less of all disposable bags, whether paper or plastic.

Amongst the other issues I raised were the problems caused by measuring recycling waste materials by weight rather than volume. First this means that although the public are more concerned about plastic waste, collection authorities focus on glass bottles and newspapers because they weigh more.

More worryingly, it also means that newspaper collections that sit in outside skips will count as a higher proportion of recycled waste if it rains because they’ll be wet and therefore heavier. That’s ridiculous but true.

Another nonsense is that it’s illegal for pubs, clubs and restaurants to use domestic bottle banks. Their waste is classed as commercial and needs to be paid for. This means that many of these premises fail to recycle, even though they have large volumes of glass and cans.

Going back to Brighton. One of the people attending my talk about The New Green Consumer Guide told me that she organised milk bottle top recycling (plastic tops rather than foil ones). I was delighted to hear this because I always collect my bottle tops but have nowhere to put them. Her problem was that some retailers were putting stickers on these tops, which makes it difficult to recycle.

Whether you live in Brighton or Bognor Regis, dealing with society’s waste is both a problem and an opportunity. Let’s not leave it to the seagulls…

Posted originally on Telegraph Blogs by Julia Hailes on 30 Jun 2007 at 11:38 Comments [2]

Tags: Green issues, recycling, Waste, Brighton, Seagulls

Green Washing (21st Jun)

Cleaning clothes

Did you know that on average we release 1 billion skin flakes a day, 1 litre of sweat and 38grams of grease? Probably not, but looking around the research centre at Procter & Gamble’s Brussels headquarters, these statistics abound.

The washing machines used for conducting tests

The corporate giant behind everyday brands such as Ariel, Bold and Fairy Liquid has rows and rows of washing machines, dryers and automated hand washing robots testing, testing, testing.

Having been invited to chair a workshop session for consumer organisations, I joined them in looking around the research centres. It was fascinating.

Julia in the research lab

If you wash at 60C (which should be a very rare event) you’ll find that 85% of the energy used is to heat the water and only 15% to rotate the drum.

By turning to 30C you’ll be saving 1kw – and that’s what modern day detergent makers are trying to encourage us to do. For them it means re-designing their products to be effective at low temperatures. It also means encouraging consumers to use them in this way.

The average wash temperature in Belgium is 48C, in Germany it’s 45C and in the UK 43C – so some of us are getting the message. I’m one of them.

Pretty well all my household laundry is washed at 30C. And, as I explain in The New Green Consumer Guide, even with three grubby boys, our clothes come out clean.

I should also point out that I don’t use so called ‘green’ detergents.

Their biggest selling point seems to be that they’re biodegradable. But that’s not such a big deal on two counts.

First, the mainstream detergents are biodegradable too – they are required to be by law. And second, if you ask the water authorities about whether the biodegradability of detergents causes them any problems (I have asked them), they’ll tell you that this is no longer an issue.

Another contentious issue is the use of enzymes.

Bizarrely, in the UK, we’re pretty exceptional in our conviction that biological detergents (the ones that contain enzymes) cause skin problems. Research doesn’t seem to support this view.

And interestingly, in other European countries this isn’t a big concern. If you look at sales of Ecover (the most well-known ‘green’ detergent), you’ll find that only 10% of its sales in the UK are biological, whereas in Europe, this is by far their biggest seller.

This is important because enzymes are key to detergents working more effectively at low temperatures.

Washing dishes

Apparently there are three main ways that people wash their dishes. I fall into the first category – filling a bowl (or sink) with water and squirting in the detergent.

But if you live in Japan you’re far more likely to use what’s called ‘direct application’ – 90% of them do. This is when you pour detergent onto a sponge and wash up under a running tap.

The third approach is very common in Arabia and Mexico but used by only 1% of Americans (I wonder what happens when the Mexicans cross the border). They use a concentrated mini solution – perhaps in a bowl and dip the sponge into it, whilst the main water used is in the sink or a bowl.

I asked which of these methods used the most detergent, water and energy. I was disappointed that the answer was not top of mind.

It seemed that research was focused on designing products around what consumers currently do - ‘We look at consumer behaviour but don’t try and change their habits’.

So P&G weren’t using their expertise to promote the greenest dish washing on the planet. Why not?

Posted originally on Telegraph Blogs by Julia Hailes on 21 Jun 2007 at 16:45

Comments [5]

Triodos Bank says 'I do'

This was no ordinary AGM. Apart from anything else Triodos staged it with a wedding theme. Charles Middleton the MD made his vows, talked to ‘the congregation’ and encouraged them to ‘speak now’ but ‘not hold your peace’.

Charles Middleton preparing to make a solemn vow

Apart from a few wry observations that the Triodos representatives were all male and were more formally attired than the guests, declarations from the Triodos team were well received. Ethical banking is a growth industry.

And gender balance was not an issue in the afternoon session, where we had a female chair and two women speakers, including me. I opposed the motion put forward by Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation that ‘green consumerism was merely mood music for the middle classes’.

Andrew is the author of Tescopoly – he not only knew his subject but was an impassioned and entertaining speaker. But, it turned out that we were largely in agreement – to my surprise, even about cut flowers.

