BritMums Live! A glimpse at blogging for the greater good.

The 'Blogging for the Greater Good' panel at Britmums Live with Camila Batmanghelidjh - Kids Company, blogger Kylie Hodges, Claire Hazelgrove - ONE.org, Polly Gowers - Give as you Live and blogger Kate Davis-Holmes

If you haven't been introduced to BritMums yet, I urge you to listen up and take note.

This weekend, the online community, formerly known as British Mummy Bloggers, gathered together for BritMums Live, a high-profile conference with over 500 delegates in attendance, attracting members from all parts of the country and with a diverse range of personal stories and blogging achievements.

Bloggers, old and new, listened to inspirational talks from blogging peers, as well as a range of celebrities from the more traditional media world.  Well-known bloggers such as Antonia Chitty, Julia Boggio and Kate Davis-Holmes, sharing programme time with some of the nation's well-known faces including Sarah Brown, Cherry Healey, Eleanor Mills, Katy Hill and Ruby Wax.  The topics were just as extensive, from experiences with depression to finding your voice, photography, publishing, video blogging, beginners tips, advanced tips, work\blog\life balance, food and blogging for happiness.  And the great thing was, it didn't matter about any individual's background, whether it was journalism, TV or blogging, being a speaker or a member of the audience, the atmosphere felt very much a level playing field.

One of the key messages to emerge from the conference was how influential bloggers have become and the evidence was pretty clear, with major names such as TK Maxx, Crocs, Panasonic, Lego, Warner Bros and Butlins being present on the day as sponsors. Brands are keen as ever to win over online voices, using modern-day word-of-mouth to share news of their latest products, through blogging platforms and micro-blogging such as Twitter.

But it's not just about manufacturers and retailers getting buy-in. In recent years, there has been an increased trend in bloggers standing up for their passions and working in partnership with the third-sector, raising the profile of charities and key issues.  For example, many of the BritMums community have already voiced support for PiggyBankKids, a charity founded by Sarah Brown, that helps vulnerable babies and children.  PiggyBankKids' presence at the conference spoke volumes, as did the fact that fundraising enabler Give as You Live was the event's key sponsor, highlighting how online shoppers can raise money for their favourite charity at no extra cost to themselves.

At the Blogging for Greater Good discussion, members of the panel - pictured above - highlighted the power of bloggers in profiling good causes and reinforced the point that charities don't necessarily need bloggers' donations, it's the blogging that is most important, encouraging support from online followers, as well as friends and families.  It's very much about sharing the personal stories that people have to tell that can connect closely to a specfic cause.

Whether as individuals or a a group, blogging seems to be entering a new era,  It was mentioned on more than one occasion how professionals within 'traditional' media have been turning to bloggers and Twitter to source stories, topical commentary as well as content for programmes and new TV formats.  My own experience can already testify to that, having had several opportunities to contribute towards and influence production content for a range of local radio broadcasts, national radio and a TV documentary.  It now seems to come with the territory and as been something that's taken some time for me to get used to.

Four years ago, it felt like wading in jelly to justify myself as a blogger but things have since changed and both BritMums Live and the recently-held Cybher demonstrated that many other bloggers have noticed the changes.

So, what did I personally gain from this weekend's event?

Firstly there's the gratitude that I've continued to blog about a topic that I care about, despite numerous moments of self-doubt and the odd period of burn-out.  BritMums Live served as a reminder of why I started blogging.  It's about the passion and the sharing.  This blog may be niche, but I do it because I care about my children and the generations that follow.  If I can learn and help shape positive change as a result of my discoveries, I will be happy that I've done my job as a blogger.

Then there's the awesome support. A hugathon, full of old friends and new aquaintances. I tend to be one for discrete waving than shouting out a total roll-call, so I shall just say, quite warmly and with much appreciation, thank you all, you know who you are. And to my pals who buffered my nerves during the awards evening, and then boosted the flow of wine when I didn't win, an even bigger thank you to your good selves.

