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 […]
Waste Watch Big Green Society Conference (Mar11)
I’m chairing a morning session looking at the role of government, business and education in promoting the Big Green Society.
The Secret Life of Stuff (Jan11)
Julie Hill thought I’d be uncomfortable with her view that we’ve had enough of green consumerism, where people are left to choose to be green or not. What we want, she says, is more ‘choice editing’. That effectively means that businesses and retailers only offer products that have a minimal environmental impact or are deemed to […]
Fact sheet on disposable nappies (Nov10)
One of the most difficult eco-decisions I’ve had to make is whether to use cloth or disposable nappies. I chose disposables. Given that I’m a big campaigner on reducing waste, this might seem surprising. But my view was that the environmental differences between the two products were not so great – and disposables performed better. […]
My goldfish died along with Labour – Here’s my coalition manifesto (May10)
Zac Goldsmith, formerly editor of the Ecologist, gets elected in Richmond Chris Huhne – New Minster for Energy and Environment Caroline Lucas – the first Green MP in the UK My goldfish died in the night. I’ve posthumously named him ‘Gordon’. It seems rather propitious that their floundering exit coincided. And […]
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 […]
Recycling plastic mountains (Nov09)
Omer Kutluoglu – Plastics recycling entrepreneur In the UK we throw away mountains of plastic waste and use lots of plywood. Apart from a small amount of plastic bottles and an even smaller number of plastic bags, pretty well all the rest of our plastic debris is discarded, never to be used again. Omer Kutluoglu, […]
Generation Green visit recycling plant (Jun09)
I was impressed by the passion, enthusiasm and knowledge of many of the children who are participating in the Generation Green youth think tank, sponsored by British Gas. Age 7-14 we met at Dagenham docks to have a look around the Closed Loop recycling plant. They were told all about recycling plastic bottles and were […]
Regifting – eek (May09)
Photo: A rather well-wrapped present… I don’t just recycled my rubbish, I recycle presents too. I’ve recently discovered that this is called ‘regifting’. Apparently this is an American phrase and I learnt it from my sister-in-law, who comes from the state of Washington but is now living in Devon. If I get a present that […]
