Julia Hailes MBE

Sustainability Pioneer

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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

ECOPOD COFFINS ARE NOT QUITE DEAD (Dec20)

But pretty nearly.  What a pity. These beautiful paper mâché, seed-shaped coffins are gorgeous.  They’re also a pretty good eco-option, as they’re made from recycled newspapers and magazines.   I’ve been planning on having one for years – I particularly like the gold ones.  This month I decided to bite the bullet and get one. […]