News archive: November 2006

Britain's got a brand new reward card offering fabulous discounts and special offers when you shop at local owner-run stores and cafes. It is a chilly morning towards the end of November, and on a narrow street in WC1 a quiet revolution is happening. On this quiet Bloomsbury back street Londoners are talking to each other. It is happening in the gift shop, where Toni is planning drinks with a couple of her customers. Up the street, the barber turns down the jazz to hear the love-life traumas of his latest customer. Julia at the bookshop is picking out reading for some local children and, at the deli, a parcel has been delivered for a veg-box subscriber. Meanwhile, the men from the pub greet the lady from the dairy, as a girl pops in to leave a set of keys for her mum. The café owner, Fred, has been up since five. "Do you know what London looks like at 5am?" he demands, expansively. "Miserable. I love it!" Over a complicated coffee at Marc Kennard's delicatessen, John Bird is trying to explain why these unassuming shopkeepers are heralds of a brave new dawn. As Kennard skilfully prepares him a double decaff Americano with cold milk on the side and two plain croissants, they patiently explain why the way forward for Britain's independent shops is something called Wedge. Together with his daughter, Diana, Bird, the Big Issue founder, believes that the smallholders in Lambs Conduit Street have hit on something special. None is part of a chain. They do not have expensive marketing men. They don't provide a free multistorey car park or ask customers to drive miles out of town to shop there. They have never conducted a scientific survey of how to make people spend more money and their business plans barely stretch beyond the end of the road. John and Diana Bird believe that this is worth saving. And they think a supermarket-style loyalty card is the way to do it. Wedge is a loyalty card with a difference. For a start, supermarkets need not apply. As the scheme is slowly rolled out across the country, Wedge's founders will not accept any shop that comprises more than 10 branches, but so far its biggest member has two. That member is Foyles bookshop, the family concern in central London that still holds its own alongside giants such as Waterstone's. The Wedge Card is a simple proposition. It will be sold to customers for £20. From tomorrow, it can be bought in participating shops, from local charities or from the website, www.wedgecard.co. uk. The seller keeps £5 and £5 goes to charity. The remaining £10 goes into the Wedge company, a for-profit business that seeks to build "social enterprise". For Wedge cards bought online, 50 per cent will go to charity. For traders, it is hoped there will be new customers looking for the kind of discounts they can get on Nectar cards. Only, with Wedge, the discounts and offers will be far, far more creative. And sometimes, burlesque dancers will be involved. For now, you will get 5 per cent at Albion Wine, 10 per cent at Green Baby and up to 15 per cent at The Lamb Bookshop - plus a range of reductions at other businesses, including both Tate galleries. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) is a Wedge Card partner. It represents charities from giants to local minnows. Its job is to make it easy for any charity to sign up. "The Wedge Card hits all the right buttons," says NCVO director of enterprise, Richard Williams. "It combines social justice, sustainability, diversity and economics. It encourages sustainable development and localism and it will entice more, new people into charitable giving. I come from the environmental sector, and I think this is a great way of being more environmentally aware. Plus it's a poke in the eye for some of the big stores that are making everything the same." In theory, the businesses in any given street will choose a local charity to receive 5 per cent of the card's revenue. But as more and more customers sign up, cardholders will be able to use the website to send the money to any charity they choose. But it's not only about money - or charity. "It's about having loyalty to your community and therefore to yourself," says Bird. "Without a community you are isolated and vulnerable." Isn't it going to be tricky to start the scheme in London, where people are wary of connecting with their neighbours and talking to strangers? Far from it, thinks Diana. "A lot of Londoners are quite desperate for a sense of community. It might be easier to start in London." Kennard's experience seems to bear this out. "When I walk down this street with friends and family, they always ask me if I've set it up," he chuckles. "I can't walk down the street without saying 'hi' to someone. I've never had that in London before. I couldn't live somewhere now that didn't have a collection of local businesses. It's what brings people together - they pop in here for a pint of milk and go over the road for something else. There are two populations around here: the people who work nearby and the people who live here. The resident population isn't wealthy. There are no estate agents on this street. It's a funny mix. It's not Notting Hill." "But we are going to launch in Notting Hill," adds Bird, quickly. "And Stratford [in east London]," chips in Diana. "And Brixton. There