And finally, there's that kick up the backside again, the one where I should really pull my finger out and write that book. With great advice from author and mentor Antonia Chitty, I now need to jump those hurdles of time-conflicts, mobilise my resources and get cracking.

Of course, being a waste-geek at a conference that coincided with Recycle Week, I couldn't help cast my mind back to the fabulous contribution the community gave to the campaign, just three years ago in 2009, and I wondered if there could be scope again.  It was much fun with lots of people rising to the challenge and demonstrating tonnes of creativity in spreading the word, so I very much hope it can happen again.

In the meantime, there's no way a rubbish blogger should really end a blogpost about a blogging conference, without demonstrating some evidence about what bloggers are doing to shrink their rubbish.

So here's my old pal and 'Rubbish Dieter', Tim, author and blogger at Bringing up Charlie, who after a dash of wine, attempts to reveal the fullness of his relatively new compost bin.  He slimmed his bin by 50% you know!

Oh yes, sorry I forget to say, the conference may be called BritMums Live, but in this age of equality, fathers are made welcome too.

Recycled Paint? Yes please!

Anyone who's tried to take a pot of paint to a recycling centre will most likely have been met with the disappointing news that unfortunately it can't be recycled due to the nature of the chemicals. Often the advice is to use it up, donate it to a community repaint scheme, or dry the contents thoroughly with sand before bunging it in the rubbish bin.


But there is another solution, one that I discovered quite recently, which is to actually recycle waste paint into new paint.  This is something that I thought would be impossible, until I stumbled upon the West Sussex based company Newlife Paints.

Newlife Paints does exactly what it says in its company name.  It breathes new life into old paint by reprocessing it into a new product, which contains a minimum of 50% recycled paint.

Created in 2008, the business has an agreement to recover water-based emulsion paints from nearby Household Waste Recycling Centres. The tins are separated into key colour groups, exterior or interior use and matt versus silk finish, after which the paint is blended, tested and treated, before being filtered and packaged ready for sale.  As a result of this process, each year, the company has been able to divert an estimated 100 tonnes of paint from landfill or incineration.

A few months ago, following my cheeky request to try it out, Newlife Paints were kind enough to send me a tester pot.  Unfortunately since then, things have been so busy,  it has spent most of its time just sat on the shelf.

But seeing as it's Recycle Week, I thought there was no better time to give it a go and yesterday I finally managed to grab myself a roller, open the pot and slap it - yes, that is my decorating style - onto a wall that has been in much need of redecoration for as long as I've been staring at the unopened pot of paint.

So what's my verdict?

I'm no professional, but on application, the pale magnolia emulsion certainly seemed to live up to any quality brand that I have used before and provided good coverage and a finish that offers more credibility to my decorating 'skills' than I possibly deserve. Even after the first coat.

I was particularly pleased with this, because the wall upon which the paint was tested (pictured above), has seen a lot of knocks and handprints from the younger members of our household.

The paint also dried fairly quickly and left no real distinct smell around the house.

That's the verdict on the product.  Sadly my husband's verdict on my decorating skills is not so positive. Apparently preparation is the key to perfection and I really should have taken the trouble to mask off the areas which I didn't want to paint. Admittedly, I was over-keen to get started and as a result I'm not sure I'll be trusted to be left unsupervised with a roller in future, whether I'm doing my bit for recycling or not!

But now that there's a choice of  buying 'new' or 'recycled' paint, for me I'll be choosing the latter, especially as Newlife Paints state that every 5 litres of paint recycled results in an estimated saving of 13.58 kg in CO_2. 

Stockists are mainly limited to West Sussex based companies at the moment, but the company has an online store for nationwide orders and is also preparing to launch its product range into 120 B&Q stores_. The emulsion range is good, offering a choice of 32 colours and Newlife Paints provides a colour matching service too.

With innovative processes like this now being available in the UK, I would hope that paint recycling along with community reuse schemes will continue to divert increasing amounts of paint that is wasted through landfill and incineration.

It would be great to see more recycling centres collecting pots for recycling or reuse and I certainly hope that Newlife Paints can expand its recovery and reprocessing service into new areas.

