RECORD-breaking round the world yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur has highlighted how she feels modern living has become detached from the resources it consumes.
At a landmark green conference today, Dame Ellen contrasted the need to preserve resources during her ocean voyages with the throwaway nature too common in everyday life.
She was speaking to more than 340 delegates at the first annual Eco Island conference.
Held in Cowes, the conference was a rallying call to businesses and organisations to support the Eco Island aim of making the Isle of Wight carbon neutral and energy self-sufficient by 2020.
Dame Ellen said: “It is not that people are lazy, it is just that we have grown up in a time when everything is available and cheap. If we want something all we have to do is go out to the supermarket.
“We need to get back to a stage where we value what we have. On a boat you learn to value the resources you have and to make the most of them.”
That is the sort of thinking we need to be applying to everyday life.
Dame Ellen, has become a passionate advocate of Eco Island. She has lived on the Isle of Wight for ten years and her Offshore Challenges business employs 50 people from a base in East Cowes.
Of the conference at Cowes Yacht Haven she said: “It has been a fantastic event and it is really encouraging to see so many people here who want to make a difference.”
Leading organisations including the Isle of Wight Council also launched the Island’s Sustainable Community Strategy — the document setting out how Eco Island will become a reality — at the conference.
Speakers included Professor Bill Wakeham, vice-chancellor of the world-renowned Southampton University that is working with the IW Council on a number of renewable energy initiatives.
Also on the platform were Sir Ghillean Prance, scientific director of the Eden Project, the Rt Rev Dr Kenneth Stevenson, eighth bishop of Portsmouth — who said Eco Island was the most important project ever undertaken on the Island – Dr Vanessa Lawrence chief executive of Ordnance Survey and David Taylor, chief executive of Sustainable Energy Ireland.
The conference was opened by IW Council leader Cllr David Pugh. Cllr Pugh said: “The conference was all about inspiring local businesses and organisations to get behind the Eco Island ethos. Eco Island is an ambitious goal but it is one that we can achieve if all of us – from the biggest organisation to the individual — work together.
“The speakers showed us that there is the technology out there to help us become sustainable and also that there is a real need for us all to do this.
“It is also became evident that we can achieve this sustainability and at the same time create opportunities and prosperity for everyone.
“A key aim of Eco Island is to not only protect our environment but also to enable everyone to be able to enjoy that improved quality of life.”
