Speakers

Amy and Ella Meek set up Kids Against Plastic, when they were 12 and 10.

Amy is now 20 and throughout her career, she has spoken to kids around the UK, ministers in all three Parliaments in Great Britain, business conferences internationally from Seoul to Barcelona, and diplomats and young people at the UN Headquarters in Geneva. She is also a two-time TEDx speaker, speaking firstly at TEDx Exeter in 2018, and most recently at TEDx Geneva 2021. 

Ella is now 19 and sees the huge value and potential of other young environmentalists when sharing their voices and ideas. She is a big animal lover and passionate about ensuring the natural world can be protected before more damage is done.

Amy and Ella have been recognised with the Prime Minister’s Points of Light Award, the Pride of Britain 2021 Green Champion Award, and a British Empire Medal (BEM). Alongside their charity, Amy and Ella are keen writers, with their books Be Plastic Clever and Be Climate Clever published by DK in 2020 and 2022

Kerry plays a crucial role in supporting schools to become Plastic Clever. This involves working closely with educational institutions to reduce their plastic waste and promote sustainable practices. 

Kerry has been a teacher for over 20 years and still works part time in a primary school in Nottingham. She is passionate about education and sustainability and along with her husband and two daughters, Amy and Ella, started Kids Against Plastic. 

Having seen first-hand how passionate the younger generation can be, she believes that young people can have a powerful voice; they are powerful advocates for the planet and as the future generation of adults they can solve the plastic crisis.

Plastic Clever Schools website

Lisa is the Inventor, Founder, and CEO of SNOAP — an award-winning sustainable personal care brand on a mission to revolutionise how we wash. With a background in finance and a deep-rooted passion for sustainability, Lisa brings together sharp commercial insight and purpose-driven innovation to create products that are kind to skin, hair, your wallet and the planet. 

SNOAP was born from Lisa’s personal need to make better choices for her family — swapping harsh, plastic-packaged products for a gentler, more sustainable alternative. What began as a kitchen-table solution is now a fast-growing movement, with SNOAP replacing liquid soaps, shampoos, and conditioners across homes and businesses in the UK and beyond. Each product is designed to reduce waste, protect our waterways, and simplify self-care without compromising on luxury or effectiveness. 

Since launching, Lisa has led SNOAP to win Green Business of the Year, Theo Paphitis' Small Business Sunday Award, multiple regional awards and even more national award shortlists for sustainability and innovation.  Lisa also won over all five Dragons on BBC's Dragons' Den, where all five Dragons pitched to be part of SNOAP, with Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones being Lisa's choice to join her mission. 

A proud Welsh entrepreneur and one of the few women working in product invention, Lisa is driven by the belief that small changes at home can lead to big changes for the planet. When she's not leading SNOAP, you’ll find her walking her dog, championing women in business, or mixing up the next big eco-friendly breakthrough.

SNOAP website

Green Tomato has sustainability, community and nutrition at its heart, key priority areas for local and national government. They provide a carbon positive mobile greengrocery service offering quality fruit and vegetables to communities in Leicestershire. Their unique, innovative, and nostalgic idea of using 1970s emission free milk floats not only reduces travel miles and packaging but also contributes to community cohesion and sustainability awareness. 

As a teacher of science at secondary school, Nisha talks about the impact our activities have on our environment as part of the science curriculum. She launched Green Tomato in response to these issues and wanted to take a step to help her community reduce their carbon footprint. 

Green Tomato's sustainability efforts have been rigorously measured in collaboration with GreenerFuture Leicestershire and the University of Leicester School of Business. With updated calculations including Scope 3 emissions, their carbon footprint assessment confirms they save 5.32 tonnes more CO₂e than they produce, making them a ‘Carbon Positive’ business.

Green Tomato website

Louise Stanway - Telford and Wrekin Council

Louise has worked at Telford and Wrekin Council for 30 years and is currently the Service Delivery Manager for Community Services. Passionate about the environment and making a difference to the lives of local people, Louise’s team has a key role in supporting the development of resilient communities. 

