erin gill environmental journalist & historian

Abel & Cole is one of the UK's largest organic food delivery businesses.

Is the organic food delivery sector booming?
In our case, yes. We are delivering to about 20,000 households now and we're growing at about 100% per year. There are such limited options as to where you can do your shopping in this country – there are five shops, basically, and none of them have a particularly strong reputation for behaving ethically or sustainably. So when a company comes along and offers a credible, believable and viable alternative people clamour for it.

How green is Abel & Cole?
We don't sit down and have big environmental policy meetings, but if you've got an organisation where absolutely everyone is coming up with ideas and they're generally getting a positive response then you end up with an array of pretty unique solutions. We get our products delivered to us in three forms: in card, which we bale up and return for recyclilng; in returnable plastic crates, which go back to producers; or in wood, which gets ground down and turned into woodchip. We don't have much going to the dump. Obviously, in the food business you get quite a lot of waste, food going off. That goes to London Zoo and gets fed to the elephants. And when the product goes out to customers it's in returnable boxes. What a lot of our customers comment on is that when they've had a big delivery from Abel & Cole they don't need to go near their dustbin. If you go to a supermarket and do a big shop you end up with half a bin liner of packaging. It's a mad world we live in where people think that quality comes from packaging.

Isn't air freighting food unavoidable?
That's a myth. Apples come up on a boat from New Zealand, as do kiwis. Oranges come up by boat from South Africa. Yet we've got something like 3,000 tonnes of produce coming into the UK by air freight, causing absolute cataclysmic disaster to the environment. It tends to be things like organic baby sweetcorn grown in Thailand. Or the classic, French beans from Kenya. It's all been done by these bloody category managers at supermarkets who are so lame and weak that they feel they can only market a product if it's on their shelves all year round. Have any supermarkets quietly asked you for advice? No, but I've heard that our name sometimes comes up at supermarket meetings. Great, have a look at what we're doing and copy it. There's nothing I would like more than if everyone had a no-air freight policy and for everyone to think about their packaging.

What's this about selling organic fruit and veg in schools?
We set up a non-profit division about three years ago, delivering bags of produce to schools. It's called the Farmer's Choice scheme. It's run by parent-teacher associations. It started when my kids began going to school and we realised that schools and parents were going to a huge amount of trouble to raise quite small amounts of money for playground appeals, that sort of thing. So my wife started selling within the school. The school kept the retail margin on each bag. These days, Farmer's Choice raises nearly £5,000 a week for primary schools in London. There are about 250 schools doing it and there are 3,500 people who get a bag of organic produce through their primary school.

Are you an environmentalist?
I reckon that anyone who graduated from university from circa 1977 to the present day is pretty green. A lot of people support green ideas. They don't want the planet trashed. I'm fortunate that I'm able to put some of those ideas into action. Whereas if you work in a department of the NHS that might be a bit more difficult. Or if you work in a highly bureaucratic company – it can be difficult to get your views across. Interview by Erin Gill. Originally published in Environment Business News Briefing, 21 April 2005.

What do you, as a member of the European Parliament (MEP), actually do?
About two-thirds of the job involves work to amend legislation going through the European institutions. The European Parliament can’t initiate its own legislation but in many areas it has what is called co-decision powers. That means that when there’s a new piece of proposed EU environmental legislation it is considered by the Parliament and our amendments really count – EU member state governments have to listen to what we say and have to find common ground with us. Quite a lot of my time is spent in committee work, examining draft legislation. I am a member of the trade and environment committees. As well, I have constituency work, as any UK MP would have. MEPs represent enormous constituencies, so I represent the whole of the South East of England, about nine million people. There are nine other UK MEPs who also cover that area, but I’m the only Green MEP for the area.

Some people argue that the UK plays fair when implementing EU law but other countries don’t.
I was aware of this belief, that "Britain keeps to the rules when implementing EU legislation but nobody else does", when I first became an MEP. To be honest it doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. I’ve come away with a sense of the yawning gap between rhetoric and reality. I would argue that Britain is no better at implementing European policy than anybody else. For example, it’s shocking the way Britain has dragged its feet over implementing some of the EU energy efficiency regulations. What Britain does do sometimes is go overboard in interpreting EU legislation. For example, when it came to regulations designed to increase hygiene standards at abattoirs, the UK government identified a number of abattoirs that wouldn’t meet those standards and therefore closed them down. In other countries, governments spent time finding ways to keep more local abattoirs open and still comply with the new regulations.

