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Award for most sickening press release of the year

The Guardian, Ecover and National Grid – yuck. Lucy Siegle – yuck yuck. This sort of thing makes any sincere environmentalist want to go and cut down a tree:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The winners of the 2012 Observer Ethical Awards, in association with Ecover, were announced at a ceremony last night in London hosted by the Observer’s ethical living correspondent and TV presenter, Lucy Siegle, alongside the awards celebrity judges and sponsors.

The Observer Ethical Awards are now in their seventh year of celebrating the projects, businesses, ideas, campaigns and activists making sustainable change a reality.

The list of winners include:

Sport
Dartford Football Club
Dartford Football Club, an ethical stadium with water recycling, bike racks, grass roof and solar panels. The judges felt it was a great project that engaged with a hard to reach community.

Ecover Ethical Kids
Fact Fashion
Fact Fashion draws attention to issues, like the conservation of scarce resources to changing behaviours, by producing fashion items that display the powerful numbers associated with these problems. The judges felt it was different from any other awards entry they had seen before.

Local Hero sponsored by The Body Shop
Dr S Oliver Natelson
Dr S Oliver Natelson is a community campaigner that has worked for over 30 years supporting the local wood and nature reserve in Barnet. The judges felt that he is the definition of a hero, incredibly inspiring and informative.

Grassroots Projects sponsored by Timberland
Climate Change Schools Project
The Climate Change Schools Project (CCSP), based in Durham, is a not-for-profit-project that puts climate change at the heart of the national curriculum.

Business initiative sponsored by Jupiter Asset Management
Ecotricity
Ecotricity is a green energy company and supplier and generator of eco electricity and gas and the judges felt that what it is doing will change the energy world.

Blog sponsored by environmentguardian.co.uk
DfID – Hannah Ryder
A blog from a UK civil servant showing how economics, poverty and action to avoid climate change and to protect the environment in developing countries relates to real life. The judges felt that Hannah’s blog was well written, talked about important topics and was an effective way of sharing information.

Arts and Culture sponsored by Festival Republic
When China met Africa
A film highlighting the new problems associated with the Chinese expansion in Africa. The judges felt that the power of the film is that is does not make any judgments – it raises a lot of issues and questions but leaves it to viewer to make their own decisions.

Big Idea sponsored by National Grid
SafetyNet
The SafetyNet is a new trawling system that cuts down on the catch and subsequent discarding of juvenile and endangered fish. The judges felt that although this project was still in the very early stage it was one of the most important ideas the world is going to see.

Fashion & Accessories sponsored by Vogue.com
Veja
Using organic cotton from agro-ecology initiatives in North Brazil, wild Amazonian rubber, and acacia tanned leather, Veja produces trainers and accessories. The judges felt Veja had strong ethical principles whilst creating beautiful products.

Campaigner sponsored by B&Q
Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall
Selected as Campaigner of the year for the second time, Hugh continues to campaign for fish conservation, energy saving and ethical chicken farming amongst other issues.

Retailer
Warren Evans
Warren Evans produce ethical beds and wooden bedroom furniture, handmade in London.

The awards included a mix of reader-voted categories and judged categories. All were judged earlier this month by a panel of ethically-minded celebrities and experts including Colin Firth and Livia Firth; poet, Ben Okri; supermodel, Lily Cole; and TV presenter, Ben Fogle.

One Response

  1. Hey, Nick. At least there is a feeble attempt by these pseudos. In Cape May, the local government councils just allow any and all developers to destroy any and all natural habitat to build McMansions or worse – after paying large fees and permit charges to them first. Nothing is environmentally safe in these constructs. Nothing. It is a way of pawing in more and more tax money into their under-the-table coffers. It is cheaply built hurricane fodder. Cape May County despises backyard bee keeping, woodburners, and solar panels. The entities here are passing ordinances against them as they are discovered by neighbors in the communities. These abovementioned fools in this article will eventually learn because in spite of their egos and lies, they have a way set to advance, to learn from their mistakes. Their spiritual guides have more of a leeway with them than those who continue to stay ignorant.

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