It’s A Mad Mad World – Do You Want To Make A Difference?
by Leonora Oppenheim, London, UK on 04.28.06
“Finding another frustrated ethical wannabe was very refreshing. After a good rant about the hardship involved in finding planet-friendly products and how the majority of people simply didn’t have the time and energy to do this, we decided to do it for them and at the same time turn our passion into our job.” This is Jolene Pritchard explaining how she and her business partner, Richard, started Mad*. We were excited to find out about Mad* recently because as Jolene says it is always great to find kindred spirits in this world. Both TreeHugger and Mad* have a keen desire to make leading a sustainable lifestyle easier and more fun. At TH we do this in a variety of ways: blogging, THTV and cool products. Mad* have also created a multi-faceted approach with their website, which includes a news letter, a product database and they have also created The Mad* Show.
Jolene says of Mad*, “The vision we had was of a shopping utopia of sustainable, organic, fair trade and ethical products, covering every part of a modern lifestyle, all under one roof. The Mad* Show will feature a host of ethical products and services from organic baby food to fair trade jewellery, ethical investments to sustainable clothing. The Mad* Show is the largest ethical consumer show in UK and will be held at Earls Court, London from 2nd-4th June 2006. Hopefully TreeHugger’s very own Bonnie Alter will be reporting back to us from the event.
We think the Mad* website looks great. It is easy to navigate and full of little gems like “Why Mad?”, which is a little box in the right hand corner which has stylish revolving portraits and reasons why we should learn to live ethically and sustainably. ‘Because good food doesn’t have to travel half way round the earth to be good’. Or ‘Because one day, I would like to see the ice caps – before they’ve melted.’ Jolene echoes a strong TreeHugger sentiment when she says, “We realised that if Mad* was to have an impact, we needed to reach a wide audience, not just preach to the converted, and to do this effectively; we needed to talk to them in their language.” We’re receiving you Mad*, loud and clear! via: Pecha Kucha :: The Mad Show
Wow!~ stylee and fun!! and great name (not only the fun in madness, but Make A Difference? That's hot!)
UK Peeps are lucky that seems like its going to be an amaqzing show-- i mean sure Solar06 will be fun and all, and energy efficicency 05 was dope (if you wearchinos and a blue blazer), but this is wheerits at! fun fun fun...