Julie Hill – författare

The term "Circular Economy" is becoming familiar to an increasing number of businesses. It expresses an aspiration to get more value from resources and waste less, especially as resources come under a variety of pressures – price-driven, political and environmental.Delivering the circular economy can bring direct costs savings to businesses, reduce risk and offer reputational advantages, and can therefore be a market differentiator – but working out what counts as "circular" activity for an individual business, as against the entire economy or individual products, is not straightforward.This guide to the circular economy gives examples of what this new business model looks like in practice, and showcases businesses opportunities around circular activity. It also: explores the debate around circular economy metrics and indicators and helps you assess your current level of circularity, set priorities and measure success; equips readers to make the links between their own company’s initiatives and those of others, making those activities count by influencing actors across the supply chain; outlines the conditions that have enabled other companies to change the system in which they operate. Finally, this expert short work sets the circular economy in a political and business context, so you understand where it has come from and where it is going.

The term "Circular Economy" is becoming familiar to an increasing number of businesses. It expresses an aspiration to get more value from resources and waste less, especially as resources come under a variety of pressures – price-driven, political and environmental.Delivering the circular economy can bring direct costs savings to businesses, reduce risk and offer reputational advantages, and can therefore be a market differentiator – but working out what counts as "circular" activity for an individual business, as against the entire economy or individual products, is not straightforward.This guide to the circular economy gives examples of what this new business model looks like in practice, and showcases businesses opportunities around circular activity. It also: explores the debate around circular economy metrics and indicators and helps you assess your current level of circularity, set priorities and measure success; equips readers to make the links between their own company’s initiatives and those of others, making those activities count by influencing actors across the supply chain; outlines the conditions that have enabled other companies to change the system in which they operate. Finally, this expert short work sets the circular economy in a political and business context, so you understand where it has come from and where it is going.

Wouldn't you like: - Products that don't damage the environment?- A better way of life without agonising about your 'footprint'?- To really know your stuff?Climate change? Biofuels? Nuclear power? Landfills? Recycling? Renewable energy? Environmental issues can feel overwhelming. But, in fact, it is simple; it all comes down to one thing - stuff. Our use of the Earth's resources - whether a crisp packet or a cargo ship, a T-shirt or a wind turbine - has an inescapable impact on our future. In The Secret Life of Stuff, Julie Hill uncovers the origins and the true cost of what we use. Her inventory of over-consumption may shock but it is the first step towards overcoming waste. The misuse of stuff is not your fault, it's a product of history. But it is only by understanding what has gone wrong, that everyone - politicians, business people and us as consumers - can create a new and better material world.

In Revisiting the Silk Road , experienced author and traveller Julie Hill takes us on a spellbinding journey into the heart of a little known but volatile region, stretching from Western China to the shores of the oil-rich Caspian Sea and beyond to the Black Sea. Hers is not only a series of journeys overland or a march through ancient history, but an informed and contemporary view of life in both the liveliest cities and the farthest-flung outposts of what once was the worlds stoutest and longest economic artery. Julie Hills journey focuses on bazaars as a recurrent motifbazaars being the economic, social, and cultural centers of the Silk Roadand radiates from these bazaars to the life around them. Because she speaks their languageliterally and culturallyJulie is often welcomed by her hosts not as a customer or a trader but as a confessor and a friend, and she vindicates their trust by bringing their stories to life. In Iran, the author hears the predicament of women crying for freedom, frustrated by the deteriorating economy and the conservatives stranglehold on power. While inescapably exotic in its subjects and imagery, the book is also a penetrating report on the effects of the recent geopolitical upheavals that have coursed through the regionseen not from the distance of spy satellites or high government places but on the ground, often literally on the street or in the homes of ordinary folk. The realities of todays Silk Road are far more complex than often understood, and this book provides an absorbing and authoritative guide to any reader in search of both a magical adventure and a hard-nosed investigation into one of the worlds most important and dynamic regions.

