Ham Hill
The memorial column of Ham Hill, in Somerset, is etched firmly in my memory. I could see it from my bedroom window in the house where I grew up. From boarding school where I went from the age of eight - and from London when I left home at 18 - I would frequently return and spend both sunny and rainy afternoons running up and down the quarry hills of this Iron Age fort that dominates the surrounding countryside.
When I returned to live in Somerset in 1995 I moved to the National Trust house at Tintinhull, which is still in the shadow of Ham Hill but on the other side to my childhood home. Two of my three sons were born in one of the upstairs bedrooms, during our 10 years renting the house.
Although, I have no wish to be cremated I have sometimes thought about having my ashes sprinkled on Ham Hill. Now, I realise that it may be possible by the time I die to have my freeze-dried remains spread about under a pile of leaves somewhere in the vicinity – so I will have come full circle.
World travel
Soon after school I spent a year in Paris – not ‘down and out’ but earning money from busking, selling flowers and even one job which involved dressing up in silver foil to sell frying pans and another making ‘pooper scooper’ gloves for Parisian poodles!
When I returned to London my career was no less eclectic. I sold teddy bears at Selfridges, shirts and jumpers door to door and spent a few months working as an industrial pudding cook at Metal Box factory.
But it was my time travelling in South and Central America that really got me hooked on environmental issues. I was horrified to see rainforests being chopped down, vast slum areas spreading as rural populations moved to cities and on a more personal level my fellow crew members on a luxury racing yacht chucking all the boat garbage into the sea!
Of course, many of these trips involved flying. At that time there wasn’t anything controversial about this.
Now, the impact of air travel on climate change is making us think whether zooming around the planet in this way is acceptable. Here’s the quandary – on the one hand the experience of travelling may be switching more people onto the perils of global warming. On the other hand our travelling habits are making the problem worse.
The Green Consumer
I came back from Central America via the East and West coast of the States. Having learnt to roller skate down Broadway in the rush hour, I continued in London, this time from North Kensington to Barnes, where I was working with John Elkington. He and I joined forces in 1986, setting up a company called SustainAbility and subsequently writing the original Green Consumer Guide.
This book went on to sell over a million copies worldwide. I believe that if we hadn’t written it someone else would have – it was the right book at the right time. John’s idea was that businesses would be more ‘green’ if they knew that this would bring them more customers. I saw it from the other direction – if most people knew the environmental impacts of their shopping habits, they’d make ‘greener’ choices.
What neither John nor I had anticipated was the response from the business world. As consultants we were besieged by companies saying they recognised the importance of environmental issues, but what could they do? This was particularly apparent amongst the supermarkets – it may surprise you to hear that even at this time they were busy appointing environmental advisors to get them up to speed.
The current climate
It’s nearly 20 years since the publication of The Green Consumer Guide. In the intervening period, I have written a number of books on a similar theme, worked as a consultant for lots of companies, including British Airways, ICI, Marks & Spencer and Procter & Gamble and given speeches all over the world. Having left SustainAbility I am now freelance – or in modern parlance a ‘portfolio’ worker. As I often find myself explaining, I have lots of hats but they’re all green.
A couple of years ago my family moved to a Victorian farmhouse, which I’m still eco-renovating. Some of my experiences are included in The New Green Consumer Guide – for example re-using a friend’s kitchen units and my struggles to find suitable energy efficient light bulbs. However, I’ve got lots more to do and will be posting progress reports on my website. There’ll also be news of my consultancy work and speeches – this year has already been extraordinary both in terms of the world waking up to environmental issues and, as a result, people wanting me to do things. I’m run off my feet.
But I haven’t lost sight of Ham Hill – I’ve just moved to another side!
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