Green Celebrities: Jamie Oliver

Green Celebrities: Jamie Oliver

When it comes to celebrity chefs, there are not many faces that are more recognisable than Jamie Oliver. He is a well-known advocate of healthy food, but did you know that he’s an environmentalist at heart too? Here’s what makes Jamie Oliver a green celebrity.

He’s a believer in renewable energy

He has had two wind turbines installed on the roof of his Fifteen restaurant in Newquay, Cornwall which has dramatically reduced energy use.

He advocates reducing food waste and ‘eco-eating’

As well as encouraging people to use fresh and natural ingredients when they cook, he is an advocate of people growing their own food, which is kinder to the environment and much better for health.

Here in England, we’re all very familiar with his campaign for healthier school meals and his war on chicken nuggets, but his ambition didn’t end there. He took the better school meals campaign across the Atlantic and appeared in TV shows like ‘Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution’ and ‘Jamie’s American Road Trip,’ which looked at healthy eating and sustainable farming and food production.

He calls for sustainable farming

Jamie believes that technology is the key to helping farmers use more sustainable methods to produce seasonal fresh food. He also believes that farms and communities should come together so that more of us can buy local organic produce.

The chef adds that the key to making farms more sustainable is making it easier for small farms to introduce technology that will make them more agile and competitive, and encouraging bigger farms to think about the impact they’re having on the environment by cutting down on the overuse of pesticides and looking after the welfare of their animals.

He wants better education and labelling on food

The dream, says the TV chef, is for people to be more educated on sustainability and nutrition so that we can be better-informed consumers when it comes to food. He wants every child to be taught about food, where it from, how it affects their health, and how to cook it. He also believes that it should be compulsory to tell people if herbicides or pesticides have been used on food.

He has clear views on what is best for us and the environment when it comes to food

• He is encouraging people to eat less meat and eat more locally-grown vegetables.
• He believes we can reduce food waste dramatically by growing, selling, and buying exactly what we need. UK households waste around 3.6 million tonnes of food every year, so we need to get wasteful production and excessive consumption under control.
• The chef says we should stick to lists, check what we already have in our fridges and cupboards before we hit the supermarket, and pay close attention to use-by dates too, to reduce food waste and save money.

He believes we should embrace technology and work with nature, not against it

Technology, he says, can be used to repair soil that has been degraded by intensive and damaging agricultural practices. If we have more nutrient-dense soil, we can grow better quality food and repair some of the damage we have done to land.

He adds that technology for sustainable fishing as well as aquaculture can help tackle the problem of overfishing in our oceans which is a huge problem.