This collection of 27 travel essays written over the last decade is based on Julie Hills journeys to far-flung destinations of the world. Often welcomed by her hosts not as a customer or a trader but as a confessor and a friend, Julie Hill vindicates their trust and repays their kindness by bringing their stories to life in this book. She goes where most others cannot or would not, emerging with priceless observations and insights on places and lifestyles that may soon vanish in this fast-changing world. One of the great joys of travel is reaching beyond the boundaries of geography, politics, culture, and our own perspective. With Julie, we wander to the edge of the map, where those boundaries blur, such as to the seriously remote, sensationally scenic parts of Bhutan; we examine Myanmars complex history, diversity, and changing society. In Indias Varanasi, Hinduisms most important pilgrimage site, we look at the stirring soul of India from a boat on the sacred Ganges. There is so much to see, do, and fall in love with in Africa, from Ethiopias entrancingly remote regions to Malis mystical Timbuktu, going on safari in Namibia or standing in the spray of the mighty Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. As lush as a dream of green heaven, Papua New Guineas air comes alive with Picasso birds, and its jungles, mountains, and people mesmerize the visitor. Along the Sepik we encounter river dwellers in villages with no name. Here we see man in his environment as it as been for thousands of years, and can almost believe the world was born yesterday. With an intense curiosity about the places she visits and in intelligible, jargon-free prose, Julie Hill examines the delights, wonders, and conflicts of the natural and human world, seeking to rediscover, as Anatole France put it, the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.

An engaging and richly appreciative account of life in Afghanistan in Pre-Taliban times. Another Afghanistan: A Pre-Taliban Memoir is set in the mid-1970s, when Julie Hill was posted with her husband, a United Nations Development Program Representative in Kabul, in between the fall of the old monarchy and the takeover of the country by the Taliban in the 1990s. The book fills a void in what most people know about that country, which has been largely defined by the excesses of the Taliban and the politics of the US and the old Soviet Union. While the Taliban do not enter the picture until 20 years after her departure, in the popular mind, they create a clear demarcation line between the old and new Afghanistan. Besides, given the country's millennial history, a 20-year interlude is of little consequence. For the ordinary reader, only the Taliban has coherence as a concept, so she has used them in her title. In any case, Afghanistan remains very much in the news, albeit perhaps for all the wrong reasons, and the author would like to balance the network news with a more personal and engaging chronicle of that country and its people. Afghanistan half a century ago was at peace with itself, with its neighbors, and even with its warlords. The politics of the region was stable, education was encouraged, women were being liberated slowly, and the country was moving in the direction of becoming a modern secular state. The book offers a view of Afghanistan and of its people-including the foreign community-on an intimate level, afforded by the fact that she was involved both in the diplomatic wife's organization and in conversations with ordinary citizens in the country' s remote corners. Representing the UN at the Diplomatic Wife's Organization, she witnessed firsthand the tension between East and West during the peak of the Cold War, albeit in a more informal but no less interesting arena. As an Alexandrian Greek she was neutral in the balance that pitted diplomatic wives from the West against those from the Soviet or Eastern bloc and the non-aligned nations. Significant, memorable, and often humorous exchanges occurred at the diplomatic events she attended. Speaking Dari with women cloistered in their homes in the countryside, the author gained insights into their country and its culture. She was exhilarated and yet also perplexed to meet such a generous, gracious, and handsome people, and yet to find some of them-too many of them-caught up in violence of both a very public and very personal kind. Afghanistan emerges in her book as a country both stunningly beautiful and bewildering, immensely rich in archaeological remains. The book tries to awaken a lost interest in remnants of civilizations and in the country's fabulous bazaars and creates a vivid tableau of traveling adventures based on first-hand observations. Given her origins, the author has always been fascinated by the exploits of Alexander the Great and the vibrant cities the Greeks left behind, which included Ai Khanum in Afghanistan. She was privileged, as it was a rarity for a foreigner to gain a permit, to visit the legendary city on the border of the Amu-Darya River. Completely destroyed few years later by the Taliban, the area has reverted to a field of opium poppies. The book takes the reader into places where life bustles with bargaining and gossip in bazaars and teahouses, into places where there was no road at all, traveling without a map or land mark in sight. She encounters nomads on their annual pilgrimage to higher mountains and grapples with the dilemma of their way of a life, and their cultural extinction with the emergence of the Taliban and the widening impact of globalization.