Firefly Solar powers many charitable, eco-friendly and free community-based events, demonstrating the benefits and versatility of solar power. They have worked with many organizations and events such as Brighton & Hove City Council, Gay Pride, Brighton Carnival and the Fringe Festival.

Firefly has proven that renewable power sources are a viable alternative to diesel, helping to change people’s behaviour and energy usage.  Every new project presents a different set of challenges which are resolved in-house. The company has developed a series of new generators and is constantly expanding and developing new products. Recently they have begun to offer a bespoke off-grid solar design division.

They have worked with NGO Computer Aid International to create a series of Solar Powered Cyber Cafes which are being distributed in Africa. These are fitted out within converted shipping containers and are fully insulated and furnished with electric lighting, desks, chairs and PCs, offering people in Africa who live without mains power or internet connectivity the chance to use the internet for the first time. The first of these Solar Cyber Cafes has recently been shipped to Zambia.

Other build projects include the conversion of East Sussex County Council’s Rethink Rubbish bus’ electrics to run on solar and the design and build of a mobile solar phone charging unit that provides a phone charging service for festivals with the profits going to charity partner Solar Aid.

www.fireflysolar.co.uk

The environmentally friendly cleaning company was set up just two years ago, but in that time it has grown into a busy, successful operation, showing that both business and ethics can exist side by side. Not only do books full of regular customers keep them busy but the Green Mop model is now being offered out as a franchise opportunity.

So how did the whole thing start? Racheal decided to leave her job in IT to do something completely different. When looking around for a new challenge, two thoughts happened to coincide. Unlike the rest of the housework-hating world, Racheal loves cleaning. She also began realising that, as an allergy sufferer, her symptoms were considerably relieved when she started using eco-friendly products. And as if by magic, Green Mop was formed.

Green Mop’s mandate means that everything they do is necessarily as environmentally friendly as possible. While other cleaning companies offer green cleaning as an option, at Green Mop it is standard – and there’s certainly no option for ungreen cleaning!

All employers get around on scooters, bicycles and on foot. Everything they take with them has to fit in a backpack, so regular customers know they must own larger items, like a vacuum cleaner or mop.

Racheal also runs a regularly updated blog offering information and advice on everything from keeping a greener home to thoughts on running an ethical company.

Find out more about Green Mop on their website

http://www.greenmop.co.uk/

A committed environmentalist, Richard could not bear to see such appalling waste on such a huge scale, so he started sowing the seeds of what became one of the UK’s first successful community recycling organisations; Brighton and Hove Wood Recycling Project.

Every day, B&HWRP’s team rescues around one tonne of timber from rotting in landfill, and then they go on to make wonderful things from the wood. Their shop – The Wood Store – is full of interesting items, some made from ‘waste’ wood, some funky second-hand items, all kinds of unusual, historic and beautiful pieces – plus good reusable timber that is simply useful, practical, and cheap.

B&HWRP is not only environmentally-focussed, it also provides a huge resource for training and work experience for disadvantaged people, offering a supportive environment to learn new skills and develop confidence, empowering and enabling people and helping them move onto gainful employment.

B&HWRP has also blazed a trail in social enterprise by helping create an informal social franchise, inspiring and assisting in the formation of 25+ further Wood Recycling Projects across the country, all saving resources and creating jobs.

This all sounds like the work of a large well-funded charity, but amazingly, it’s not. B&HWRP has a small team of long-standing, highly committed staff who keep the business running self-sufficiently – with no outside grants or funding – purely by hard graft and unwavering self-belief.

The results: a non-profit green business that’s innovative, sustainable and highly productive; offering great benefits to the community, the economy and the environment.

www.woodrecycling.org.uk

Around 800,000 traditional coffins are burnt or buried each year: 89% are made from laminated chipboard containing dangerous pollutants, the other 11% from solid wood.

She wanted to introduce an alternative to the traditional coffin that was innovative in design, beautiful, colourful and ethical, using recycled materials – and not harm the earth in any way.

Hazel says: “The biggest challenge was – and still is – to encourage undertakers to offer the Ecopod instead of chipboard coffins which they can buy cheaply and sell very expensively. However, a new breed of ‘green’ undertakers is emerging, who are particularly interested in using green burial sites and selling green funeral products.”