I’d be quite happy if the cut flower industry went out of business. Whether they’re grown in Guatemala, Kenya or Kent this industry has a significant carbon footprint. It may surprise you to hear that British grown flowers, grown in greenhouses, can use significantly more energy than flowers air-freighted from the other side of the planet.

So what about the people in developing countries who make a living from this blooming industry? My view is that we (by that I mean retailers) have to help them find alternative crops to grow that perhaps can be more beneficial to them and their economies.

One thing I learnt was that Triodos customers are well informed. Questions from the floor weren’t trivial. We talked about peak oil, quality of life, comparative standards of living, the role of government, green taxes and lots more. I was also pleased to find that it was far easier selling The New Green Consumer Guide to this audience than to people at the Bath & West – OK, that’s not a big surprise, but it was very nice.

Posted originally on Telegraph Blogs by Julia Hailes on 13th Jun 2007 at 13.12
Tags: Shopping, Environment, Triodos Bank, Ethical Banking, Andrew Simms

Interior designers be damned (12jun07)

I stayed the night with friends in Holland Park. Only a year ago they had completely stripped their house to the bone and refurbished it from top to bottom. I wish they hadn’t!

Designer lighting - looks good, but there is a cost

Interior designers, builders, architects and I’m afraid to say my friends too have managed to create a family home with an energy appetite of a factory – more than 15 times what my family use and costing a staggering £8,000 a year in electricity bills.

I’ve counted the ceiling lights in their kitchen before – there are 22. But this time I counted the other lights dotted around – uplighters, spotlights and lights under the cupboards.

There were a total of 44 not including the ones in the cupboards, or indeed those in the super deluxe American style fridge and freezer - nor the lights in the garden that could be seen through the large sliding windows next to the dining table.

Halogen lights were spread about the house light confetti. They’re in every room – even the hallway and stairs, controlled by a sophisticated dimmer system. But they’re a curse of our time – wasteful (energy-efficient replacements are not generally possible), short-lived (they tend to blow quickly) and hot (they can be a fire hazard).

The government is talking about banning incandescent bulbs (ordinary light bulbs) but I think halogens should be even higher on their hit list.

Of course, the gargantuan electricity bill isn’t just from lighting. On further investigation I discovered that the renovation included marble floored bathrooms (5 of them), with electric under-floor heating, using 120 watts when it’s switched on.

Only one of these bathrooms had a thermostat and was on a timer, two had the heating on pretty well all the time and the other two were only switched on when guests were staying. We still worked out that the electricity cost for this heating alone amounted to at least £500 a year.

Power showers, full flush lavatories, a lawn that’s mown several times a week and a kitchen waste disposal unit (one of those whirring gizmos in the sink) are other eco-horrors in the house.

On the plus side I should point out that they have double-glazed windows and... I can’t think of another eco plus point. Oh yes I can – they don’t have an aga and they do recycle their waste. It occurred to me that they’d have to recycle for about 100,000 years (that’s a guess) to save the amount of energy their house uses in a year.

So who’s responsible? My friends should have included eco-criteria in their brief. But I also think that builders, architects and most particularly interior designers should be informed about these issues.

To design a house that looks beautiful but leaves a huge ugly footprint is irresponsible – possibly even immoral (one of Al Gore’s views expressed in An Inconvenient Truth is that climate change is the moral issue of our time).

If you’re an interior designer remember that the legacy of your creations will live longer than you. Think green or be damned.

Posted originally on Telegraph Blogs by Julia Hailes on 12 Jun 2007 at 17:38
Tags: electricity, Housing, Environment, recycling, Lighting, interior design
Comments [8]

Save the rainforests (8jun07)

South American travels

Cool Earth has really hit the news this week. So much so that when I went to look at their website it had crashed from too much interest. To me that’s really good news (the popularity of the site rather than the technical problems) because the main aim of Cool Earth is to protect the rainforest. This happens to be the issue closest to my heart. I feel absolutely passionate about it. In fact that’s what started me working as an environmental consultant and writer.

Julia Hailes in a rainforest, 1983.

It all began with a trip to South America. In 1983 I went to Peru with a girl friend – Juliet.

We arrived at Lima airport in the middle of the night with some dollars (not yet converted to Peruvian currency), our South American Handbook (a bible for backpackers) and our ra ra skirts (they were fashionable at the time).

I knew two phrases in Spanish – ‘That’s too expensive’ and ‘Go away’. Both proved to be very useful.

We travelled South in Peru to the town of Arequipa, where we made ourselves very sick from eating strange fruit bought at the market. The worst thing though, was getting robbed.

Our guide-book had warned us that 80% of tourists travelling to Cusco on the train suffered this fate. But we managed it before we’d even got on the train.

On the short bus-ride to the station our bags were slit with razor blades and my travellers cheques were stolen from the breast pocket of my jump suit. We had thought we were on the look out!

Further North from Cusco was my first rainforest experience.

After a couples of days on a bus, we headed up the Urumbamba river in a canoe and camped for the night.

