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If there is one thing Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and later the Soil Association and agitators like George Monbiot have demonstrated it is that we have not been treating our fragile planet properly. We have not been paying it forward. Political progress has been slow, but as a generation we have done way more than any other in terms of individual responsibility to alter our habits and respect the environment around us. From litter to plastic bags, recycling to organic, deodorants to Fairtrade, buying seasonal to being conscious of air miles, we have adopted and championed every one of these initiatives. And while our Millennial colleagues might be right behind us in terms of agreement, ultimately the influence rests with us as we are more powerful economically and socially.
‘Millennials will tend to make a lot of noise about ethical shopping and collaborative consumption without actually putting their money where their mouth is,’ says Annabel Rivkin of The Midult. ‘Boomers aren’t interested, they are in it for themselves. But the Midults are the ones that actually buy Fairtrade. These are people thinking truly cross-generationally because they have old parents, friends starting to get ill, school-age kids and they want karma on their side. That means that morality comes into their consumer decision-making: we buy the Fairtrade bananas, we don’t buy T-shirts made by children the same age as ours.’
It might be self-interest induced by mid-life anxiety, but it also might be part of the fact that as a generation we have always wanted to be passionate, admirable and influential with our voices. And of course, we wanted to be cool – and because we were young and we cared, adopting green credentials became the cool thing to do, not least because as schoolchildren we all wanted to give money to the Rainbow Warrior and save the whale.
From a consumer point of view, the Green Movement suits us perfectly, and we have turned it into something of a lifestyle. I feel good when I buy Ecover over Persil, when the Abel & Cole box lands outside my front door, when my recycling bin overflows faster than my actual bin (I know, simple pleasures). It marks me out as responsible, modern and knowing. Parsimonious Boomers used to shout at us for leaving the lights on (the expense!) – now we turn them off because we know it’s cooler to be energy-saver than energy-waster. I can dress up the economic need for a staycation as a lifestyle choice – so much more hip to be taking the train to Northumberland than a plane to Ibiza! Right on supper-party conversations centre around underground heat pumps and going off grid, while the ultimate badge of honour is to serve up your own home-grown veg. A window box of herbs is amongst today’s most aspirational urban home accessories.
‘Sustainable’ literally became the new black when the accessories designer Anya Hindmarch launched a new tote in 2007 emblazoned with the slogan ‘I am not a plastic bag’. Made out of unbleached cotton and retailing for only £5, she turned environmentalism into a fashion statement. The bag was produced in partnership with We Are What We Do, a non-profit campaign group that has set out to change the world in small steps. It was a consumer sensation: with only 20,000 produced it became the must-have accessory of the moment, with imitator versions springing up on Ebay and the genuine article changing hands for hundreds of pounds. It even went on to be chosen as the Vanity Fair Oscar-night goodie bag. Does it matter that we lusted after this bag because it had achieved fashion holy grail rather than the fact that it was not quite what it seemed (the bags were actually manufactured and imported from China, which somewhat dented their credentials)? Of course not. Making green cool has worked; behavioural change has been far more effective than political diktats.
Lifestyle movements have been far more successful for us as a generation than any kind of civic change. Where is the fun in that? The actual implementation and administration of our ideals has held much less fascination for us. Under the influence of Steve Hilton and led by David Cameron and George Osbourne (all Generation X), the Tories made one of the main planks of their 2010 election campaign their green credentials – even changing their party logo to an oak tree and sending Cameron sledging in the Arctic. It helped rebrand them and got them into a coalition government.
But once in power, many of their pledges were dropped. Onshore wind and solar subsidies, watering down incentives to buy a greener car, the zero carbon home target: these were the environmental policies that helped them look attractive to Generation X voters, but all fell by the wayside. Did we complain? Barely. Either because we thought they were boring, or we sided with the Boomers and thought them an unwelcome distraction from the spending cuts the Tories insisted we needed following the 2008 economic crash.
Boomers have a different view of the environment. It can probably be summed up in the views of the iconic 60-year-old American chef Thomas Keller, who said he did not see it as his place to set any kind of example: ‘With the relatively small number of people I feed, is it really my responsibility to worry about carbon footprint?’ he asked the New York Times back in 2012. ‘The world’s governments should be worrying about carbon footprint.’ As one of our most influential chefs, he demonstrated his views to be totally out of step with the legions of cohorts coming up underneath him, with their microbreweries, local cheeses and regional sourcing.
‘Wahaca is about to achieve carbon-neutral status – we are the first fast-food chain to do that,’ says Tomasina Miers, the fortysomething owner of the Mexican chain of restaurants, Wahaca. ‘We have installed special designs so the heat from the fridges and freezers goes to heat the hot water in the taps. That way we don’t have to have water boilers. Everything we use – from the detergents that clean the tables, to the recycling we do with our food waste to compost, even the paint our graffiti artists use decorating the walls – has to be non-polluting. All our materials are reclaimed or recycled. For me it was a massive driver: if we were going to open this really fun restaurant, we had to be environmentally responsible.
‘But how do you run a Mexican food chain without importing chillis from across the world? In my darkest hours I sat there thinking, where is the planet going to be in 20 years? When’s oil going to reach its peak? It was not a good environmental place to start from, setting up a restaurant where all the ingredients come from the other side of the planet. So we make sure all our meat is British, all our fish MSC certified, that we use local producers wherever we can.
‘I’m a social activist,’ she says, ‘but as someone who cares deeply about life, environment and the planet, am I going to be an MP? Of course not. Your life would be completely intruded on. Whereas if you just get on and make a noise yourself, you can get stuff done. A few years ago I got a band of chefs together and we reared eight pigs on Stepney City Farm on permissible food waste and held a feast for 5,000 people in Trafalgar Square. Loads of restaurants took part, because it was a necessary response to the ludicrous European law that got passed after the foot and mouth outbreak. The law bans feeding livestock on food waste, resulting in an increased need for crops, which means we are cutting down forests at a horrendous rate, affecting all our weather cycles.
‘We’re doing it at my kids’ primary school too. The mums have all got together to build a garden on some common land nearby, because all the research shows British kids lag behind in general welfare; many inner-city kids never see parks or green spaces, never value the environment because they have never been shown it. All free time is screen time. Research shows the positive impact gardens and being outside can have – on learning, on social cohesion, on communicating and breaking down barriers on cultures and backgrounds.
‘It is normal now for people to get off their arses and do stuff like that because you have no faith now that the government will do it for you. You’ve got to do it yourself.’
Children have only helped drive Generation X’s green zeal further. I am very proud of the way our schoolchildren are so passionate about their environmental responsibilities. Our local home zone in north London is plastered with posters from the local school asking people to pick up their litter, drive slowly and respect their surroundings. My kids can spot a solar panel at a hundred paces, they recently raised money to have them installed in their school, and my nine-year-old’s recent project was debating the relative merits of wind and nuclear. When your kids tell you to compost your food waste – well, you get it.