Environmentalist Trewin Restorick has been announced as the first speaker booked for the Garden Centre Association’s (GCA) annual conference in Bristol in January. The event takes place from 26-29 January 2020.

Iain Wylie, chief executive of the GCA, explained: “This year’s conference has a real focus on the environment and what we can do as an industry to be more environmentally-friendly and aware, so we’re thrilled to announce Trewin as the first of our speakers for the event.

“He will be speaking about corporate social responsibility, behaviour change to combat climate change, green living and charity and business partnerships. We think he will be a real inspiration to our members and help them to think more about the issues we’re facing, not just as an industry, but as individuals and as a country.”

Trewin is the founding CEO of Hubub, a charity which is said to make environmental issues fun. It works to bring issues of climate change, carbon footprint and global warming into the public eye in a fun and light-hearted way.

He is also the former CEO and founder of independent environmental charity Global Action Plan. Under his leadership, the charity ran programmes to reduce carbon emissions, energy consumption and waste with businesses, schools, community organisations and households.

Trewin acted at the Chair of the Environmental IT Leadership Team (EILT) and sat on the Defra Third Sector Advisory Board, is a trustee for Sustainability and Environmental Education, and co-chaired Defra’s Compact Group. He has also been trained as one of Al Gore’s UK Climate Change Ambassadors and is a frequent media commentator on environmental issues for Channel 4 News, Sky News, BBC Breakfast and CNN.

Before starting Global Action Plan, Trewin worked for Friends of the Earth as a recycling co-ordinator and head of marketing. In these roles, he established the first blue box kerbside recycling scheme in the UK and created Paper Round, an office-based recycling scheme in London, which now has a turnover of £3million.

The GCA’s 2020 conference will be held at Mercure Bristol, Grand Hotel in Bristol from January 26-29 and places can be booked via www.gca.org.uk.