‘We’re green goddesses’
Forget recycling your wine bottles, these eco-angels have made going green their lives
Jo Wood recycled herself after Ronnie left
Dumped by her Rolling Stone hubby, Jo Wood has rediscovered herself
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Video'I SAVE LIVES SELLING RUBBSISH'
Make-up artist Melissa Hartzel, 32, lives in Watford with her husband Miles, 35, and their children, Jaden, five, and Ruby, two.
"Standing in the hot, dusty Cape Town suburb of Langa in South Africa, I watched the kids playing outside the shabby huts they called home.
Squealing with laughter, they began a game of hopscotch on numbers they'd scratched into the road with a stone. It was a sight that filled me with guilt. All I could think about was my own children and their roomful of toys in our home in a wealthier area of Cape Town.
My thoughts were interrupted by a man working nearby. He was busy weaving bits of cola cans together with old electrical wire to make a baseball cap. I was overwhelmed by his creativity in the face of such poverty, and immediately felt I had to do something to help.
We'd moved to South Africa a year earlier in September 2005, while I was pregnant with Ruby. We'd wanted to have a family adventure before Jaden started school.
The sunny outdoor lifestyle really appealed to us and we were able to rent out our three-bedroom semi in Watford and afford the lease on a four-bedroom house with a pool in Cape Town.
Of course, I knew the country had townships - underdeveloped, poverty-stricken areas built on the outskirts of cities. I'd seen them from the motorway, but I'd never been to one before. There were tourist trips out to them though, and a few months after Ruby was born, I decided to go to see them.
It was at the third township we visited that I spotted the man making the hats. I later found out the villagers made imaginative things like bags from old number plates and would sell them on to visiting tourists.
That evening, I couldn't forget what I'd seen. We'd always been fairly eco-aware, recycling bottles and cans, but I suddenly realised almost all our rubbish could be used again in some way.
That evening, I told Miles I wanted to help by selling the products these people made and investing the money back into the townships.
I was fired up, and within eight weeks I'd spent £2,000 of my savings buying produce through a company that represents township artists. I bought handbags, hats and bowls all made from junk, and set up a website called Oldtincan.co.uk to sell the goods, with 10 per cent of my profits providing funding for a craft school called Out Of The Box in one of the townships. It gives scholarships to adults who want to develop their creative skills and make a living from them.
We moved back to Watford in July 2007, but by then the website was thriving. We've now sold over 500 products worldwide and I run the business alongside my full-time job as a make-up artist. So far I've raised around £500 for the school, but now the business is really taking off I'm hoping to raise a lot more. The money has been used to buy equipment like paints and brushes, and also to help support the students who are on scholarships.
We're hoping to go back to South Africa in 2010 to visit Out Of The Box, and see how my business is helping them.
Now my attitude towards recycling has really changed. I'm teaching the kids that nothing is to be wasted. I want them to understand their future depends on it. Through this business they've learned how one person's junk is another person's living."
'PEACHES AND SIENNA LOVE MY ECO DESIGNS'
Sarah Ratty, 39, is an eco-fashion designer and founder of the Ciel fashion label. She lives in Brighton with her partner Ben, 31.
"My eco-epiphany came in 1990. I was a young designer, fresh out of fashion college, and had gone to France to visit some clothing factories.
As I drove through the French countryside, I admired a beautiful river - then I noticed a sign beside it warning that the water was polluted. Textile mills in the area were dumping huge quantities of chemicals from dyeing agents into the river, killing the fish and plant life.
While I was aware of pollution and the damage it could do, it had never occurred to me that fashion could be so un-environmentally friendly. Until then, it had always been a wonderful, positive thing to me. It was deeply upsetting and filled me with the resolve to try to do something to help, no matter how small.
I'd wanted to be a designer since I was four - my mum was a fashion lecturer at Brighton College Of Art, so it was in my blood. But I didn't want to be playing a part in destroying the planet, so I decided to try to make fashion environmentally friendly. At the time, eco-clothes were only worn by hippies, so I knew it would be a struggle to change opinion.
I founded my own label called Conscious Earthwear. I worked on a recycling project with Oxfam detangling donated jumpers and using the wool to make cutting-edge street wear, and started importing organic cotton from India, using it in my designs. By 1999, the label had really taken off and was being stocked in Selfridges.
