Julia Hailes MBE

Sustainability Pioneer

Rubbish In Indonesia (Mar23)

It felt like Armageddon.  We went on a ‘nature bike ride’, but the trip highlights were piles and piles of rubbish.  Plastic bottles, old flip flops, a child’s shoe, fishing nets, polystyrene, foil packets and general household detritus. We were in Indonesia staying at the Banyan Tree on the northern coast of Bintan, which is […]

The Rubbish Project is hiring! (Jan22)

Brilliant opportunity for an entrepreneurial commercial director to work with circular economy pioneers. Click here to find out more. The Rubbish Project is a fast-growing company with too much work and not enough time. Would you like to be part of a team creating a ‘waste-free world’? Do you want to make a positive environmental […]

My Green Life (May21)

When I was a baby my brother painted me green.. Perhaps a sign of what was to come. And the start of my Zoom speech on ‘My Green Life’. I also talk about: Setting up SustainAbility Ltd, with John Elkington, in 1987 The global success of ‘The Green Consumer Guide’, published in 1988 Becoming a […]

Is the EU’s Single-Use Plastics (SUP) Directive better for the environment (Feb21)

No.  I don’t think it is – at least not all of it. Mid 2021 the EU is planning to introduce the Single-Use Plastics Directive. The key objective appears to be moving business and consumers away from single-use plastics and towards re-usable solutions.  On the surface of it, this sounds like a good environmental move.  After all, using […]

Green Consumer Compilation – TV Clips with Julia Hailes from 1988-90

Many people will be surprised to know how much interest there was about green consumerism in the late 80s and early 1990s. It was kicked off by the publication of The Green Consumer Guide, co-authored by myself and John Elkington, in 1988. The book had 11 print runs in the first month, shot to the […]

The Green Consumer Guide & Week Green Consumer Week TV Clips with Julia Hailes 1988

Published in 1989 ‘Green Consumer’s Supermarket Shopping Guide’ was written by John Elkington and myself – Julia Hailes. It was launched on our ‘Green Shopping Day’. When I was researching The Green Consumer Guide, none of the supermarkets had a clue about ‘green products’. When I asked them what environmental things they were doing they […]

McDonalds are wrong to switch to paper straws (Aug19)

I can’t count the number of times when I’ve said I don’t want a straw and the response has been – it’s OK because it’s paper…. It’s not.   First, we have to challenge why straws are so commonly used.  I suppose I have to acknowledge that there are some situations where it makes sense […]