Local paint collection is one thing that I feel we currently miss out on in Suffolk, but I now feel confident that it's only a matter of time.

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More information about Newlife Paints can be found at www.newlifepaints.com. For details of Community Repaint schemes, visit www.communityrepaint.org.uk.

Confessions of a rubbish blogger - for Recycle Week

Blimmin' 'eck, it's Recycle Week!

The 9th one apparently - although I've only ever been aware of the last 5.  I reckon I must have been sleepwalking beforehand, probably too busy at work or with the kids, or doing the washing up, picking pins out of the wall or probably flossing.

Well it is a bit of a bizarre thing to have on your kitchen calendar isn't it!

"Recycle Week whoop whoop. I love a bit of that!" isn't quite the typical cry to be heard in the average household, unless of course you happen to be someone entrenched deeply in the recycling sector and can't wait to make a big noise this week.

So, seeing as I'm pretty much of a waste groupie, with one leg dangling inside the recycling industry whilst keeping the other one safely on my home turf near the kitchen sink, I thought I ought to contribute in my own way and confess a few things that might bring hope to you all....

Gawd help us!

Here goes.

Sometimes, dare I admit, I get caught without my resuable bag. Yes, mostly I juggle, partly to stand by the the 'refuse' principle and sometimes to replicate the challenge of Buckaroo, but on a few occasions I've had to give in.  But eh! I have refused plastic bags in Harrods! Yes Harrods, the place where I would once go just to get my hands on one of their shiny green carriers! So I reckon my halo remains intact, even if on the rare occasion it might look a bit dangly!

I once called my sister a waster! I was five. She was two. She was wasting her food. I got told off for swearing. I was simply being truthful. Tact was never my strength.


Many people think I live at the recycling centre!  I don't. I only pop in when passing, which might be once every 4-6 weeks. Thanks to a number of joint projects, I now have a 'Recycle for Suffolk' hi-vis jacket but I promise you all, I never attempt to impersonate a recycling operative, that would be mean to the professionals and the unsuspecting public.


I can be a real prude! So when asked by an Irish radio presenter, about the one thing we should never send to landfill, to this very day I still don't know why I blurted out 'sanitary towels'. Still blushing, I think I should have said food waste instead, even if I was secretly proud of getting over my hang-ups and abandoning the disposables. I fear it was too much for both me and the unsuspecting man on the radio, let alone his audience!


Ringing up my local council's waste strategy officer to ask where I could recycle my husband's old pants, just a matter of days before we did a joint presentation, did nothing to end my blushing or help my professional reputation! But bagging them up and dropping them in the textile bank did make me feel a whole lot better, as well as knowing what to do with the dodgy old loo seat!


Kevin McCloud once took a shine to my lovely upcycled handbag, which is made from old redundant firehose diverted from landfill. When he asked to look inside, I became utterly embarrassed that it had been a long while since I'd last emptied or recycled its contents. 'Always be prepared' has since been my motto, even if in reality, I still use my bag as a mini waste transfer station.  From that day I have not let anyone else peer within!


One of my scariest moments was during filming for a TV documentary when I had to go through a family's rubbish that was spread out on their lawn, within minutes of meeting them. Apparently the director got that idea from this very blog.  However, I don't remember writing anything about me personally emptying out bags of doggy doo.  Thank goodness for the protective masks, even if the elastic did break frequently, adding to the waste pile! It was worth it though. By picking out all the things that could be recycled locally, stuff that could be reused as well as disposables that could be replaced with longer lasting alternatives, the family reduced their rubbish even further during the week that followed.


And finally, there is the matter of my own rubbish. Despite forever pushing towards the road towards Zero Waste, we still have some rubbish that unfortunately has to go to landfill.  Things like confectionery wrappers, crisp packets, toothpaste tubes and other types of multi-material laminate packaging, plus the odd scrap of food waste, when our wormery needs a pepping up or if, like any other household, things haven't quite gone to plan.

I admit that we are lucky to live in a part of the country where the recycling services are extensive, where we can recycle almost every type of plastic packaging in our kerbside bins as well as hard plastic such as broken kids toys and coathangers at the county's Recycling Centres.



