Julia Hailes MBE

Sustainability Pioneer

TV Clips compilation of Julia Hailes talking about waste and packaging – 1988-1990.

Recycling was probably the most popular green consumer issue because people could really understand what they could do. Quite often it was the only environmental thing they were prepared to do! Here I’m talking about recycled loo paper, overloaded landfill sites, saving energy, recycled materials, Mcdonalds cartons, egg boxes etc… “As we fill more and […]

War on Waste – Not just plastics (Oct18)

I’ve now done multiple speeches about plastics and waste.  The more I do, the more committed I am to changing our wasteful, disposable society. We’ve adopted practices that are ridiculous in their wastefulness and think nothing of it.  Here are some examples: Online Shopping: I live in rural Dorset and do most of my shopping […]

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 […]

Green Mobile Company Lives and Dies – C Mobile (Jun11)

C Mobile promised a greener approach to using your mobile phone.  Their idea was to give a proportion of their profits to community renewable energy projects, to minimise waste, offer re-conditioned hand-sets and recycle phones wherever possible.  Unfortunately they both launched and folded in 2010 and 2011 – they weren’t able to keep up with the big […]

Eco-Sheets – Using Recycled Plastics (Jan11)

In January 2011 I took my son Connor (far right in picture) to see the Eco Sheet factory.  Melinda Watson from the Raw Foundation came too (pictured far left) – and Amanda Barry-Hirst from Greenhouse PR.  Omer Kutluoglu, one of the founders showed us around.   They’re making brilliant use of recycled mixed plastics – turning them into […]

Alupro – the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Jul10)

Alupro – the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation – were celebrating 21 years of aluminium packaging recycling.  During this time recycling of aluminium packaging has risen from less than 2% to more than 40%.   Given that an average of 9 tonnes of CO2 are saved for every 1 tonne recycled, the more recycling the better.  My view […]

C Mobile Adisory Board (Jun10)

I’ve joined the newly formed Advisory Board of C-Mobile.  This company is launching a pay as you go mobile phone package in partnership with Orange.   It’s early days but they plan to invest a proportion of profits to green initiatives and campaign to improve the environmental performance of the mobile phone industry.

Expert Panel on Packaging (2008-2010)

Between 2008 and 2010 I sat on a expert advisory panel on packaging at M&S.   This was run by Rowland Hill, Helene Roberts and Mark Caul from M&S.   Other panel members include Jane Bickerstaffe from Incpen (Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment) and Mark Barthel from WRAP (Material Change for a Better Environment). Changing […]

Joining Waste Watch Board (Feb10)

Recruited by Stewart Crocker, the executive director of Waste Watch, my first board meeting was early in February 2010. It’s a really exciting time to be a part of this organisation as it’s revising its strategy putting less emphasis on recycling and more on reducing the amount we consume. I think we should be making […]

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.