are no chain cafés there." "And we'd like to keep it that way!" says John. As well as Stratford, Wedge is due to go to Marylebone, in central London, along with a small area of Covent Garden and into Southwark. The chain café is a sensitive subject in the area surrounding Lambs Conduit Street. In fact, if you want to talk about Starbucks, you must whisper it. That is because the American conglomerate opened a store there in the summer, despite a local petition against it gathering more than 1,000 names, and the support of such local luminaries as Rupert Everett. "Starbucks is spreading like a cancer," said Everett, now a local hero. "Nobody in the area wants it, including me. There are plenty of diners and coffee shops there already." Local residents may have been right to be concerned. More than 1,000 shops in the capital have closed in the past four years - and Fred Sata, the owner of Tutti's café, must be worried he will be next. When the builders who were working mysteriously on a new façade over the road from his business revealed that they were building a Starbucks, he didn't believe them. "We thought he was joking," he says, looking out at his shiny new rival. "I didn't worry myself too much. Then there was this big petition. But they couldn't do anything. We were sad. I thought, 'How many streets are there like this in London?' The builders said there will be 150 to 200 more Starbucks in the next two years, inside the M25." For the time being, Tutti's café is safe. Over the course of a morning, a dizzying crush of people piles into the steamy, espresso-scented upper room, taking away coffee, tucking into freshly made pasta or thundering down the stairs yelling for Fred. "They only get the tourists," he says, tilting his head at That Which Must Not Be Named. "You should see lunchtime. We are full and there are three people in there. Every day their staff are changing." He lowers his voice. "And they come in here to eat food, you know that?" At the other Wedge shops and restaurants in the street, they are looking forward to meeting the new Wedge Card owners, competitively dreaming up special offers and probably making friends. "You strike up friendships with all kinds of different people," says Toni, at the gift shop. "Lots of people say they come in here to feel calm. They tell me about their problems with their jobs and their arguments with their bosses. They open up." At Badlambs hairdresser, a woman is lured in from the cold by the bergamot-scented chamber, the make-yourself-at-home music policy and the promise of a burlesque dancer in the window in time for the street's annual Winter Festival tomorrow, at which Wedge Card will be launched. As Tony, the owner, soaps her hair, the woman leans back and stretches. "It's the first time I've been here," she tells him, conspiratorially. "It's really lovely, isn't it?" Feature by Katy Guest for The Independent

With lurid names like ‘Candymania’, ‘Malteser Munch Madness’, ‘Mini Chocolate Challenge’ and ‘Triple Treats’ dominating the menus, children’s health comes second as family restaurants promote junk food over healthier options. Chips with almost everything, eat-as-much-as-like ice cream and bottomless fizzy drinks, containing dangerous levels of fat, sugar and salt, are being served up to over 40 million children in the UK each year, new research by the Soil Association and Organix reveals today. In contrast, the research also identified examples of some restaurants and visitor attractions doing great work, offering far healthier, fresh, unprocessed food choices. A detailed survey of ten popular family restaurants exposes a continuing prevalence of junk being served up as ‘treat food’, despite eating out being a routine weekly event for a quarter of families. Whilst schools are changing their approach to school meals and making excellent efforts to provide fresher, healthier food for children, the UK’s family restaurants are failing to offer a healthy choice to children and parents who want it. Junk food is still king - this is how the restaurants’ ranked out of a possible 30 points, based on nutrition, food sourcing and provision, food policy and information provision: TGI Friday's 1st = 16 points out of 30 Harvester 2nd = 15 points out of 30 Beefeater joint 2nd = 15 points out of 30 Pizza Hut 3rd = 14 points out of 30 Brewers Fayre 4th = 13 points out of 30 Garfunkels joint 5th = 12 points out of 30 Hungry Horse joint 5th = 12 points out of 30 Little Chef 6th = 11 points out of 30 Nando’s 7th = 10 points out of 30 Café Rouge 8th = 8 points out of 30 The full report, containing both surveys, is downloadable at http://www.soilassociation.org/realmealdeal. Although TGI Friday's received the highest score overall, this only showed up the pitiful meal options in the other restaurants. TGI Friday's average children’s meal still contains over double the school meal maximum saturated fat content. Their burger in a bun with deep fried French fries and baked beans, followed by ‘Malteser Munch Madness’, contains one and a half times a primary school child’s recommended saturated fat intake for a whole day. Café Rouge, ranked bottom of the league, also wins the booby prize for the least healthiest meal. Its croque monsieur (toasted cheese sandwich) with deep fried French fries, washed