This was no peaceful night in the wilderness – the cacophony was over-whelming.

Frogs, birds, perhaps even monkeys but most of all insects. You could hear them, you could see them and you could definitely feel them – I’m not sure who won the competition for the most bites…

The strange thing about the rainforest is that most of the animals remain invisible.

It’s not like Attenborough’s Life on Earth, where everything is not only on display but probably hunting or mating too.

What we did see though was a wall of colourful McCaws – I’m tempted to say parrots but that’s not strictly accurate.

Anyway they were a beautiful mix of blues, yellows and reds – and there were lots of them nesting and nestling on the cliff face that bordered the river...

Forest destruction

It wasn’t until I visited the Pantanal in the South East of Brazil, a few months later, that I witnessed the forest being chopped down.

Huge noisy chainsaws, their ugly sound echoing across the canopy.

Big vehicles dragging the fallen timber across the floor of the forest like dead animals.

It was sad. It seemed catastrophic.

They weren’t just destroying trees but so much more – a whole living eco-system.

Now I know they were also killing the planet too.

Cool Forest tell us that each acre of rainforest locks away 260 tons of carbon.

Rainforest destruction in Brazil accounts for 75% of its greenhouse gas emissions, which is why Brazil is actually the world’s fourth largest climate polluter.

Many carbon off-set schemes invest in planting trees, as well as energy-efficiency and encouraging renewable energy, such as wind and solar.

I’m not against that per se – I’d certainly prefer people to make donations to these things than contribute nothing. But I can’t help feeling that saving the rainforests is even more important.

It should be easier to keep what we have than to re-create it.

So I’m going to buy rainforest land. Either through Cool Earth or Rainforest Concern - I haven’t yet decided which.

And in future I’m going to ask clients that want me to travel by plane if they’ll contribute too.

It never feels like it’s enough but I’d like to do something…..

Posted originally on Telegraph Blogs by Julia Hailes on 08 Jun 2007 at 22:35 Comments [3]
Tags: Brazil, Rainforest, Cool Earth, Attenborough’s Life on Earth, McCaws, Pantanal, Peru, Deforestation, Rainforest Concern, Buy rainforest land

Hay on Wye Festival - China & droughts (6jun07)

The China Question

When I wrote the original Green Consumer Guide there was one question I was unfailingly asked by journalists. It was 'if there's one thing that you can do to save the world what would it be?' Answer that in a sound bite without sounding trivial... Of course there isn't just one thing there are lots of small things we should be doing - and lots of small solutions.

A rainy day at the Hay-on-Wye Book Festival

Now the question I'm asked most often is 'what's the point of us changing what we do when China and India are consuming so much'.

Sure enough this issue was raised both in my session at the Hay-on-Wye Book Festival (which I did along side Guardian journalist Leo Hickman) and at a later session I attended with Australian ecologist Tim Flannery.

My answer has 3 parts.

The first point is that we produce about 4-5 times more CO2 per head than they do in China (and America produces about double what we do).

This makes it even harder for us to preach to China that they should cut emissions without us cutting our own.

It would be a bit like asking someone to eat less when they have only one meal every two days, whilst we go on eating 3 meals a day without compunction.

The second point is that much of what is produced in China and other developing countries is consumed by the richer countries in the West. This means that we're in a very good position to use market forces to specify that the goods we buy are produced, minimising their environmental impact.

Perhaps this is a little arrogant when, for example, China has set a goal for 20% renewable energy by 2020, compared to a target of only 2% for the Australians (Tim Flannery made this point).

Another thing to consider is that the average fuel efficiency of cars in China is the same as the target for Californian cars by 2020...

Finally, we should understand that rapid development in China doesn't necessarily mean it will go through all the polluting stages that we have since the Industrial Revolution.

We should be hoping that they'll be leap-frogging the dirtiest stages of development.

Take a mobile phone, for example. Nowadays you can use it to play music and games, take photos, email, measure your diet, keep a diary and a whole host of other things (even warn you when PMT is due!). This one small gizmo replaces many other bigger pieces of equipment - and therefore uses less resources.

Bizarrely, when I got back from Hay, China was in the headlines.

The government there has said it will make climate change a central part of their energy and economics policies. We’ll have to see.

But I’m very keen to get The New Green Consumer Guide published out there – I think there’s some real interest in reducing their impact, even at an individual level.

Australian PM prays for rain

Tim Flannery didn't just talk about China.

He showed his frustration with the Australian Government, particularly in the face of a real crisis in both Adelaide (severe drought) and the Murray Darling river (which is drying up).

The Australian Prime Minister, Flannery says, exhorts the public to 'pray for rain', whilst refusing to sign up to the Kyoto agreement.

Talk about fiddling whilst Rome burns - or in this case Adelaide.

At the Hay Book Festival they weren't praying for rain.

I was there on the last day when it was moderately sunny. But there were signs all over the place of a very muddy start to the event - despite lots of discussion about climate change and droughts, it was a wet day in the Welsh hills.....

Posted originally on Telegraph Blogs by Julia Hailes on 6th June 2007 at 18.58
Comments [2]