Julia Hailes MBE

Sustainability Pioneer

Sky News interviews me on e-waste (Jan24)

Are you concerned about e-waste? If not you should be! Over half a billion small electrical items ended up in landfill last year in the UK.  And to give another perspective, a person born in 1980 will generate around 500kg of e-waste in their lifetime – or 8 times their body weight. If you calculated how […]

Let’s stop needing printers (Dec21)

The biggest problem with printers is that they’re not made to last. Good Business has published a great blog outlining the problem with these monstrously inefficient machines. I’m embarrassed at how many printers I’ve been through. They rarely last more than 2 years, they’re incredibly bulky, they’re really badly designed, if there’s a paper jam […]

My Manifesto for COP26 and beyond(Oct21)

I’m delighted that Cop26 is getting a lot of attention.  I think it’s great that young people – with Greta leading the charge – are voicing their anger at what’s happening to the climate.  It’s incredibly positive that more and more businesses around the world are trying to make meaningful changes. Not so good is […]

Right to Repair is good – my E-waste poem in the style of Dr Seuss (Mar21)

I wrote a slightly different version of this poem in 2012 when I was campaigning to change what happens to e-waste. Sadly, it’s still just as relevant today. However there is some good news. The EU are bringing in ‘Right to Repair’ legislation, which means that it should be much easier to get spare parts […]

Setting up E For Good (Apr12)

Along with Melinda Watson from the Raw Foundation, I’ve set up E For Good. We’re the first consumer-facing organisation targeting e-waste from an environmental life-cycle perspective. Our aims are to reduce the amount of e-waste, promote repair and reuse and recycle the rest, as efficiently as possible. We’re working with Environcom, an e-waste company, who […]

Clear Out electricals week in Grantham and Stamford (Mar12)

The aim of Clear Out Electricals Week, which took place in Grantham and Stamford from 12th – 18th March, 2012 was to try out E for Good’s ideas for collecting e-waste and raising awareness about it’s impacts.   We chose to work in two Lincolnshire towns because of their proximity to Environcom, the e-waste company we […]

We need more computer re-use (Aug11)

We travelled up to Arnos Grove – an area of London I’d never been to before.  My companion was Melinda Watson, who has set up the E-Waste Campaign with me.  We’d arranged to look round the office and depot of Computer Aid. The factory floor was piled high with computer parts – hard drives, circuit […]

The E-Waste Campaign (Mar11)

I’m working with Melinda Watson from the Raw Foundation to set up an E-Waste campaign. The WEEE man, whose head is in the photo on the left illustrates the amount of waste one person will throw away in a lifetime.  WEEE stands for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. But the WEEE man was made about a decade ago, so if another one […]

My goldfish died along with Labour – Here’s my coalition manifesto (May10)

  Zac Goldsmith, formerly editor of the Ecologist, gets elected in Richmond   Chris Huhne – New Minster for Energy and Environment   Caroline Lucas – the first Green MP in the UK   My goldfish died in the night. I’ve posthumously named him ‘Gordon’. It seems rather propitious that their floundering exit coincided. And […]

Printer Horrors (Oct08)

I’ve been having problems with my printer.   Actually, it’s been annoying me for quite some time. The gremlin inside it gets particularly difficult when I’m trying to print something off before rushing out of the door to catch a train. Perhaps I should admit to be partly to blame for my problems.  Having bought my inkjet printer […]