The Ecopod business has developed from making one or two a week, to opening up a workshop locally and employing two workers.

The process is a handmade one, mixing recycled newspaper pulp with a mineral hardener in a huge pre-war dough mixer and pressing this mixture into moulds.

The company also manufactures ‘Acorn’ urns for ashes, also made from paper pulp, as an alternative to the non-biodegradable plastic urn.

All glues and paints used in the production of Ecopods and Acorn Urns come from ethical companies and Ecopod has passed all regulatory tests for safety and cremation emissions.

Ecopod is currently negotiating with a factory to take up production in order to enable the company to bring prices down to a more financially competitive level, but they will still operate a finishing workshop in Brighton, where Ecopods are finished with handmade paper with silk screened designs.

Hazel says: “I feel very hopeful that the face of funerals will quietly change over the next few years as more and more people are becoming conscious of the need to protect the planet.”

www.ecopod.co.uk

Holly says: “It gave me an insight into the wedding sector and an understanding of technology required to run an online wedding list. When I got married in 2006, we wanted an eco wedding list as I have always been eco minded – I joined Greenpeace when I was 5! I hunted for a wedding list but it didn’t exist, so I spent the next year and a bit working to research and plan, and then set up the list to fill a gap.”

OGWL was started with no investment and Holly works part-time to enable her to carry on. But this hasn’t been her only challenge. She says: “The wedding sector is dominated by the large department stores who mass import products. My goal is to make an eco wedding list ‘normal’ so that anyone,not just the green minded, consider using my list as an alternative to the mass manufactured, chain or generic.”

In her experience, people are suspicious of a green wedding list and, in particular, about the quality and range of products available. “I really research my products,” she says. “Make sure I offer really good ranges and check the quality again and again. I’ve had to convince the sceptical that an eco list is really a viable alternative.”

Despite these challenges, she is tireless in her efforts. A new site, goodgreengifts.com has been added to her portfolio, 10% of her company’s profits are directed to small community organisations doing grassroots environmental work and she blogs on green issues and campaigns.

www.ourgreenweddinglist.com

Members pay an annual fee, after which they can cheaply rent a car to use whenever they need. City Car Club parking spaces across the city means members are never far from a vehicle.

Chris Seigal, who runs the project, says: “We are constantly trying to break down the relationship between people and their cars to overcome the common perception that owning a car is a necessity. This is no easy challenge! The great news is that membership increases of almost 100% per annum show that car sharing is truly becoming a mainstream option in Brighton and Hove.”

Research from Carplus, a sustainable transport charity, shows that each car club car replaces 24.5 privately owned cars. With 50 cars to the fleet, that equates to over 1,200 cars removed from the busy streets of Brighton and Hove. The research also suggests that car club members cut down on car travel by an average of 37%

Chris says: “By charging members for car use at the point of consumption, it forces them to become hyper-aware of their car miles and think carefully about which journeys would be better done by other forms of transport.”

City Car Club has a membership base of 2,000 people and they say the recession has boosted business as people look for ways to save money. In five years time they hope their membership will hit a whopping 10,000.

It is no magic bullet though, and Chris says: “City Car Club offers a viable alternative to car ownership, but the service is promoted as one crucial component of a larger sustainable transport network. Members are strongly encouraged to cycle or walk wherever possible and only use City Cars for journeys where a car is absolutely necessary. There are several City Cars located outside both Brighton and Hove rail stations and City Cars are also strategically placed near cycling bays and bus stops across the city – this is all part of the strategy to integrate the car club with existing public transport infrastructure.”

www.citycarclub.co.uk

EcoChic Collection’s mission is to buck this trend. Sidestepping mainstream fashions, this website based in Hove is an online boutique and shiny fashion magazine all in one.

Creative director Deborah Miarkowska says it is “a hand picked collection of the finest ethically sourced jewellery, gifts and accessories. Pure elegance and ethics combined with the best in UK design talent”.

Set up in 2007, EcoChic has created an ethical in-house assessment model based on the World Fair Trade Organisation and Ethical Trading Initiative standards, and includes examining supply chains at every stage.