The moral is that recycling services are improving all the time and councils across the country are using Recycle Week to help boost awareness of what can be done to reduce waste locally, whether it's encouraging you to recycle all your plastic bottles or to find out more about organic waste.

So if you're not up-to-date with the latest facilities in your area, it really is worth logging onto your council's website to find out what's happening, or visiting www.recyclenow.com.  And if you're a newcomer to the whole idea of wastebusting, especially when it comes to food, you'll find even more advice at www.lovefoodhatewaste.com.

And my last piece of advice is, no matter how daft your recycling query might be, don't be shy about calling your council.  The worst that'll happen is you'll cheer up someone's day and at best, you'll know what to do with that thing that's been niggling your recycling muscles for far too long!


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Blogger disclaimer: In the climate of sponsored blogs, I'd like to clarify that this blog is totally independent of Recycle Week and all websites listed above. This post is not sponsored. I just know a blimmin' useful resource when I see one!

The future of hard plastics recycling is here!

I've enjoyed many unique experiences since starting this blog, but there have been none so fascinating as a recent project, where I accompanied waste management company FCC Environment to find out what happens to the hard plastics that are recycled through the Household Waste Recycling Centres in Suffolk.

Yes, you read that correctly. Hard plastics, aka rigid plastics, where examples include broken toys, garden furniture, kitchen utensils and even coat-hangers. You name it, if it's made from hard plastic, even if it has metal components, Suffolk HWRCs can recycle it!

Yes, even broken loo seats!

I wanted to find out how effective and efficient the process was and share the results with the residents of Suffolk, who can help the county divert even more of this material from being buried in landfill.  After all, if we've got such excellent facilities for recovery, it seems utter nonsense to waste it.

The video of our discoveries, prepared by FCC_Environment  and Suffolk County Council for this year's Suffolk Show, introduces the innovative recycling process developed by EMR & MBA Polymers, which not only creates recycled plastic that matches the quality of virgin polymer, but uses only 10% of the energy required to make equivalent polymers from oil.

So if you've ever been frustrated over why your hard plastic gubbins can't be recycled, the answer is that they can. For more information, have a peek at the video below:



If you're attending this year's Suffolk Show, more details will be available from the FCC Environment stand (580).  I will be there on Thursday 7th June, where I will be delighted to talk about the visit as well as any aspect of the Rubbish Diet.  More information about the project can be found in the FCC Environmental press release.

 

To achieve Zero Waste, we MUST keep focusing on the target

The future of waste is something that's been on my mind lately, not least because tomorrow I will be attending my first board of trustees meeting of the Zero Waste Alliance UK.  I've also got several exciting projects coming up over the next few weeks, which will highlight how our culture is changing.

My mind goes back to 2008, when I volunteered to take part in my first Zero Waste Week challenge. Despite my enthusiasm, I thought I must have had a screw loose for trying it.  I worried that people would think I was a weirdo and as for the reducing waste so drastically, I didn't think it was possible. 

But the results of the challenge showed otherwise and, at the time, shocked me.

I realise now that my pre-challenge assumptions were based on limiting judgements, lack of knowledge and embedded habits, as well as expectations that fitted well within my comfort zone.  Consequently, when I first signed up for the challenge, I confessed to the council that the best I could commit to during Zero Waste Week would be a carrier bag's worth of rubbish.  It was a comfortable target.  With such a busy family lifestyle, it felt far more realistic than producing an empty bin. And to be honest, knowing how much rubbish we threw away before that, I knew I'd be happy and proud to declare such an achievement.

But this declaration was 8 weeks before the Zero Waste Week.  I was unaware of the discoveries I would make in the coming months, including the recycling solutions that were continually improving, or how I could take control over reducing waste that could not be recycled.  As my knowledge grew during those few weeks, my assumptions changed and so did the horizon of the challenge that lay ahead.

