Prince Charles. The Prince of Green

Posted by maureen

January 30, 2007 |

Charles is in the US to be presented with the Global Environmental Citizen Award, and will receive the award from last year’s recipient, former Vice President Al Gore. Anyone who cares about the environment should read on:

The Prince has been outspoken on environmental issues long before they became the popular cause of the day. As early as the 1970s he was trying to call attention to the problem of climate change and to promote sustainable agriculture. At that time he was thought of as eccentric and often laughed at. Even the English press, usually quick to comment, gave little copy to his work and views. In 1990 he made a BBC documentary called ”The Earth in Balance, A Personal View of the Environment,”. It was not received well and his prophesies on global warming fell mostly on deaf ears. Undaunted he took his beliefs one step further and started to organically farm his Gloucester estate.

“When I first started farming organically my real aim was to explore the best ways of developing a sustainable system of food production. Organic farming was, and still is, the most effective system of applying what I thought to be the principles of sustainable agriculture”

In 1992, the Prince created Duchy Originals, which has become one of the UK’s leading brands of organic food and drink. All of the profits from Duchy Originals are donated to The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation. Today the popularity of organic foods has blossomed and Duchy Originals has become a flourishing business with sales revenues of $62 million. It has established its reputation by winning numerous fine-food awards.

The Prince plans to further his commitment to global warming by labeling his Duchy Originals range with details of the greenhouse gases emitted in making the products. He wanted to make consumers aware of the cost of their food in greenhouse gas terms as well as in terms of dollars and cents. Under the scheme, every stage will be analyzed to quantify how much climate-changing gas is released in producing each of the 200 items they produce. Some restaurants and food producers in England are already displaying “food miles” - the distance an item has traveled before being sold. But Charles wants Duchy Originals to go further.

It’s all too easy to be cynical and say it’s easy for him. But in truth, he could have chosen any number of causes that were more popular and easier to have been associated with. He stuck to his guns and committed his time and reputation by farming against conventional thinking . I’m sure that his life as a royal is often at odds with what he preaches but he is making changes; he now uses commercial airlines and biodiesel cars in an effort to reduce his carbon footprint and help fight global warming emissions. If his legacy is The Prince of Green, it is one that he would be proud of.