down with cola, and followed by ice cream, failed a record 10 out of 14 nutrition standards. The almost complete absence of fruit and vegetables on their children’s menu guaranteed their embarrassing bottom position. Meanwhile, at Hungry Horse, it’s a ‘candymaniac catastrophe’. This restaurant scoops the prize for highest sugar and salt, with desserts like their monstrous ice cream, chocolate and sweet laden ‘Candymania’. This popular pudding contained four chocolate brownies, chocolate sauce, three scoops of vanilla ice-cream, three scoops of chocolate ice-cream, four strawberries, one bag of white chocolate Minstrel’s, a handful of Malteaser’s, a handful of Milky Way Magic Stars, a Wagon Wheel, a Milky Way Crispy Roll and topped with squirty cream. Needless to say, this provides a child with well over their recommended sugar intake for a whole day. With the startling rise of obesity in children and the eating out industry now accounting for 31% of total food and drink expenditure, families desperately need these restaurants to be prioritising healthier meals. As family dining declines, we calculate that Whitbread restaurants (Beefeater, Brewer’s Fayre and TGI Friday's) now serve one children’s meal for every 14.5 school meals served. So they and all other family restaurant chains have a clear responsibility to provide and promote healthy, nutritious food choices. Not one chain, other than Pizza Hut, passed the fat and sugar tests and, alarmingly, almost none of the food is homemade. Parents might wonder why they didn’t stay at home with a ready meal. The only ‘cooking’ in most of these restaurant kitchens is opening packets and re-heating frozen meals, apart from cooking the odd bit of beef and chicken. Favourite foods, mashed potato and pasta meals, all came out of a packet - with one exception which was Café Rouge. Not one of the restaurants sources food locally and you’ll only get organic if you’re still on baby food. There is a total absence of helpful, nutritional information in all the restaurants, apart from the occasional referral to ‘five a day’. The report is based on findings by a leading, expert nutritionist who analysed 568 possible meal options for children and ranked the restaurants according to how their food compared to the Government’s new minimum standards for school meals. Shamefully, not one restaurant chain came close to meeting the new school meal standards. The results reveal a mountain of highly processed, additive-laden, junk food that contains all the risks that may lead to obesity and diet-related illnesses. For example, the average meal at Nando’s contains eight teaspoons of added sugar, taking a primary school child close to the recommended maximum for a whole day. Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director, said, “There is much to celebrate in the changes happening across the country to improve the quality of children’s school meals. Sadly, our survey of children’s food in restaurants reveals that all the major providers of children’s meals are simply continuing their unhealthy business of serving up junk food to children. We are not calling for a ban on junk food, but parents have a right to be provided with a choice of healthier meal options, and restaurants must take responsibility for this�?. Lizzie Vann, founder and managing director of Organix, said, “Parents have the right to know what’s in the food being served to their children and we hope this report will give the industry a much needed shake up. It amazes me that some of the biggest and most successful restaurant chains in the country are still getting it so wrong�?. Jeanette Orrey, dinner lady and writer, said, “I have been cooking fresh, nutritious and exciting food for children for over 20 years. I know kids will eat it and there is no reason why these companies should not be providing that choice�?. Healthy meals are possible. New family restaurant chain, Leon, shows it is possible to provide children with low-cost, fresh, healthy, nutritious, food in a fun environment. The expert nutritionist rated this restaurant highly, along with other exceptions like the National Trust‘s restaurants, YHA, Garden Organic’s restaurant at Ryton, Ikea and Center Parcs, which provides an excellent children’s menu with vegetables included in nearly all main meals. Similarly, The Tower of London and Eden Project show real progress in offering freshly prepared food. And Europe's biggest family restaurant, the Rainforest Cafe in London, serves over 3,000 children's meals a week, many of which are organic and made from fresh ingredients. The Soil Association has written to the restaurants recommending the following: * Always provide free drinking water * Provide a range of tasty healthy choices, promoted to children on the menu * Increase the availability and desirability of fresh fruit and vegetables and incorporate vegetables in the main dish, rather than as side orders * Enable children to have half-portions of adult meals * Raise ingredient quality, especially meat This survey follows on from the Soil Association and Organix research earlier in 2006, investigating 14 leading tourist attractions’ food and drink provisions, published in August. The full report, containing both surveys, is downloadable at www.soilassociation.org/realmealdeal.

