Triodos Bank says ‘I do’ (Jul07)
This was no ordinary AGM. Apart from anything else Triodos staged it with a wedding theme. Charles Middleton the MD made his vows, talked to ‘the congregation’ and encouraged them to ‘speak now’ but ‘not hold your peace’. Apart from a few wry observations that the Triodos representatives were all male and were more formally […]
Interior designers be damned (Jun07)
I stayed the night with friends in Holland Park. Only a year ago they had completely stripped their house to the bone and refurbished it from top to bottom. I wish they hadn’t! Interior designers, builders, architects and I’m afraid to say my friends too have managed to create a family home with an energy […]
Hay on Wye Festival – China & droughts (Jun07)
The China Question When I wrote the original Green Consumer Guide there was one question I was unfailingly asked by journalists. It was ‘if there’s one thing that you can do to save the world what would it be?’ Answer that in a sound bite without sounding trivial… Of course there isn’t just one thing […]
Sunny day in London (May07)
Unusually I didn’t have meetings in the morning, so I headed for the Lido on the Serpentine. Delicious ‘pain au chocolat’ and not such a delicious organic orange juice for breakfast, whilst reading Rosie Boycott’s Our Farm, published earlier this month. A man approached me saying something about the child he was carrying not being […]
EU Bureacratic nightmare… (May07)
It’s been a long time since I’ve done any work for the EU. I hope it will be even longer before I do it again. Having agreed to speak at a conference on ‘Climate Change and Civil Society’ in Brussels, I felt I couldn’t back out. But the administration required to claim back the modicum […]
McDonalds Testimonial (May07)
“Julia participated in a panel discussion that explored our CSR past, present and future. We encouraged her to be provocative because we want to be challenged to create game changing social and environmental policies and programs. And she sure delivered. She has strong opinions about McDonald’s, and she’s not afraid to vocalize them.” “Most of […]
Food Ethics in practice! (Apr07)
Was rather flustered arriving at my first Food Ethics Council (www.foodethicscouncil.org) meeting and finding no-one in the allocated meeting room at University College London. It transpired that the meeting had moved across the road – and I hadn’t picked up the last minute change on my email. When I heard why the meeting room had […]