The magazine is updated daily with a mix of reviews, eco travel, campaigning news and ideas for stylish yet sustainable living.

Deborah says: “As a reader, you can feel good knowing you are experiencing  a wide range of fresh and lively features that celebrate the world’s most committed stylish ethical businesses, people and brands that are dedicated to environmental stewardship, human rights, community growth and social responsibility. Each and every one of our features found in EcoChic Magazine has earned its status, shares our ethical beliefs and is as driven as we are by the desire and commitment to share, give back, bring hope and inspire.”

www.ecochiccollection.co.uk

Keith says: “I’m an industrial chemist with over 25 years experience in the paint industry and after setting up a trial laboratory in my shed at home I worked out how to recycle this paint and in September 2008, Newlife Paints was born.”

The company couldn’t start selling paint straight away, however, as since no one had done what they were doing before there was no entry in the Environment Agency legislation. Newlife Paints had to wait while a category was created specifically for them.

He says: “Another huge challenge is getting information about recycled paint out into the community, people have the misconception that waste paint is dirty and lumpy but actually I return it back to it’s original quality so it is as good as any other paint on the market.”

Newlife Paints is a small business, with sales hovering around £300 a month, but recently a rise in interest means income has jumped to £1,000. This means soon they will be able to increase the amount of paint they recover from Household Recycling Centres.

Keith says : “Currently we take two tonnes a week from 6 HRC locally but hope to increase this to all of them in Sussex and Hampshire. Within five years we hope to expand to additional factories in the Midlands and one up North to cover the whole country. Our long term aim is for no paint to be sent to landfill and it all to be recycled, but this is much more than 5 years into the future.”

www.newlifepaints.com

Since then the organisations has grown into a successful construction company that has done many green building projects around Sussex, ranging from extensions and loft conversions to whole house eco-refurbishments and retrofits. They have used a range of green building techniques, including straw bale, rammed earth, timber frame and insulations and airtightness.

Project manager Mischa Hewitt says: “While other companies offer ‘green options’ as added value, to Earthwise Construction sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. We assess each building we work on in terms of its overall performance, and carefully assess how energy is being used unnecessarily and how this can be remedied. We then choose what techniques and materials should be used, based not simply on what will be most cost effective, but what will have the least environmental impact from manufacture and installation through to long-term use as part of the building’s fabric, including eventual disposal or recycling many decades into the future.”

In 2009, Earthwise Construction won funding to retrofit a large Victorian house in the centre of Brighton with the aim of showing it is possible to reduce the carbon emissions of a typical Brighton home by 80% through a range of energy efficiency measures.

Mischa says: “After we’ve finished this project we aim to be doing more ‘whole house retrofits’ in Sussex delivering this depth of carbon reduction and energy efficiency, as well as building state of the art new-build projects to Passivhaus standard.  The information and experience from this project will be shared with other construction industry professionals in Sussex.”

The company is currently designing a process to audit all of its construction projects in terms of energy, water, waste, transport and carbon dioxide emissions.

www.earthwiseconstruction.org

The principle of the business is simple: there is no point making something designed to encourage people to spend more time outdoors, enjoying nature, if in making it you are damaging the environment.

Driftwood Treehouses are made using local and sustainable timber, predominantly from coppiced chestnut from Wilderness Woods in Hadlow, East Sussex, as well as reclaimed or recycled wood. Any new timber is bought from local merchants with an FSC stamp.

Lee studied fine art sculpture at the University of Brighton and after graduating with a first, worked for a tree house company two years. But he wanted to make his own designs and knew he could make them in an environmentally friendly way.

He says: “everybody said I was mad trying to start a new business in the middle of a recession, but I thought if you can get things going now then they can only get better.”

The big challenge has been competing against larger, more well established companies. But through showing customers his bespoke designs, personal service and real passion for making tree houses in an eco friendly way, he has managed to win them over.

Currently, Lee is working on a winter tree house as well as ones with grass roofs. He says: “We’re always looking for better ways to make things and constantly searching for new materials. We’re always wanting to develop and evolve. The main point of a tree house is that it’s fun, but all these other elements happen at the same time. As well as creating an awareness of nature and natural materials, it shows you can make things in a way that is good for the environment.”

www.driftwoodtreehouses.com