But just when things were going well, I had a very bad car accident. The brakes failed, the car flipped over five times, and I was thrown from the vehicle. I broke my back, leg, arm and shoulder and spent two years in a wheelchair.
It was a dark time in my life, made even worse by the fact I had to close the business because I wasn't physically able to run it. To come so far and see it all disappear was devastating.
But I was determined not to give up. My dream of eco-friendly fashion kept me going throughout my six-year recovery, and in 2004 I started again with another eco-friendly label, Ciel (Cielshop.co.uk), which means sky or heaven in French.
The brand quickly attracted a celebrity following, including Peaches Geldof and actresses Cate Blanchett and Sienna Miller. I love the fact these famous women buy and wear my designs, because others notice the clothes and then buy them too.
The founding principle of Ciel is to create luxurious, cutting-edge, chic clothes with an environmental conscience.
Every stage of production is as ethical and environmentally friendly as possible. We source organic cotton from Africa through fair trade groups, and alpaca wool from Peru, where we also work with a women's knitting group. We try to use natural colours as often as possible, and when we do colour fabrics, we only use non-toxic dyes.
My long-term aim is for eco-fashion to become an absolute must-have - I want to show people you don't have to sacrifice style to have eco-credentials."
'NO ELECTRICITY OR WATER, BUT OUR TENT IS PERFECT'
Cassie Lishman, 40, lives in Narbeth, Wales, with her husband Nigel, 51, and their children Ted, 15, Davi, six, and Bea, four, where they run an eco-business.
"When I tell people I live in a 14ft tent with my husband and three kids, they always want to know more. No one's told me I'm mad yet!
I studied environmental science at uni. I learnt how our actions affect people all over the world, from the rubbish we dump to the food we consume. I saw the damage we're doing to our planet, and I realised I had to lead by example.
I first saw a yurt - a circular tent made of wood and canvas - at an eco-festival in 1998. Nigel, who's also a fervent environmentalist, agreed it was perfect and in 2001, when Ted was six, we decided to move from our £175,000 two-bedroom house in London to a £700 tent in Wales. We didn't sell the house until a few years ago, just in case!
Yurts may not be your average home, but we love ours. You can erect them anywhere you're allowed to camp. For the last three years ours has been pitched in a field near Narbeth in Pembrokeshire. There's nothing more amazing than reading by candlelight or looking out and being surrounded by woodland.
As the yurt is an open space, it doesn't give much privacy. The children have sleeping quarters and a play area and we have our own area too, but they're not partitioned off. If Nigel and I feel passionate, we have to wait until the kids are asleep!
Everything about our lives is as environmentally friendly as possible - even our car has been converted to run on locally produced rapeseed oil. Our kitchen is another wood and canvas structure attached to the main yurt, where we cook with a tiny gas stove as we don't have any power. We have our own chicken for eggs but buy all our other produce from the local grocer or butcher. Not having a fridge makes things difficult, but I try to chill milk in cold water and cook meat the day I buy it.
Admittedly, when I'm traipsing up and down the hill to fill our tin bath with water from a nearby well, I dream of soaking in a hot bubble bath, but other than that I've never regretted moving. Even our compost loo (a hole in the ground hidden under a wooden structure) doesn't put me off. The kids don't have a TV or computer, but they've never complained. They'd much rather be out playing in trees or looking at frogs. Their friends think it's cool.
Nigel and I have now set up our own eco-business, Livelightly.co.uk, selling handmade crafts online, like the willow sculptures I make, and organising green events. We work from an office in a community centre a couple of miles away as obviously the yurt doesn't have electricity or broadband for a computer!
Our next project is building our own permanent eco-home into the Pembrokeshire landscape. We'll build it with our own hands, using straw bales and clay, and exist on our own produce. We're really looking forward to it - it will be one more challenge for our family!"
PHOTOGRAPHY: BEN GOLD, SYRIOL JONES, REBECCA BRADBURY HAIR & MAKE-UP: MELISSA HARTZEL, KELLIE MITCHELL MELISSA WEARS TOP: ASOS
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