The UK is well-known for its poor performance in waste management.
A lot of the new EU waste legislation is excellent, and just common sense, but still this Government has to be pulled along kicking and screaming. We had some Green party colleagues come to London a few months back and the bus in which we were travelling from the Eurostar station to the conference centre got stuck behind a rubbish lorry. Into the back of this lorry workmen were throwing old computers. The people on the bus were appalled, saying: "You can’t let them do this! It’s illegal!" Unfortunately, we had to inform them that Britain has managed to negotiate yet another postponement of waste legislation in force elsewhere in Europe that requires old computers to be recycled - the WEEE directive. There was nothing we could do to stop those computers going straight to landfill because it’s still legal here.

Is corporate influence over EU environmental policy something that worries you?
Yes. So many industry sectors have Brussels-based trade associations that operate at the lowest common denominator. I know perfectly well there are enlightened companies that are members of particular industry associations and I think they would be genuinely shocked if they heard what was coming out of the mouths of their trade associations. One of the most important things enlightened companies could do would be to scrutinise what’s being published or lobbied for in their name. It’s a massive industry and it worries me - just the size of the corporate machinery here.

How did you ‘go’ green?
I had always been interested in issues like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but then in 1986 I read Jonathan Porritt’s book Seeing Green. It changed my life. I suddenly saw the connections between everything I’d been involved in. After I finished the book, I marched down Clapham High Street in South London trying to find the Green Party head office. I assumed it would be a large building. When I found it, behind a laundry, I discovered it was the size of broom cupboard.
© Erin Gill

Interview by Erin Gill. Originally published in Environment Business News Briefing, 23 February 2006.

How long have you been campaigning on the issue of crop spraying?
I started in early 2001. I’d been aware of the situation for a few years. My family had gone to the Health and Safety Executive about it, since our garden adjoins farmland, but we didn’t get anywhere. I finally decided: "Enough is enough. I’m going to try and change government policy." I was quite naïve. I thought it would only take me a year.

What about Defra’s two consultations in 2003 on crop spraying?
In 2002 I was asked to make a presentation on what they call "the bystander risk assessment" issue. I showed a video in which the sprayer came by three times within one month and sprayed our garden – and a "family" of mannequins I’d set up. After I’d shown the video I said to everyone – government advisors, regulators, agri-chemical representatives: "Please, raise your hands if you think this is an acceptable system for protecting public health." No one put their hand up. Yet the majority of the people in that room say publicly that the current system is acceptable. That led to a meeting with ministers and ongoing correspondence. Next, Defra launched its consultations, looking at the three points I had been raising. I was calling for a ban on crop spraying near human habitation, prior notification, and direct access to information about the type of pesticides being sprayed, etc. Eventually, Alun Michael announced his decision to explore the possibility of prior notification and said Defra would attempt to put through a new law giving people access to information about spraying, but only via a third party. He decided not to introduce any no-spray zones.

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) has just released a report about crop spraying.
The RCEP says the current system for regulating pesticide spraying is completely flawed and needs a total overhaul. In that sense it’s positive. However, the RCEP’s recommendations don’t match its findings. It's accepted there are potential health risks and that some illnesses may be related to pesticide spraying, but the 5m buffer it recommends won’t protect people. Seven states in America have no-spray buffer zones of up to 2.5 miles around schools. People ask me: "Is the nightmare situation we’ve had going on for years going to stop?" The answer is still no. The Government has never done a risk assessment based on people living next to farmland. They’ve based their policy on short-term exposure, of a bystander wandering past at the time of pesticide application and only being exposed to one individual pesticide.

