It's a funny old world...I went to France this week to meet a supplier of ours. He's a brilliant man who runs a juice company. All the waste water from his factory is passed through reed beds and piped to his livestock and all the fruit pulp from the juices is dried in the Provencal sun and again given to his livestock. He is as sustainable a business as you could imagine. Sadly, he is also a professor of doom. He is convinced that the world is falling apart. That greed has finally got the better of us and there is no way back..thank you very much you bankers! (his words!). I stood my ground and told him about something I saw just the day before. I explained.... when you think there is no hope...when you edge towards the realisation that we may all be doing our bit but actually we're not really going to achieve anything...YOU'RE WRONG! And boy how wrong you would be.... to doubt that anybody cares about whether or not we turn off our lights (more about that in a minute), or care about how we travel (more about that to, in a minute) or indeed just generally care about the whole global warming issue, is remiss.We had the opportunity to see the future in action. My colleague, Bart and I were invited to be part of a 'program of sustainability' workshop at Quinton Kynaston school in St Johns Wood. Sounds posh, St Johns Wood but actually it is a huge inner city school with an amazing diversity of students and abilities. We were in the presence of some 'Sustainable' luminaries from Price Waterhouse and university students as well as other eco minded businesses. The plan was to mentor a group of 14/15 year old students (10 in a team) who had to devise a sustainable/eco business, give it a name, logo, write a plan and then pitch the idea to a group of judges. A huge ask of any group of people! Once the ear flicking and pen nicking had finished we got down to work.
Ali, thought about eco tourism and the connection to a school in Kenya...Heartfelt and brilliant but expensive to set up and maintain. I suggested collecting metal waste around the school and other schools..just to throw an idea in. Luke said "whenever I walk past the school at night, the lights are all on...No one remembers to turn everything off. Can't we put a switch in each room that will turn off all the lights and standby buttons on the computers?" On one level, not very visionary you might think. Surely it's been done before. I beg to differ. This wastefullness was something that annoyed Luke and this was the forum for him to do something about it. I think this was a genius observation...an instant means of income (by way of savings) for the school, an instant reduction in carbon footprint, an instant step towards sustainability, an instant pat on the back for that man and his idea! But it continued....'we could supply other schools and all those office buildings and all the parents, they'll all want to save money!'. We were definitely on to something. So now we had to think of a name and a logo. Alana sitting quietly (more or less)doodling away and BHAMM! the logo. Just like that, off the top of her head.. and another genius revealed! The 'marketing team' got busy writing their presentation. 'You have a choice to change' was the message 'and one click is all it takes'. The whole team pulled it together....I don't know what the collective term for a group of geniuses is but this was it! We had a very lively, heated and passionate few hours pulling this thing together. Unfortunately, for me, I had to leave at this point and the team prepared themselves for the presentation to the judges.
I came away from that day feeling incredibly uplifted by the experience and by the enthusiasm of the 14 and 15 year olds (who could have not bothered and mucked around instead). And also by their understanding of the need to alter the way in which we consume. I hope all schools do this sort of thing because it is invaluable and brilliant for both the students and for those of us who are busy running businesses and forget that the connection to the future is right behind us. So a big thanks to Hannah and her team and to QK and especially to team 11...'Switch' ... who incidentally won Best Business Champion (up against lots of other brilliant ideas).
I hope they don't mind me putting their names here but I thought a weenie bit of recognition from us could do no harm! Well done chaps...I am brimming with pride!

AND ANOTHER THING........

When we started our organic food business, nearly 12 years ago, people either said we were mad -"nobody will buy organic food all covered in mud and grown by smelly hippies"- or that we were climbing on a bandwagon -"you just want to overcharge people, tell them they're not cool if they don't buy organic food, live in Notting Hill 'Village' or call their children Willow or Skye"-. What we were really trying to do was say we think we can make simple, honest food, bereft of chemical additives and yukiness for a reasonable price. We were never going to compete with a mass market supermarket pizza full of hydrogenated fats and stuff with weird sciencey names, for 7p, so we make all of our foods in small batches, by hand with a healthy degree of care and attention. Those 12 years are now behind us and we must be doing something right 'cos we're still here, winning awards and accolades and selling our pizza for exactly the same price as when we started. Only now we also make other organic lovelinesses including; soup, pasta sauces and some dizzyingly wonderful organic cheesecakes. Have a look at www.whatonearth.co.uk if you want to see some nice pictures of what we do.
And if you want to talk to mad bandwagon hoppers then drop us a line hello@whatonearth.co.uk .