I attended an event yesterday in Birmingham whose aim was to raise awareness about making greener lifestyle choices. The weather was pretty grim, so if I hadn't been doing a talk I probably wouldn't have braved it, but I'm glad I did.

There were some great stalls, loads of useful advice and a truly committed bunch of people doing everything they can to help get information out there. I sometimes find that I've already come across most of the information and advice being offered at green events, but yesterday I came across something totally new that really excited me ... purses, hats, bags and belts made from cork!

For those of you who don't know, the Portuguese cork oak forests are in serious danger of being cut down and replaced with cash crops. This would be an ecological disaster. The cork oak forests provide one of the most diverse eco-systems in the world and we should all be doing everything we can to support them. I already knew that cork is used for wine bottle stoppers and that the increase in plastic stoppers is one of the reasons for the decline in the cork forests. Also, I am already a great fan of cork flooring ... and even walling, but I've never come across it being used for bags and belts before, or even more amazingly for an umbrella!!!

Anyway, having had a look at the stalls, I had to focus on my afternoon talk and I was a bit nervous about doing it because most of the people at the event (due to the weather) were other speakers, stall holders and organisers. This meant I'd be ‘preaching to the converted' and I was concerned that I would have very little of interest to tell them as (being a bunch of very environmentally aware people) they might have heard it all before.

The expression ‘preaching to the converted' is often used in the kind of context that suggests one is ‘wasting one's time', but my experience yesterday told me that in reality this is not the case.

I do a lot of public speaking and workshops around the UK and I always carry a bag of interesting props with me. I use props for a number of reasons. Firstly, I'm not a very technically minded person so don't like using power point slide shows to illustrate what I'm talking about. The second reason is that the props help me remember what I'm going to talk about! The third and final reason I use props is that I find it is so much easier to get my message across when I have examples of what I'm talking about to pass around for people to handle and play with.

Yesterday, I though it would be best to abandon my rucksack full of goodies and talk about ‘The Big Green Idea' and the bus. However, when I began to explain that the bus would be packed with interesting goodies for individuals to look at, I decided this would be easier if I showed everyone the kind of things I'd have on the bus. The response was wonderful! Of course there were people who had already come across soap nuts, deodorant stones, bokashi, hemp and nettle fibre, plant based cook books, and water hippos. There were also a few people who had read about the impact we have on the lives of Indian farmers when we choose ‘non-organic' cotton, grown from GM crops, as well as those who already knew how easy and inexpensive it is to sprout your own seeds to add to salads. But ... and this is a big ‘BUT' ... at least half of the information I passed on yesterday was received by people, like myself, who despite the fact that they already do as much as they can to try and reduce their impact on the earth, still have a lot to learn.

The thing is, there is always something else you can change if someone shows you how. So, having experienced both sides of the ‘information exchange' thing yesterday, I believe it is really important to remind those of you who think it's a waste of time ‘preaching to the converted' that this really is not the case. It is as important to keep getting information out to the ‘converted' as it is to people who are not yet proactive about making changes to green up their lifestyles!

In case anyone reading this hasn't come across some of the things I've mentioned above, here are a few links to explain more:

• If you are interested in finding out more about the problems facing the European cork oak forests ... http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2006/2006-05-15-01.asp
• To find out more about soap nuts ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapindus
• Deodorant stones ... http://www.faithinnature.co.uk/shop_frameset.asp?mainframe=catlink.asp?Cat=61
• Bokashi ... http://www.bubblehouseworms.com/index.php?main_page=bokashi
• Hemp fibre ... http://www.harbay.net/fibre.html
• Nettle fibre ... http://www.nettles.org.uk/nettles/people/clothing.asp
• Plant based cook book ... http://astore.amazon.co.uk/thbigrid-21/search?node=2&keywords=vegan+hamlyn&x=0&y=0&preview=
• Water hippo ... http://www.hippo-the-watersaver.co.uk/
• Sprouting your own seeds ... https://www.livingfood.co.uk/
• And to find out more about the devastating affect GM cotton crops are having on Indian farmers ... http://www.hindu.com/2006/05/09/stories/2006050911171200.htm

Thank you for reading this.