What type of illnesses and diseases are most frequently linked to pesticides?
I’ve heard about all sorts of cancers, especially breast cancer. I’ve been told about clusters of breast cancer along, say, a couple of roads surrounded by fields. There are a lot of reports about leukaemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, motor neuron disease and ME. Also, asthma and allergies. I must stress that all of these diseases and conditions have been linked to pesticide exposure in numerous scientific studies over several decades. A lot of these pesticides are neuro-toxic and attack the central nervous system.

How do you feel about farmers?
This campaign has never been against farmers. It’s against the Government’s policy, which is failing everybody. Farmers have been told for years that something is safe when it clearly isn’t and they’ve only been doing what they’re legally allowed to. They’ve come to rely on pesticides and the thought of pesticides being taken away throws them into a panic. The overall solution is widespread adoption of sustainable, non-chemical methods of farming.

Are you tired?
Yes. I’ve put my whole life on hold to campaign. A lot of people say: "Look, what you’ve done. It’s amazing.’ But to me, my campaign hasn’t succeeded yet because there haven’t been any actual changes. But I’m not going to stop.
© Erin Gill

Interview by Erin Gill. Originally published in Environment Business News Briefing, 20 October 2005.

What is The Climate Group?
We’re a leadership organisation of cities, states and corporations all focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change. I use the word "leadership" deliberately. We work with organisations that aspire to be the best in their sector and we have an explicit focus on mobilising people now. Most of our staff is in the UK, but we also have offices in California and in Melbourne, Australia. We’re opening an office in China next year. We work with both the private and public sector and work with companies like HSBC, BP and Starbucks.

You’ve been working with the Greater London Authority.
Yes, we were involved in helping London establish a climate change agency. It’s an approach that’s been pioneered by London and is already being considered by a couple of other cities. Finding ways to achieve carbon reduction in relatively short timeframes is a challenge and I think this model for city-based climate change agencies is going to have a big impact. It’s about emissions reduction, energy security and energy diversification - external finance can be leveraged in, so activities aren’t just limited to a city’s own budget.

Are you a fan of companies going carbon neutral?
Going carbon neutral demonstrates that a company believes climate change is serious. Companies can combine internal energy efficiency targets – supported by rolling capital investment – with green energy tariff electricity and, then, they can offset the emissions they’ve got left. I think HSBC has kicked off a trend by going carbon neutral – it’s the UK’s biggest bank and it’s leading the way.

Tony Blair’s recent climate comments have caused concern.
My interpretation of the Prime Minister’s position is that he’s trying to create an inclusive politics. I think Blair’s recent public statements on climate change have been about trying to build support internationally, particularly within the USA and China, and in doing so he’s lost some support at home within the environmental movement. But if you look at what he’s said recently in the Houses of Parliament, he’s still committed to Kyoto and the UK government is sticking to its 2010 target of a 20% carbon reduction. One of the most significant recent developments in climate change politics was this year’s G8 statement on climate change. Is the world saved as a result? No, but it was a very significant move to get the big five developing countries to discuss the issue, and to get the USA to sign the statement. The USA was a reluctant signatory to a statement that says, "We need to reduce emissions", but it did sign.

When will the USA begin to rein in its carbon emissions?
No matter what administration next takes over in the USA, there is no way it will sign up to Kyoto. American emissions have gone up by too much – they’re way ahead of 1990 levels. And there’s too much emotion surrounding the word Kyoto. I think a more realistic outcome would be a national cap and trade scheme for carbon, perhaps within five years. That could then be the building block for the US to play a robust role in an international regime.

How do you maintain an optimistic attitude about climate change?
To be frank, I probably spend three or four days a week being optimistic and a couple of days being pessimistic. I have a PhD in environmental physics, so I understand the science. I tend to do a climate science presentation about once a week, to help people understand this is an urgent issue. Every month I refresh the presentation with the latest science and there’s never any good news. That’s why I believe that the next five to ten years will be crucial. The decisions made over the next decade will dictate where we end up. There’s a book called Bury the Chains about the campaign to end slavery - it’s a really good read. I think one day there will be a Bury the Chains type book written about climate change and people will be judged by the actions they take over the next few years.
© Erin Gill

Interview by Erin Gill. Originally published in Environment Business News Briefing, 1 December 2005.