Louise has many years experience working with individuals, voluntary and community sector organisations, social enterprises, parish and town councils and businesses across the borough. This includes capacity building support, help with community projects and managing a number of community grant schemes. She also has responsibility for corporate support across the organisation on a range of specialisms including equality, diversity and inclusion, consultation and engagement and volunteering as well overseeing the Council’s work on climate change and sustainability. 

Louise is a member of the Telford & Wrekin Plastic Free Taskforce, working with a wide range of partners who are on a journey to collectively achieving plastic free status for the borough of Telford & Wrekin.

Cllr Janne Jarvis - West Suffolk Council

Janne Jarvis is the District Councillor for Newmarket North – West Suffolk. 

A proud Anglo-Finn, Janne is an advocate for sustainability and has spearheaded the first council-led reverse vending machine scheme in the UK, in West Suffolk and Cambridge.

Read more about Janne's efforts here

Alec Young - Eryri National Park

Alec is the Carbon Officer for the Eryri National Park Authority and led the Plastic-Free Yr Wyddfa project in 2022-24.  The pilot project runs a successful sustainability scheme for businesses, a series of innovative comms campaigns, improved refill infrastructure in the area and trialled behaviour change experiments in partnership with Bangor University. The project continues to engage with the public at wide and aims to achieve a plastic-free status for Wales' highest mountain in the future.

Read more about Plastic Free Yr Wyddfa

Isabel Mack - Party Kit Network

Isabel is the founder of the Party Kit Network, a global community helping more people ditch disposable tableware through shared kits of reusables. With nearly 600 members across the UK, Australia and beyond, the network has helped avoid over 1 million single-use items through local action and community sharing.

Party Kit Network website

Catherine Conway - GoUnpackaged

Catherine’s career has spanned both the private and Third Sectors, but always focussing on the interplay of how business interacts with, and supports, the society in which it operates. Catherine has worked within the field of Corporate Social Responsibility for nearly 20 years.

Before the concepts of zero waste and the circular economy had developed, Catherine could see that there was a problem with the amount of plastic packaging being used in our modern lives. A true innovator, Catherine set-up the first version of Unpackaged in 2006 as the world’s first modern zero waste shop.

Not only has Unpackaged created a new, desirable, sustainable category in modern retailing but Catherine’s passion for developing systems to enable refilling, and reuse, within various sectors has enabled many other businesses to create real and lasting change.

Catherine’s passion straddles both the corporate world of getting reuse projects up and running in the world, as well as collaborating across sectors to shape the policy needed for a reuse economy to thrive.

GoUnpackaged website

Helen Tandy - Eco Communities

By day, Helen is a Partner and Ethical Financial Adviser at Castlefield, where she helps individuals and organisations align their finances with their values. She has been fortunate to reduce her paid working hours to dedicate more time to her not-for-profit work with Eco Communities, where she serves as Director. 

Helen supports regions in Cheshire to become Plastic Free Communities, working in partnership with Surfers Against Sewage, for whom she acts as the Chester Community Representative. She also represents Chester as the Refill Rep for City to Sea, helping to reduce reliance on single-use plastic through initiatives like their returnable coffee cup scheme across parts of Cheshire. 

Helen is passionate about reducing single-use plastic and litter, and she enjoys engaging with others on topics including sustainable living, responsible business practices, and achieving net zero.

Eco Communities website

Daniel Webb is the founder and director of Everyday Plastic, a UK-based environmental organisation dedicated to tackling the harmful impacts of the plastics crisis on our society. In 2017, he embarked on a personal challenge to collect, count and analyse all the plastic waste he used over the course of a year. This project culminated in the creation of Everyday Plastic, an innovative project that has captured global attention for its impactful approach to addressing one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time. In addition to founding Everyday Plastic, Daniel established The Big Plastic Count with partners Greenpeace UK. The Big Plastic Count is the UK’s largest investigation into household plastic waste. This nationwide citizen science experiment has empowered hundreds of thousands of people to take action against plastic waste and has generated valuable data for advocacy and policy change.

Everyday Plastic website