My name is Victoria and like most people, I’m a mess of contradicting loves, hates and interests. I love elegant clothes and interior design, but hate conspicuous consumerism and fast fashion. I’m a sucker for well branded luxury goods in gorgeous packaging, but I hate waste. I adore art, painting and making things beautiful, but I know true beauty lies within. And, I’m a life long lover of animals and our mother earth, am vegan, try to live a low waste lifestyle and completed an Environmental Governance MSc, but I have spent the past decade working in the construction industry – one of the most environmentally damaging industries in the UK!
In my previous job I coordinated refurbishments and maintenance work for blue chip companies nationwide – filling in the cracks, repairing the broken, and regenerating spaces and making them beautiful for my clients and their customers to enjoy. I championed an environmental mindset in my workforce, where possible running environmental projects with my clients to reduce the environmental impact of the works we carried out.
With my passion for environmental and ethical issues, I really wanted to dedicate my working hours to something that could help make the world a better place. And with my passion for making things beautiful, I thought I could create the kind of products that I enjoy buying – useful things with a sense of whimsy, with pretty, delicate details and packaging. Just because a product has a lower environmental impact, doesn’t mean it can’t be stylish too! Like many people out there, I love the aesthetics of a purchase as much as the practical and ethical advantages it offers. So I invested in starting my own small business and Peach & Bumble was born.
‘I am going to make everything around me beautiful, that will be my life.’
Elsie de Wolfe
It’s still early days here at Peach & Bumble, but we’re slowly growing; we being: the business and the Peach & Bumblers – the wonderful customers and other small businesses who see the value and beauty of Peach & Bumble products. After all, the ethos of Peach & Bumble is built around collaboration – the idea that as individuals, the small actions we make to reduce our overall consumption and waste are more powerful when we are a movement, united in our actions.
“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.”
Herman Daly
Though systemic change – challenging corporate dominance and greed, the growth economy and political failure – is required to save us from the environmental emergency we face, and I would never want to give the impression that we can solve the climate crisis with our purchase choices alone, I firmly believe that thoughtful individual change is significant action, in tandem with challenging the systems and power structures at a higher, political level, that drive climate change and biodiversity loss.
Individual action, on a personal level, is empowering – a sense of achievement and agency affecting positive change, however small, is important in order to avoid the environmental despair that can lead us to give up hope when faced with such overwhelming environmental problems. We all have the power to make positive impact by reducing our environmental footprint and leading and inspiring change in our communities. Individual behaviour makes up social norms, and so we can see individual change as a precursor to systemic change. When we act together, we can help to disrupt the system.
I want, for my part, to help my customers by empowering them as individuals to engage with environmental issues, to reduce their contribution to environmental harms, and promote attitude and behaviour change in their families, friendship groups, and in broader society.
“You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.”
Wangari Maathai
Together, by making considered choices about what, and how much we buy, we can encourage systemic change and an economy that works within planetary boundaries, and supports, rather than injures, life on our planet.
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