What is the UK Environmental Law Association?
UKELA is one of those slightly strange bodies – it's a whole combination of things. It's a trade association for anyone interested in environmental law. Something like 75% of our members are lawyers of one sort or another. But it's also a charity and a body that calls for changes in environmental law where appropriate. It's not a campaigning body in the sense of a Greenpeace-type NGO, but we do look at areas of environmental law that could be changed for the better and make recommendations.

Is environmental law an expanding field?
Yes, it's certainly expanding. Environmental law is a very new area of the law. When I first qualified there wasn't anything called environmental law and now it's a recognised discipline – there are environmental law courses and many firms have environmental law departments. One of the things that makes environmental law so interesting, from a practitioner's point of view, is that it is changing all the time. You're often advising on groundbreaking issues. From a personal point of view, the contaminated land work I do is amazing because I'm advising on regulations that have never been tested – and that's the case in a number of areas of environmental law.

Is recently introduced freedom of information legislation having an impact?
In some respects the environmental field is an area where there have always been quite considerable rights to information. The recent changes have widened access slightly but more importantly, they have brought the issue to people's attention. Whereas there always were these 1992 regulations tucked away that the pressure groups knew about but your average person wasn't aware of, the difference now is that people are more knowledgeable. I think requests for information are being made. Often, the people who are making requests are normal human beings, not lawyers, so they're not phrasing requests in formal, legalistic fashion. What's important is that public bodies now know that they have to provide information when they receive a request. Rather than writing back with an unhelpful reply, they're providing the information. It's a significant change in attitude. I also wonder whether bodies are starting to publicise information because they know they're going to be asked about it eventually, so they're thinking: "Why not put a positive spin on it and get it out there".

Does UKELA wish the public knew more about environmental law?
Yes. We're currently talking to government and various charitable trusts about creating an online environmental law library. Basically, members of the public would be able to log onto a website that would give them sound information on environmental law and how they can use it for themselves. It would be very practical and very much written for the layperson. There would be a series of questions, such as: "I've got some noisy neighbours. What can I do?"; or "My house is affected by aircraft noise". The aim would be to give people an understanding of what the law is, explain what they can do and how they can go about it. The government has been very supportive, without actually agreeing to give any money. It's one of those Catch-22 situations – we've got the government saying it's supportive while the charitable trusts are saying: "Yes, this should happen but if the government agrees why isn't it willing to pay for it? Why should a charity pay?"

How did you end up becoming an environmental lawyer?
I didn't set out to become one. I fell into the subject area more by luck than judgment, but I'm glad I've ended up where I have. I was always interested in environmental issues and the firm I did my training with had some clients in the waste industry, so I started to do a little bit of environmental law. I also used to do a lot of planning work and, a few years back, it was very much the norm that the same people carried out both planning and environmental law.

© Erin Gill

Interview by Erin Gill. Originally published in Environment Business News Briefing, 31 May 2005.

Ecotricity was the first company in the UK to sell wind power. It's both an environmentally committed company and a seriously commercial one – and it prides itself on selling green electricity for the price of brown.

How old is Ecotricity and where did it come from?
I began in 1992 with the idea of building large, grid-connected wind turbines. By 1995 I had discovered that the biggest obstacle was getting a fair price for the electricity. So we decided to cut out the middleman and become an electricity company ourselves. We came up with a new way of supplying electricity, which we called embedded supply. It's more contractually new than physically new. We took embedded generators across the country and matched them with customers in the same GSP areas, which meant we didn't pay transmission charges. That helped us to sell green electricity for the price of brown. We started supplying on 1 April 1996. Cheltenham and Gloucester College was our first customer and it's still our customer today.

Ecotricity has begun building wind turbines on its customers' land. Why?
We call it merchant wind power and it allows us to be on the customer's side of the electricity meter so we avoid not only transmission charges but distribution charges as well. By avoiding these costs we are able to offset the fact that most industrial sites are not where the wind is. And you can often get planning consent on an industrial site. What we offer is green electricity that on day one of the contract is either cheaper than brown or is the same price as brown and gets cheaper over the term of the contract.

