The latest green flex

A lip balm called Eco Lips landed on my desk today. It’s a nice enough thing, sweet-tasting with a clever little clip so that you can fasten it onto your trousers if you have the good fortune to be on the slopes * or doing some other vigorous winter sport that turns your pockets upside down. But why eco?

Well, the ingredients are 95 per cent organic, which is nice to know, as is the fact that it is free of all those paraben, petroleum combinations that Greenpeace warns us about. But what really jumped out of the press release was the fact that the Iowa-based company – yes, sorry, it is American (not because America is bad but because it's a shame it has to travel so far) – is trying to establish solar power for its offices.

It is a long way from being off-grid - for which read that it has probably only taken the first steps - yet it strikes me that this is the latest green flex. A company's way of marking itself out as green. Yes, a rival company might be off-setting; it might be organic and/or fair trade, and it might be lighting its HQ with low-energy bulbs, but does it have a whopping great panel or a wind turbine on the office roof?

Not all companies make a song and dance about it. Here are a few places in the UK that have renewable energy, and you would never even know.

* yes, I know about the environmental hazards of skiing, and I'll back to them soon, I promise (just after my annual two weeks in Val D'Isere)

The Neal’s Yard creamery in Herefordshire, which makes goat’s cheese and organic cow’s cheese, relies on a combination of wind power and solar thermal panels to provide the large amount of electricity required to power all the dairy’s machines.

Richmond Fire Station, in West London, is the only fire station in the UK to be powered totally by electricity from solar panels. It makes enough energy to sell some back to the grid.

Ruskin Mill, an education centre in Gloucestershire has hydropower, generating electricity from the nearby river.

Roots and Shoots, in South London, provides gardening experience for young people and has solar panels

Comments

[Brian]

Impressive. I live in West London, but I never knew about the Richmond fire station.
Has anyone tried panels/turbie on their own home?

[Joseph]

Hey Anna,

Do you ever stop to actually THINK about why other planets in our solar system are also undergoing "climate change"? Last time I looked, there weren't any SUV's on Mars but Mars is undergoing similar climate change patterns.

Are you an deliberate Con or just another useful idiot of the Greens?

CLIMATE CHANGE IS BULLSHIT.

[Emily]

Apropos of nothing in particular, Anna you wanted to hear how my green attempts were coming on - went back to visit the parents at the weekend, and on finding that they only had eggs from caged hens, couldn't bring myself to have them! Had porridge instead, felt very virtuous. On the other hand, I still think those electic salt and pepper mills are the work of a genius. Sorry!

[Emily]

Joseph, I'm not entirely convinced that it is man's efforts that are causing climate change, but I am a believer in "leave nothing but footprints (non carbon ones ;-) )behind" You wouldn't leave rubbish in a park would you - so why should you feel fine about polluting the planet?

[Eco Worrier]

Emily - that's great that you had a smug porridge-over-caged-hens-eggs moment. Bravo! I have almost forgiven you for loving the electric salt and pepper mill...

[Emily]

It could be worse - they could be the ones which have a light at the bottom so you can see where the salt's going....

[Alice]

Anna Shepard.

the comment, "yes, I know about the environmental hazards of skiing, and I'll back to them soon, I promise (just after my annual two weeks in Val D'Isere)" sickens me. Do you really think you are doing ANYTHING productive by buying an "eco" lip-balm, from a company that is merely 'TRYING" to get solar panels, rather than actually having them yet? Are all these little faddish commercial exploits really worthy of writing about in a national newspaper? You are a JOKE. Get a life and start doing something more productive like NOT going on your annual trip to Val D'Isere, or spending £300 on your yummy mummy highlights, or prancing about talking SHIT in your sleeveless puffa jacket and pumps. (Please excuse the impression of you that your high-quality writing gives me...)

[Eco Worrier]

Umm, it was a joke. I've never been to Val D'Isere, nor am I going.

[sophie]

Well Alice, you are a FRIENDLY friendly person aren’t you! All these CAPTIALS littering your posts in a way that only a frustrated, narrow-minded fool can muster (excuse me but your writing style suggests that might be what you are). Do you really think Anna would be such a hypocrite as to practice one thing and preach another? Takes one to know one is all I can say to that… And as for what one writes about in a ‘national newspaper’, it’s a blog – a forum for discussion. Not today’s headline. I fear the day when angry blog posts take place of interesting ones. Easy on the verbal attacks!

[Eco Worrier]

Thanks Sophie - nice to be defended against the vitriol of angry blog posters.

[B.L. Zeebub]

Well, as for us over in the US, it doesn't matter how much we tighten the belt. The ridiculous government we have is set to accelerate the rate of invasion from Mexico and other nations so that every effort towards conservation we ever make will be nullified by massive population growth. Why bother. I have stopped all recycling and other eco imperatives as a matter of civil disobedience!

[Paul Walker]

Man made global warming is a scam, and the renasance was kick started by the midevile warm period. If you Eco Worrier's realy want to help society shoot yourselves before you reproduce.

[Dusty]

It was not very long ago that you WACKO enviromentalist were warning us of GLOBAL COOLING, the new ICE AGE. I hate to see people so arrogant to think we can destroy something God created. You are a bunch of bark humping AMERICA HATING FOOLS!!!!

Put that in your pipe and smoke it...I love my Hummer!