Guest column: Project Dirt

Project Dirt (www.projectdirt.com) was set up by Mark Shearer and Nick Gardner a little over a year ago in South London. Wanting to green their lifestyles, they quickly realised accessing green information carried a psychological health warning, needed numerous spare hours and entailed copious amounts of confusion.

Enter Project Dirt. A site that brings together “real people doing real green projects.” It’s about accessing and learning from the local green “trailblazers” already doing their own projects. Not the scientists, politicians or experts – but neighbours, down the road, who can give you some practical advice. “It’s pretty straight forward” says Mark. “We realised there was this huge groundswell of green activity. Project Dirt is simply about helping these people/projects collaborate and helping the public learn from them.”

Project Dirt was started in April 2008 with 1 project and 5 people. Now sailing along with over 130 projects and 1,200 people, Project Dirt is now seen as THE green network in south London bringing it all together. The food growers, energy boffs, conservationists, transport groups and numerous others. All this – and there hasn’t been any marketing in sight. It’s grown purely from word of mouth.

There’ve been over 450 events on the site in 18 months, 150 blog posts and lots of activity. That’s what it’s all about; harnessing and bringing together tangible activity in a transparent way. And that’s not all. “It’s about working with good partners.” Says Nick. Timberland (the US boot makers) got in touch to fund green projects on the site. There are also ongoing conversations with Borough Councils to follow suit. Why work with Timberland? “Because, having looked into it, they take green very seriously. Their CEO is on a mission to integrate green into all aspects of their business.” Says Nick. “Having funding available from Timberland seemed the right decision for the site’s members – many of whom have taken advantage of the funding opportunity.” Other conversations are now being had with a number of other green conscious companies looking to follow suit.

Where from here? Good question. A new sight is in the pipeline to build off the success of the existing test site. Project Dirt is steadily expanding across London and will soon be national. Earthwatch (the fantastic charity backed by a number of governments) is shortly to set up a network on Project Dirt and conversations are being had with the likes of the GLA.

Watch this space – Project Dirt seems to be doing something right. Let’s see where it goes from here.