Who is taking you up on your offer?
The first merchant wind power we built was in 2001 for Sainsbury's, a 600kW turbine at the company's East Kilbride depot. This was the UK's first fully commercial wind turbine, built without any government subsidy or contract and the electricity sold without a premium. It powers about a third of the depot annually. The second company to take us up on merchant wind power is Ford. We're building for Ford right now in Dagenham and it's a massive project. There's a new diesel engine factory being built there that will produce all of Ford's diesel engines for Europe. Our wind turbines are going to power that diesel hall 100%.

What about companies without land?
We've introduced another type of merchant wind power. It reverses the logic of onsite merchant wind power – we'll put the wind farm where the wind is and we'll use the extra electricity we generate to pay the distribution costs to get the electricity to the customer.

You advertise yourselves as offering the greenest electricity tariff in the UK.
About a year ago, we had roughly 3% green electricity in the UK, but since then the electricity companies have been running around buying it all and putting it into special tariffs so they can supply a few companies with 100% green electricity. It's robbing Peter to supply Paul. The renewable energy content in the UK hasn't gone up and we haven't saved any more CO2. These companies are just repackaging existing green electricity. We've opted for what we call "new energy". We won't buy existing green electricity; instead we spend all of our money building new capacity. When a new customer joins us we promise to build at least 10% of their electricity consumption in new wind energy every year. That's what we've got to do as a nation in order to combat climate change.

Have you always been environmentally aware?
Before I got into wind energy I was leading a low impact lifestyle and achieved a lot personally, living without mains services for ten years. I was out of mainstream life and then I dropped in. I decided there was a lot I could accomplish if I took on something like large-scale wind turbines.

© Erin Gill

Interview by Erin Gill. Originally published in Environment Business News Briefing, 8 April 2004.

HSBC's climate change action has been making headlines.
In November 2004, HSBC's board approved a carbon management plan for the whole group. It's designed to be an integrated and comprehensive response to the carbon issue. It's a three-point plan: to reduce our direct carbon emissions through energy efficiency; to buy renewable electricity wherever we can; and to offset our remaining emissions in a credible, cost-effective and genuinely additional way. The result is carbon neutrality, which we believe we have achieved. We're currently working with consultancy DNV to confirm this.

How are you tackling energy efficiency?
We've set a target to reduce energy consumption by 7% and carbon dioxide emissions by 5% over three years. This is on top of business-as-usual investment in new kit that will deliver efficiency gains. Our efforts will focus on air conditioning, heating systems, vehicle fleets, building systems management and employee behaviour. We're also looking at the possibility of major investments in new technology. We've got a set of minimum standards for our buildings' energy performance and we're currently putting the finishing touches to a new head office building in Mexico that will be the first LEED-certified building in Latin America. LEED is the North American equivalent to BREEAM.

HSBC buys a lot of "green" electricity.
In the UK all the electricity we use is from renewable sources. The percentage varies in other countries. However, I must say that buying renewable electricity is challenging. If you want to buy a fuel-efficient car, organic food or FSC-certified wood you can go and do it, but if you want to buy renewable electricity it's a case of buyer beware. It's very difficult through the purchasing process to know what the sources are of the electricity you're buying, and without that information you can't know what the carbon intensity is. Most suppliers aren't able to offer clarity about the carbon intensity of the renewable electricity they're selling; yet as a carbon neutral company that is our most important measure. Legally, we could report zero CO2 emissions even if the source of our renewable electricity was landfill gas, and you don't need a PhD in chemistry to realise that burning landfill gas releases some CO2 into the atmosphere. Although legally we are allowed to report that as zero CO2 we don't feel comfortable doing so.

What about your initial experiences of carbon offsetting?
It's a challenge! It is early days for offsetting and there's an absence of credible projects in the right countries. We went out to tender for the first time in August, looking for offsetting projects to fund. We had over a hundred projects sent to us and we whittled those down to four. When choosing, we tried to apply tests that would allow the average person in the street to say: "Yes, I can understand this. There is going to be less carbon in the atmosphere thanks to the offsets you've bought". We ended up with a New Zealand wind farm, an agricultural demethanisation project in Germany, a biomass burning project in India, which substitutes fossil fuels, and a compost-based methane reduction project in Australia.

