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Eco Hero: Julia Hailes

Anna Guyer | 08.03.10

If working for sustainability of our planet was an Olympic sport, Julia Hailes would be on the podium with a green medal. A tireless advocate for an eco-friendly lifestyle, she dedicated herself to environmental issues long before anyone ever knew it was important, or that we would need to think about it, or it became the fashionable status symbol that some consider it to be today.

The list of her contributions on social, environmental and ethical issues is too long to list here, but you might know her as the author/co-author of nine books on green living, including the best-selling Green Consumer Guide published in 1988, which sold over a million copies.

That book and it's 2007 sibling, The New Green Consumer Guide, serve as veritable bibles of how to live your life in a responsible and green way. Julia highlighted green issues and wrote about solutions before sustainability was a word on the public or boardroom agenda.

As a modern day Robin Hood, Julia leverages the grown-up salary she makes as a green consultant for some of the biggest companies in the country, so she can work for the smaller, less wealth-laden causes about which she is passionate. Currently, she's particularly fired up about supermarket refrigeration and resomation (an alternative form of cremation using water and with less impact on the environment).

I am work-shadowing her at the moment to learn more about sustainability - and on how to be superwoman. I've seen her turn up in comfy clothes, disappear into a public loo at a station, and emerge in smart clothes and quirky boots ready to take on the world. I sit, listen and learn while she tells clients or the minister or the councillor or whomever exactly what she thinks, how it is and what they need to do about it.

She connects people. She is pragmatic. She makes me laugh. She is an inspiration and she shows that you can stay true to your beliefs. She's my Eco Hero, and here are her answers to our Eco Hero questionnaire.

1. How would you describe yourself?

I describe myself as a campaigning consultant. Also, because I do lots of different things I summarise it by saying that "I wear many hats but they're all green.'

2. What is your mission?

Making a difference. When I co-founded SustainAbility with John Elkington, in 1987, we decided that the values of the organisation were like a three pronged stool, with all the prongs being equally important. They were to make money, make a difference and enjoy ourselves while we were doing it. I think that's still a pretty good approach to my work.

3. What do you care passionately about?

Saving the rainforests. It tears my heart out when I see chainsaws ripping through the forests, orangutans clinging to wrecked trees or swathes of tree stumps stretching into the distance. It was my concern for the rainforests that got me into the environmental field. Now I work on a huge range of issues and I'm passionate about many of them. For example, it might be strange to feel passionate about waste but I do. We've become such a disposable society where products and resources are consumed like there's no tomorrow. This has to change.

4. Why is green/eco so important?

Because it's all about the world we're living in. I don't want to live in a brown and dead landscape or in a society like the TV programme Survivors where everyone is at war with each other. Actually, I thought the film Avatar illustrated the contrast between an industrial and consumerist society vs. a green community that values nature. Most of us would prefer to be in the Avatar camp.

5. What is the next big challenge?

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green, environment, eco, new green consumer guide, julia hailes