Julia Hailes MBE

Sustainability Pioneer

Behind the scenes at McDonalds (Jun10)

It wasn’t ‘Old McDonald had a farm’. Actually, the farm belonged to the Duchy of Cornwall although it was being run by farmer, Richard Hoskins. Near Dorchester, almost over-looking the Prince of Wales new town of Poundbury, the beef farm turned out to be a key supplier for McDonalds. The expedition was the first of […]

Dorset Schools Eco Summit (Mar10)

Attended by over 40 schools and held by Bryanston, the Dorset Schools Eco-Summit helped schools share their green commitments and encourage each other.   TV presenter, Dick Strawbridge (It’s Not Easy Being Green and Scrapheap Challenge) and I co-presented the day – I worked out that we were speaking for over 5 hours during the day.  Rob Hopkins from Transition Culture also came and spoke […]

Greenhouse PR – Nominated as an Eco-Hero (Mar10)

I’ve started working with Anna Guyer, founder of Greenhouse PR.  We are collaborating on a number of project ideas and really enjoying the process!   Anna has nominated me as one of her Eco Heroes on her blog.

Food Inc film is worth seeing (Feb10)

I was really impressed with Food Inc – it was powerful and compelling – and even after a busy day in London I didn’t fall asleep, which is quite unusual. The main point of the film was to illustrate how the American food system has been centralised under the control of just a handful of […]

Chilling Facts Campaign on Supermarket Refrigeration (Feb 10)

Launched on 1st February, 2010, the second Chilling Facts survey has been very successful in drawing attention to the huge impact of supermarket refrigeration on climate change. I’ve been working with the Environmental Investigation Agency  on their campaign to get the supermarkets to switch to climate-friendly refrigeration gases.   We ranked the retailers on their performance and gave them detailed […]

Julia Hailes on recycling plastic bags (Jan10)

Jonathon Vernon-Smith, from BBC 3 Counties, rants to Julia Hailes about why he doesn’t like being made to feel guilty about using lots of plastic bags. Julia robustly responds and the debate is followed by a phone-in! This was aired on his lunch-time programme in January 2010.

Christmas cards are wasteful (Jan10)

The Jeremy Vine Show wanted me to have a pair of scissors ready for my interview. The idea was to record me, Blue Peter style, cutting up my Christmas cards so I could use them again. Listening to the programme afterwards, I don’t think the scissor cutting was audible! But the message about re-using Christmas […]

BBC 3 Counties Radio – plastic bag rant from presenter (Jan10)

Jonathan Vernon Smith from BBC 3 Counties Radio rants to Julia about why he doesn’t thing people should be charged for plastic bags.  Julia gives a robust response and explains that he shouldn’t be complaining about something so trivial. [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4C0WkuoiZs&&width=200&height=125[/embedyt]

Radio 4 – Costing the Earth (Dec09)

This half hour programme looks at how some people are responding the the threat of climate change as we approach the Copenhagen summit in December 2009.  It includes interviews with school children participating in the Generation Green youth tank, including comments from Julia, as their expert green guide. BBC Radio 4 Costing the Earth

The Age of Stupid film (Oct09)

I’ve just watched this film at a screening in the nearby village of South Petherton. The village hall was jam packed, although I was one of the few who had taken along my children. At the beginning we were warned of bad language in the film but actually all that I noticed was someone swearing […]