With my limiting judgements being sledge-hammered into oblivion, thanks to my new knowledge, experiences and conviction, I was able to look afresh at the Zero Waste target and the goal looked more easily attainable. That's how during that week in March 2008, we only came to throw out a plaster.  And that's how those who took part in the Rubbish Diet Challenge that I set at the beginning of the year, also came out with fabulous results.

That's the power of the target, no matter whether it's zero waste or any other personal\business goal.
 
And this is why we must keep the focus on zero waste and underpin it with a commitment to learn, innovate and improve the processes and solutions that help us move towards that goal.

Zero waste isn't just about recycling more, it's about not creating that waste in the first place.

Whether you're a designer developing your next product or packaging, a buyer for your own business or a large retail chain, an events manager organising the smallest of events, or a householder who thinks you have nothing at all to do with the waste stream, you can make your own contribution towards a zero waste future whoever you are.

Even if all you do for now is take a proper read of your council's latest leaflet or your company's waste management policy, that is a key step to recharting the future of waste.  As a resident, you may find new services that you never realised existed and begin to recycle more as well as reduce other waste. As a designer or buyer you may discover that the future of your product can only be landfill and decide to design-out that waste.  Or if you're organising an event based on plastic cutlery or polystyrene, you may decide to consider alternatives that could help make your event waste free.

By setting yourself a zero waste target now, even if you don't think it is achievable, it will kickstart your interest and your inner innovation.  Then once your learning curve is underway and you become satisfied with your progress, a sustainable zero waste future will become more attainable, and you'll be ready to pounce on any new technologies or services that become available or more easily respond to legislative pressures.

Sometimes, all it takes is a little imagination to want to do things differently and great results can be achieved, such as that shown in the business case study here or illustrated by community based programmes that include WasteWatch's Our Common Place, or the examples demonstrated by individual contributors to MyZeroWaste.

You just need to keep that target in mind, even if it feels like it will take you five years to get there.

So begin now, by setting yourself the target, learn, innovate accordingly, reap the benefits of interim successes and review regularly.

I strongly believe you'll get there, even if you need the genius of scientists\designers to help you or invigorated markets to drive the demand for recycled goods.


As a society,  if we focus on the target, the road to zero waste and closed loop recycling will always remain open and all other diversions will become closed.

Anything else, can only be second best and is less than our future deserves.


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Useful websites to feed your inspiration:

www.wrap.org.uk
www.lovefoodhatewaste.com
www.recyclenow.com
www.wastewatch.org.uk
www.myzerowaste.com
www.feeding5k.org

My very first relationship with.... COMPOST!

As we're slap bang in the middle of Compost Awareness Week (6-12 May), I thought I'd delve into the archives of my memory cells and rustle up a few notes on my long standing relationship with compost.

For me, composting has been a normal part of life since my childhood in the Seventies. I have early memories of accompanying my grandmother on the trek from her kitchen to the compost heap, which was located in the chicken run.

Well it felt like a trek.  I was just five years old, and it was a large garden.

My sister and I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' home and as we grew up, one of our little jobs was to take the kitchen waste to the compost heap, dodging the fearsome cockerel when we got there.

We soon realised the value of composting, not least because it was the perfect place to hide the evidence of our sneaky pea snaffling, as we entertained ourselves with many rounds of pea-pod Top Trumps.

And every so often, we would see our uncle standing in the middle of the heap, turning it and shovelling heaps of earth from the bottom, into a wheelbarrow, which he'd then dig into the kitchen garden.

Soil from all those peelings! It seemed like magic.

It is clear that my early introduction to composting as an everyday part of life stayed with me.  I may have left the Welsh village where I grew up and spent the next decade hopping from student digs and shared houses, before settling down with my husband, but the minute we bought our first house in 1998, one of the first changes I made to the garden was to install a compost bin - one of those black plastic ones, which we bought through our local council.

When we relocated to our new home in Bury St Edmunds five years later, I discovered that St Edmundsbury Borough Council collected vegetable peelings & garden waste as part of its recycling service. This was 2003 and when registering for our brand spanking new wheelie bins, I suddenly got all defiant.  As I rejected the opportunity of adding a brown wheelie bin to our collection I recall making my stance clear...