Robert Wiseman Dairies will supply a quarter of the UK's organic milk by the end of this month after announcing new contracts which increase its share of organics five-fold. Robert Wiseman confirmed it had won new organic contracts from Tesco and Horizon Organic Diary. Later this month it will supply 60 per cent of Tesco's organic milk, the same proportion of all liquid milk it currently supplies to the supermarket giant. Previously only holding 5% of the organic market, these new deals increase its portion to more than 24%, roughly the same as its portion of the total UK liquid milk market. Organic milk will represent around 3% of their total revenue, but the market grew by around 40% in the last 12 months. The chief executive, Robert Wiseman, predicted it would become a significant chunk of consumer demand within a decade: "Where will it get to? I think it will level out over a number of years, but I would like to think it will get up to something approaching double figures [of the total liquid milk market]." For the next year the supply of organic milk will mainly be handled at the company's dairy unit in Manchester. However, its sixth factory, the £46 million Bridgwater unit to be completed late in 2007 will be designed to be an organic "centre of excellence". Situated in an area with high clover growth which improves organic yields, the factory is closer to the majority of customers demanding organic milk in the south of England. The "transformational" organic deals were announced as the company revealed a pre-tax profit of £17.1m in the six months to 30 September, a 40% increase on the first half of last year. Turnover increased 3.8% to £291.9m as volumes rose by 3% to more than 700 million litres. The development was particularly strong south of the border, with more than 75% of the company's milk throughput now coming from England and Wales. Wiseman said the company would seek to further improve its profitability through more efficiency, and the development of new products and higher cost products such as organics. The company warned that plastics and energy costs "remain a concern". While plastic costs were expected to fall with the price of oil, the company was locked into high energy costs for the next 12 months. The East Kilbride-based company delivered interim results ahead of analysts' forecasts which sent its shares up almost 3% to a new all-time high of 462.25p. The increases prompted an interim dividend of 3p per share to be paid in February, 25% more than last year. Charles Hall Securities maintained its hold rating, but upgraded its full-year profit estimate from £28m to £32m. Several other analysts upgraded their estimations and target prices. Analyst Susan Gordon said the group had been commendably nimble, selling surplus land earmarked for possible development in Durham, to focus its energies on the south of England. However, she said, despite high regard for the company, she believed the stock price "reflects its immediate prospects". She added: "As an industry the prospects are always uncertain. It's not high margins, and it's difficult to see large growth in profitability."

The Prince of Wales is one of the first landowners in the UK to open up his farm to children. The move is part of a new offensive to offer every child aged 5 to 11 at school in England the chance next year to visit a working farm and learn about food and farming methods. That's more than one million pupils. Prince Charles, who has agreed to be Patron of the Year, is keen that his Home Farm, part of the Highgrove estate near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, will play an integral part in the project.

The Environment Agency has invited experts to name the people who have done most to save the planet From the woman who raised the alarm over the profligate use of pesticides to the doctor who discovered that chimney sweeps in 18th century London were dying because of their exposure to soot, the government's Environment Agency has named the scientists, campaigners, writers, economists and naturalists who, in its view, have done the most to save the planet. To help celebrate its tenth anniversary, a panel of experts listed its 100 greatest eco-heroes of all time. And it does mean all time: St Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) is there, as is Siddartha Gautama Buddha, who died in 483BC. Top of the list is Rachel Carson, a US scientist whose 1962 book, Silent Spring, is credited by many with kick-starting the modern environmental movement. Her account of the damage caused by the unrestrained industrial use of pesticides provoked controversy and fury in equal measures. Barbara Young, the Environment Agency's chief executive, said: "She started many of us off on the road to environmental protection." At number two is the maverick economist EF Schumacher, a German national rescued from an internment camp in the English countryside by John Keynes, who went on to achieve worldwide fame with his green-tinged economic vision. Jonathan Porritt, head of the Sustainable Development Commission, is third, with the wildlife broadcaster David Attenborough, fourth. James Lovelock, the UK scientist who developed the Gaia theory of life on earth, is fifth. The US former vice-president turned documentary film maker Al Gore is placed ninth, while David Bellamy, the television botanist who angered some campaigners with his contrary stance on global warming, still makes the list at 18. There are journalists too, including the Guardian's George Monbiot (23) and Paul Brown (80). And some surprises: few would consider an oil boss an eco-hero, but Lord John Browne has done enough to turn BP around to make the list at 85. Mark Funnell, managing editor of the agency's magazine Your Environment, which published the list, said: "We tend to get incredibly negative about people and their effect on the planet. There are some who have done fantastic things and we wanted to celebrate that." Not all the candidates have left their carbon footprints on the real world. Tom and Barbara from the BBC TV show the Good Life are at 91 while Father Christmas completes the list at 100, for his "sleek, no-carbon operation". 1 Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring Seen by many as the patron saint of the green movement, Rachel Carson's reputation was sealed by the 1962 publication of Silent Spring, a passionate and revelatory account of the damage done by the unrestrained use of pesticides. A writer, scientist and ecologist from rural Pennsylvania, she studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and received an MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. First hired by the US Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the depression, she supplemented her income writing features o