For the year of 2024, the team here at Fifty Shades Greener have decided to focus our energy and efforts into spotlighting small, community driven sustainability projects from anywhere in the world that are operating on a grass roots level.

We hope their stories inspire you, and more importantly that they spark hope.

Our seventh story features Emma Tuite, Director of Sea Shepherd Ireland, the Irish group of this international marine protection organisation.

The Beginning of Sea Shepherd Ireland

Established in 1977, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) is an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization, with a very clear mission: to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world's oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species.

Sea Shepherd uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas. By safeguarding the biod...

Creating any new culture in an organisation can feel daunting, particularly for industries recovering from the impact of the pandemic.

The Four Leadership Types

Professor Christina Edger from Birmingham City Business School highlighted 4 types of leadership from the Covid crisis:

• Deniers: angry, denied how the crisis affected their business
• Opportunists: used Covid-19 as an excuse for poor performance with other factors at play i.e. poor leadership
• Pragmatists: accepted different stages of the crisis, addressing issues speedily
• Inspirers: able to see the bigger picture, care for their people as the crisis affected society as a whole

The questions remain: how do we inspire our team, how do we encourage trust? How do we share our green values?

Essential Leadership Skills 

There are several leadership models and theories, but Brené Brown has highlighted 4 key skill sets every leader should possess and develop:

1. The ability to be vulnerable, to have the hard conversations...

We are delighted to present the fourth volume in our "Year of Hope" 2024 blog series. 

Our fourth Story of Hope is shining a spotlight on Understory - an environmental education and zero-waste organisation founded by Alex Konieczka.

"Understory was founded to provide you with a solution to one of the biggest global problems that is biodiversity loss, as a result of the make and waste model. Understory uses reclaimed materials to create sustainable zero waste products, designed to strengthen your connection to nature and help biodiversity. There is no such thing as waste in nature."

For the Fifty Shades Greener team, Alex's story inspires as well as motivates you to push forward with new ideas and when you see there is an urgent need amongst society for something - stick to your ethics and go for it! Read her story for yourself below...

💡Who Is The Founder Of Understory? 

My name is Alex Konieczka, I'm the founder of Understory, as well as an ecologist, educator, youth worker, ze...

The world of sustainability itself can often be perceived as a minefield. From the enormity of the climate crisis, CSRD regulations and measuring carbon emissions, the efforts being made on the field by individuals or groups can often get overshadowed.

However, we always say at FSG, that small actions do count, especially when being carried out by many. This blog series will endeavor to highlight those people or communities who are driving REAL action.

We hope their stories inspire you, and more importantly that they spark hope.

Our sixth story features Anup Manandhar of Comfort Felt, a factory and workshop located at Kirtipur city in Nepal producing beautiful felt products. Our CEO Raquel and Director Patrick, were able to experience first hand the work that Anup and his enterprise are carrying out to support women in work in Nepal when they visited Nepal in August 2022 while working with the government there in the area of green skills.

Anup and his team have a goal - and that is...

What can be more tempting than a sustainable solution that benefits your business in three ways - socially, economically and environmentally? 

You can triple win in your business by doing the following: 

1. Reducing your use of resources and CO2 footprint.
2. Reducing operating costs and empowering members of the team to take personal responsibility in the fight to reduce emissions. 
3. Use the approach ‘trust is built’, create a culture of transparency in communication, with customers and the community in which the business operates.

To triple win in your business it can be achieved through education of the team that this has the greatest impact: socially (training, upskilling, career progression, investing in your team and improved communication), economically (reductions and efficiency means cost savings) and environmentally (reduction in usage means less CO2 emissions): the triple win. 

This blog article will help your business embed a triple win strategy.

How to Triple Win Econo...

The other week the Fifty Shades Greener team visited Clare Spring who are committed to move away from plastic bottles completely by the end of 2022. Clare Spring is an environmentally friendly, family run company located deep in the rolling hills of Co. Clare. With process lines 100% automated and designed to run a wide range of both glass and plastic bottles, Clare Spring distribute to shops, and nationally to hotels & businesses as a premium water product in glass bottles. 

The Challenges of being an Environmentally Friendly Business

In Clare Spring's efforts, they have tried plant-based plastic bottles which can be composted but they soon realised that through the delivery stacking and movement of the trucks, hairline cracks appeared in the bottles. Through vigorous testing, Clare Spring now offers “water-in-a-box” which holds 10 litres, for households and businesses to use and in the coming months will offer Spring water refill stations in a number of locations. 

Starting your...

Ireland has much work to do in 2022 to implement solutions to curb the colossal CO2 emissions from our Island’s overuse of resources.  In my quest to research other solutions that weren’t tree planting, I landed on the bog! 

A day cutting turf is an age-old tradition in Ireland and has cultural importance, but our commercial destruction of these natural habitats and carbon sinks have created a hugely negative impact on our environment over the years.

Approximately 21% of Ireland is covered by peatlands, which are second only to the ocean in their capacity for carbon storage. They can also store 20 times more carbon than a forested area of the same size.

Water is a key ingredient in peat (approx. 90 – 95% of its content): the carbon of the decomposing material is stored by becoming waterlogged and “sequestered” in the peat, rather than being released into the air. The main challenge faced in the conservation of Irish bogs is that they have been drained of their water to extract their...

This past year has been as unparalleled as 2020, with many hoping for better things to come in 2022...

What has been crystal clear, is that society is demanding more. More from our governments, more from businesses and more from ourselves.

2030, 2050- these 'net zero' targets and others are only around the corner and where once before, the issue of climate change was left to the policy makers around the world, people are demanding transparency and real action.

What about us? And our own impact on the environment? 

We know we have to do something about our own Carbon Footprint, but often we are not really sure how to go about it.

Customer demand for a Greener Hospitality industry is on the rise. Those that adapt, change and market their efforts well, will  see the benefits of listening to what their customers want, and become “favourites” in a landscape of competitive industry.

Working with hospitality businesses, I have heard all kinds of excuses over the years:

“I just do not h...

The world of sustainability itself can often be perceived as a minefield. From the enormity of the climate crisis, CSRD regulations and measuring carbon emissions, the efforts being made on the field by individuals or groups can often get overshadowed.

However, we always say at FSG, that small actions do count, especially when being carried out by many. This blog series will endeavour to highlight those people or communities who are driving REAL action. 

Our second story of hope for 2024 looks at The Compost Kitchen, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This company, was developed by Himkaar Singh, with the purpose of repairing South Africa's soil using compost made from food waste. In 2017 SA suffered a bad drought, motivated to stop this natural disaster repeating in the future and worse, Himkaar studied a masters in water management and during a permaculture course learned that healing the soil meant putting organic matter back into the soil because organic matter makes the soi...

I’ve often spoken about food waste and could continue to do so for the rest of my life, this is primarily down to the fact that our food supply systems are broken, and a shocking one third of all the food we produce ends up as waste before it even hits the shops.

When we talk about bridging the gap - this is clearly a social issue as well as an environmental one.

In terms of impacting the environment - when food waste ends up in landfill, which due to poor waste segregation is often the case - it produces methane, a gas that is far more damaging than carbon dioxide.

It currently accounts for between 8 - 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions however, we are forgetting the energy it takes to produce this food, the water required and the land destroyed to grow it. As I said - it is not a straightforward figure when it comes to its cycle of life and the greenhouse gases it produces along the way.

These are the global figures of food waste, but what about  for us mere mortals at home? ...