"There's no way the council's getting their hands on my compost!" were the words that fell from my mouth.

I can't help laughing at my over-protection position on my grass clippings and apple cores.  It wasn't as though I was even being particularly frugal.  We simply had an average sized garden that could easily accommodate a compost bin, and it just made more sense to compost at home and bung the finished contents under the odd shrub, instead of a bin lorry carting our peelings around the county to be managed elsewhere.

Nine years on and we now have a collection of three compost bins dotted discreetly around the garden, as well as a wormery, which is great for the odd scraps of cooked waste.  Well, I say discreet.  The plastic ones are tucked away, but the wooden beehive compost bin (pictured above) has become a very attractive feature of the garden and is located just outside the kitchen.

Many people feel discouraged from home composting because of the risk of vermin such as rats. Although this is a possibility in some areas, we've never had a problem.  The worst we've ever experienced was a mouse that decided to take residence, but was solved with a humane mousetrap.  I also had a squeamy squirmish scare with maggots on one occasion, as a result of something going in that shouldn't have, but some boiled water, covering the contents with newspaper and avoiding that compost bin for a week soon resolved the issue and it has never happened again.

As far as creating the 'right mix' is concerned, I'm no particular expert.  I just bung in all our scraps and remember to add odd pieces of cardboard, paper and garden clippings now and again.  If the results are sloppier than our efforts, I don't see it as a problem as the compost just gets buried into the existing earth anyway, enhancing it with all its extra nutrients.

Even though our garden is not very large, I still prefer our self-sufficient approach to managing our kitchen scraps. From a sustainability perspective, it seems far more sensible.  However, we have since compromised and added the council's composting service for our garden waste, which is plentiful in the Spring and throughout the Summer.

Although not quite as exciting as my own early memories of composting, I hope my children - currently aged 7 and 10 - will develop the same responsibility and awareness when they are older.  At least they already understand the process and a quick test this evening demonstrated that they know the kind of stuff that goes in the compost bin, even if they don't have that duty very often.

But they'd better look out because Compost Awareness Week has just inspired me to add compost duties to their list of jobs.

Cue evil laughter.

Mwahahahahahahahaha.

Mwahahahahahahahahaha!

Well it's about time they made more of an effort.

And I know it won't just be rotten veg we'll be discussing. I'm quite sure they will soon tell me that I'm a 'Rotten Mother' for making them do it.

I just hope that when they are my age they will come to thank me, and are just as grateful as I am to my late grandmother.

If you've never composted before and would like to find out more, visit www.homecomposting.org.uk and www.recyclenow.com/home_composting.

Swish, shwop, swap or drop, or make do and mend?

With a solid infrastructure of car boot sales, clothing agencies, charity shops, recycling points, give & take days, passing onto friends or a night out swishing, there are many solutions to getting rid of unwanted clothes today.  You'd think our society would have this thing sorted wouldn't you?

Wrong!


According to TRAID (Textile Recycling for Aid & International Development), over 1.4 million tonnes of clothing still end up landfill each year, much of which could be worn again.

Now this makes me bloody angry!

When you consider all of the labour, the resources, the energy and the effort that's gone into making a product, which is simply discarded as rubbish when there is so much more that can be done with it, it highlights a major problem with our society.  A society that is either unaware or one that doesn't care.

So it was with interest, that I've been following the huge campaign that has been launched recently by M&S and Oxfam, promoting Shwopping.  Unless you're a hermit in a loincloth, tucked away in the farthest corner of a deep cavern, it's been hard to miss it, especially as it's been fronted by one of the UK's most wonderful actresses, Joanna Lumley and has hit print, broadcasting and social-media alike. The message is simple. Stop chucking so much into landfill because that's bad. M&S will make it easy for you to recycle instead, passing it onto Oxfam for reuse, resale or recycling. The idea is that next time you're shopping in-store, take in something old and drop it in the Shwop Drop box before you buy something new. 

