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Eco Hero: Richard Hammond

Esther Freeman | 18.02.11

Richard Hammond is the complete antithesis of his name sake. As founder of the award-winning website, www.greentraveller.co.uk, he has helped make our holidays greener. He is also the travel editor of National Geographic’s Green Magazine supplement and the co-author of Great Escapes – 500 unforgettable travel experiences.

How would you describe yourself?

Green travel writer and entrepreneur.

What is your mission?

To publicise the huge variety of options now available for more environmentally friendly holidays. In particular, the thousands of wonderful holidays that can be easily reached overland by train rather than by plane.

What challenges do we face?

The powerful airline lobby and the prevailing culture (particularly in business) that still regards flying as ‘cool’ and face-to-face meetings as a necessity. It doesn’t help that train fares to Europe can be expensive and difficult to book.

What’s your next project?
We're working on a really exciting project with VisitEngland that is due to launch during Climate Week, 21-27 March.

Your biggest achievement?

Converting www.greentraveller.co.uk from a blog into a fully-fledged business. The site receives over 40,000 visitors a month, and offers over 250 choices of eco-friendly places to stay. In addition over 25 specialist tour operators offer 1,000 holidays in the UK, Ireland and continental Europe that can all be reached by train.

What green principles do you live by?

I’m a great believer in prevention rather than cure, so I try to encourage reduced packaging rather than recycling, taking the train rather than offsetting, and so on.

Is organic important to you?

Eating food that is grown without the use of man-made pesticides has got to be the progressive way forward. But so, too, is choosing seasonal food grown relatively close to home to reduce food miles.

What one thing do you wish everyone would do?

Check whether it is possible to reach your holiday overland by train. The superfast train service from London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel means us Brits are now plugged in to Europe’s high speed rail network. It’s a really pleasurable way to reach many destinations on the continent, and you’d be surprised how far you can get.

What would you like to pass on to your children?

To pursue what they enjoy and believe in, no matter what other people say – but not to trample over other people to do so and not to be too crushed when (inevitably) things don’t always go their way.

How can we spread the green message?

By portraying green as the smart, modern, and economically efficient way to live and work.

What cheers you up?

Arriving by train in the mountains, particularly the trip from Toulouse into the French Pyrenees.

Who is your Eco Hero and why?

Nicholas Albery, founder of The Institute for Social Inventions and the London-based Saturday Walkers' Club, which encourages people to head off by train for country walks. I never met him, but I’ve used his friendly, no-nonsense walking guides on numerous occasions and it has always struck me that by encouraging people to leave the urban grit and grind for the rural fresh and wild, he must have stirred the environmental consciousness of a great many people.

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ECO HERO: LINDA MOSS

Greta Jonyniate | 07.09.11

Linda Moss - author of Organic Places to Stay. The reason why we love Linda is that she has been passionate about organic holidays for the last 12 years - working her socks off to produce a wonderful guide and website and never giving up - despite difficulties along the way. The outcome is a wonderful guide with truly wonderful organic places to stay. Check out her website.

1. What inspires you?

What inspires me is the dedication that drives some people to act on their own initiative and who have the courage to support something they believe in. The hard working people who run the businesses I promote on my website are all examples of this.

2. What makes you angry?

What makes me angry is the way we’ve been duped into thinking it’s okay to go into the supermarket to fill our trolleys with processed foodstuffs rather than to eat real natural food.

3. If you were Prime Minister, what would be the first thing you'd change?

If I were Prime Minister, the first thing I would change is the way our food is produced and promoted. I would make a stand against the big food companies, ban all additives and promote the idea that food should be wholesome and unadulterated.

4. Can individuals really make a difference?

Throughout history, there are examples of how an idea that starts with an individual quickly spreads to other individuals and generates a process of change. Today, we have the power of the internet so it’s much easier for individuals to communicate with each other about the differences they would like to see.

5. What is your personal mission?

My personal mission is to try to raise awareness about the importance of organic food. It is a fundamental notion that healthy food equals healthy people. It has become my life’s work to promote the principles of eating organically, not as a lifestyle choice for the few but as a basic right of access to nutritious food for all of us.

6. What’s more urgent: changing things from the inside or starting a revolution on the outside?

What is most urgent today is the need for change from the inside – a renaissance in the way each and every one of us thinks that will allow us to see our way out of our current problems

7. What is the best meal you’ve had in your life? Cooked by whom? Eaten with whom?

 Many years ago in northern Tenerife with my husband and three young children, we were driving through Teide National Park looking for somewhere to eat when we came across a little place miles from anywhere. Not being able to speak the language, we were taken into the kitchen by the friendly owners and shown what was cooking in a huge pan. Minutes later, hunks of freshly baked bread in hand, we were served generous bowls of this traditional local stew. Made with pumpkin, cabbage, sweet potatoes, pork and beef, it was delicious. The hospitality and the simple rustic food left an impression that remains to this day.

8. Can you describe a typical work day? (ie. what you do within that day and who you have potential to influence etc.

Like most self employed people, my business is my life and a twelve hour day is normal. My day is spent is doing all the things that need to be done to keep the business going – answering emails, keeping the website up to date, marketing the site, arranging the advertising, doing the accounts, finding new listings, planning for the future, etc. In promoting the ethos of my business I have the potential to influence every person I talk to, because the subject of food and what we eat affects us all.

9. How do you define success?

While it’s important to be able to generate sufficient income to cover basic needs, true success is internal and comes from being the sort of person who can positively influence others or make a positive difference to someone else’s life.

10. What’s the best advice anyone’s ever given you?

I think the best advice came from my husband on the day he told me not to ‘work for my business’ but to ‘let it work for me’. It is all too easy to take a passionate idea, use it as the basis for setting up a business and then dedicate your life to it, lavishing it with time and effort and forgiving it for not giving the kind of returns any normal business would be expected to deliver. I now understand that it’s important when running a business to treat it as a business, without letting go of the motivation that set it up in the first place.

11. What’s your favourite book or film of late?

My favourite book is How To Eat Like There’s No Tomorrow, by Robert Elliott. Rob runs a real food B&B in Herefordshire with his partner Sally. Together they’ve created an ethos based on forsaking modern processed foods in favour of the real thing - in other words all the nutritious foods that sustained us up to the time that industry took over and processed our food into something that’s good for company profits but bad for human health. The book has been described as part memoir, part manual and part manifesto. Rob sets out a persuasive argument which suggests that changing the way we eat leads on to other changes - the changes we need to put into place to ensure humanity has a future on this planet.

12. What would you most like to happen to protect the planet?

There are many ideas about what we can do to protect the planet, but the truth is that to protect the planet from now on we have to rethink how we live our lives. What I’d like to see is a new understanding of the importance of food to our human culture, because if we can change the way we see our food, and if we can once again be connected to how it is produced, we will reconnect ourselves with the planet that supports us.

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