Is carbon neutrality a long-term commitment for HSBC?
I don't think you can go back once you've decided that neutrality is the right answer to the question. The challenge is coming up with efficient and effective ways of delivering neutrality, and building it into our business. We believe eventually there will be a multiplicity of carbon markets and we may be well placed – as a big, international bank – to see carbon management not just as something we do for ourselves, but also a service we offer to our customers.

Are you a green who ended up in business or a businessman who turned green?
I'm the former. In fact, I'm seconded to HSBC for three years from WWF. My previous job was director of conservation at WWF-UK. You can get a lot done in business if you've got a senior management team that recognises the importance of the environmental and CSR agenda. But if senior management isn't on board, it could be quite demoralising to be an environmentally-aware person in business.

© Erin Gill

Interview by Erin Gill. Originally published in Environment Business News Briefing, 9 February 2006.

Your name is well-known for the work you did on ecological footprinting
Yes. The idea of the ecological footprint came up in the early 1990s. It involves calculating the physical areas required to make our modern lives possible - the areas required to produce food and forest products, and the areas needed to sequester the waste products and carbon we generate. In 1995, I had a first stab at quantifying London’s ecological footprint. It was a pioneering study, so it was widely reproduced and referred to, and as a result my name is often mentioned in the context of ecological footprinting.

How big is London’s ecological footprint?
When I did my study I had a very small budget and I did it in a fairly back-of-the-envelope fashion. I estimated London’s ecological footprint to be 125 times its surface area. But since then two other, more detailed studies have more than doubled my estimate. They suggest that London’s footprint is about twice the area of the UK. What is clear is that if all of humanity lived like Londoners we would need three planets.

Has greening cities long been a passion of yours?
If we’re serious about sustainable development we must start with sustainable urban development. Take a city like London, which grew out of the Industrial Revolution and the Empire. It has been a great pioneer in unsustainable development. Can it be reconfigured? The Greater London Authority has done a lot of hard work to define what sustainability means for a large city. We’re beginning to see results: the congestion charge was a step in the right direction and, now, we’re looking forward to the creation of the London Array in the Thames Estuary, which will eventually comprise 270 large wind turbines supplying 25% of London’s domestic electricity.

What about ‘new’ cities?
Yes, I’m currently working with Arup on plans for the world’s first eco-city, to be built on an island off Shanghai. It is called Dongtan Eco-City and construction will start late this year. The project is really exciting because it’s about creating a city with a circular metabolism that mimics natural systems. It will eventually be a city the size of Bristol – made up of a series of compact, pedestrian villages and towns integrated into a landscape of working farms, and powered by renewable energy. It is one of the most exciting urban development projects in the world. 

What is the World Future Council?
The World Future Council is an initiative of my colleague Jacob von Uexkull, who also lives in the UK. I became involved after attending the 2002 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. It has become sadly apparent that global decisions on climate change, biodiversity, sustainable energy and other important issues are now being made at the level of the lowest common denominator. If one or two powerful governments decide they don’t want measures that go beyond simple market forces then that lowest common denominator becomes the determining factor. We urgently need long-term thinking in our decision-making processes, but it isn’t happening. The World Future Council will be a body of a hundred councillors - people who have a track record of action on sustainability, ethical thinking, long-term leadership and poverty alleviation. We will work to initiate action to fill the ever-widening gaps between where we are now and where we need to be if we are to have a sustainable and equitable world. Our first council meeting will be in May, so watch this space.

Have you been always been an environmentalist?
Yes, I think I was born green. I was born in 1943 and it was in 1949 when my father bought his first car. He proudly switched on the engine and I saw this smoke cloud coming out of the exhaust pipe. I said: “Dad, where is this stuff going?” He couldn’t answer my question. Another important experience in my early life was seeing fish belly up in frothy river water polluted with detergents. Seeing thousands of dead fish was a shocking experience and I started asking questions about how we could do things differently. I have not stopped asking since.
© Erin Gill

Interview by Erin Gill. Originally published in Environment Business News Briefing, 26 January 2006.