Claiming this is the start of a fashion revolution, it is unsurprising that the campaign has been met with a whole whirlwhind of controversy, with some great commentary from columnists such as the Guardian's Deborah Orr, TriplePundit's Raz Godelnik and blogger Keith Parkins, all delving a little deeper beyond the campaign gloss.  M&S is really putting itself on a pedestal for what could be deemed as profiting from simply selling emperor's clothes, when the more environmental alternative is to buy less.


We will never win the battle of waste and resource issues with constant consumerism, but despite this, I think that M&S really does have a huge role to play with its current campaign and in terms of how it can be developed further.

From an educational perspective, the retail giant is able to reach an audience that may never be turned on by less sexy council leaflets, or that feels too proud to enter a charity shop, even to drop something off, or can't be arsed to take something to a recycling centre because they're simply too busy getting the buzz from the next purchase.

If you're looking for any anecdotal evidence on this, people like that really do exist.  I've been there, and am just glad to have snapped myself out of it shortly after the turn of the century.

In my bubble of optimism I hope that the Shwop idea will be the start of something greater, not least because I hope it will reach out to an untapped opportunity for clothes recycling and that other stores will follow the lead in raising awareness in their own socio-demographic corner of the retail sector.

But I also hope that M&S will develop this further and use it as a platform to educate customers and kickstart discussion - and action -  and look at ways in which it can work closer with the community.

I have already witnessed the perfect model for this at the campaign's Shwop Lab in Spitalfields this week, where I had the chance to chat to eco designer Gary Harvey, whilst he was busy designing a dress made from donated denim that would have otherwise been landfilled.

Passionate about good design and quality materials, his position is clear, in that fast fashion has transformed the clothing industry with merchandise that is so cheap you can pick up a pair of jeans for just four quid.  He worries that as a society we have lost respect for clothing. 

He is also concerned about the social injustice of a trade, which in many areas has taken people away from their communities into enforced labour with poor conditions of pay as well as health and safety.  He's not on his own in this worry. Lucy Siegle, author of the book To die for, has conducted a tremendous amount of research in this area, which has highlighted some stark realities of the fashion industry.  I'd recommend you watch her very short video, which provides a brief insight.

My discussion with Gary Harvey highlighted another issue, in that we have lost our creative and practical skills for making and customising our own clothing. Even altering an item of clothing can be beyond our capabilities.  As a society he wants us to get up off our backsides, have a go at making something and stop making excuses.  I could only nod and blush, having rejected many a blue skirt in my local charity shops this week because the hem was far too long.  I was beginning to wish that I'd already had this conversation last week.

"It's not difficult," he told me. "If you make a mistake, you just fix it."

My visit to the Shwop Lab gave me access to an informed perspective, which despite being open to all of M&S customers, the majority won't see it. Yet, with a full agenda of debate and insights in conjunction with Oxfam and the Sustainable Centre of Fashion, it is a fundamental part of the campaign launch

If M&S really wants to influence its customers and start creating a deeper fashion revolution, every store in this country should host a version of the Shwop Lab,  raising awareness of the issues that exist in the fashion industry and illustrating what the company is doing to address them.

It may be a little leftfield, but I would also love to see an instore Oxfam pop-up shop with good quality pieces, which can be bought there and then, to introduce shoppers into the idea of reuse. 

I really hope the Shwop campaign will create a much wider debate about our relationship with clothing than has ever been tackled before.  It's certainly made me look again at my own buying habits, which have had the odd moment of weakness lately.  Inspired by Gary Harvey, I am also going to attempt to overcome my fears and laziness and try and work some magic with my sewing machine, which I will need to drag down from the loft.

Meanwhile, I've got one last plea to M&S.  Please, I beg you to stop including those damn belts with your jeans.  If I want a belt I'll buy a good quality one, and probably so will the thousands of people who also probably take them off after the first wash and never wear them again.  I know I could 'shwop' it, but I don't want it in the first place.

It may be a very niche idea, but just imagine the impact it could make.  To bastardise one of the most famous sayings, "That's one small belt for a woman, but one giant leap for mankind".