Green List announced! 
The Scottish Sustainable Development Forum launched The Scottish Green List on the 22nd April. The aim of the list is to create a thriving network of sustainability leaders in Scotland, to recognise their efforts and to be an inspiration to everyone to do more. Many congratulations to the following on being included in the list!
Listing courtesy of The Scotsman.
50 Ruth Dawkins
Ruth is the sole staff member of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, a coalition of groups with an interest in the environment. She has played a huge role in the success of the group, and in boosting its profile over the past three years. The result has been co-ordinated action between environmental groups, faith groups and trade unions to keep pressure on the Scottish Government to enact an effective climate change bill.
49 David van Alstyne
David has carried out pioneering work in the use of algae to turn waste products from Scottish distilleries into useful fuel either for electricity, heat or transport. Use of algae has long been researched but this is thought to be one of the first successful commercial applications of this ground-breaking technology. The equipment has been installed in the Glenturret distillery, Crieff, home of Famous Grouse whisky.
48 Rob Edwards
Rob has been a journalist in Scotland for many years, reporting for the Scottish media and New Scientist. He has shown determination in championing environmental issues, which have enlightened and engaged with readers and provoked debate. He has put considerable time into researching his articles, and has been responsible for many exclusives and exposés in his long-standing career.
47 Roger Parry
When asked by a customer if he could supply printing that met high environmental standards, Roger's response was to transform his business. The result is that he runs what is almost certainly Scotland's greenest print company. It supplies a wide range of business and government clients with low-impact printing, meaning that Roger has had a considerable impact on making businesses greener.
46 Randy Klinger
Ten years ago Randy Klinger had a vision for a creative arts centre in Moray. Due to Randy's hard work, what is probably the first carbon-neutral arts centre in Britain has opened. It is working hard in its aim of reaching out to all social groups, to become an active part of the local community. The heating at Moray Art Centre is provided by geothermal heat pumps and solar panels supply the electricity.
45 Dave Morris and John Mackay
These two men are the key architects behind the access legislation that made the right to roam a reality across most of Scotland, and for the first time opened up the Scottish countryside to the many. David was the campaigner lobbying hard, and John used his role in Scottish Natural Heritage to turn the initiative into a framework that met the concerns of landowners and government.
44 Hugh Raven
Hugh is a passionate advocate of sustainable development in his many roles. Whether it is in his work managing his family estate in Morvern, in his role as director of the Soil Association Scotland, or as an adviser to the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, sustainable development is at the forefront of his good work. Hugh is also well known and respected throughout Scotland for his championing of sustainability in relation to food.
43 Roley Walton
Roley has worked tirelessly to inspire environmental awareness through the concept of the "outdoor classroom". The retired Currie High teacher encourages involvement in practical projects aimed at improving the outdoor environment, such as community woods, and she works extremely hard to enhance biodiversity in areas of green space. Roley's Wood has even been named after her in recognition of her efforts.
42 John Hancox
John runs the Children's Orchard, planting apple trees around Scotland with school children. It all began when he was a journalist and could not get a satisfactory answer about why nobody planted fruit trees in our parks. Today, there are fruit trees being planted in parks all around Scotland and now John is planning the delivery of the Commonwealth Orchard to coincide with the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
41 Stan Blackley
Stan is a full-time influencer through his day job as the director of an ethical communications consultancy and in his spare time through his work as an active volunteer and board member for a number of worthwhile charities and social enterprises. He has been involved over the years with Friends of the Earth Scotland, Greenpeace and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, to name but a few.
40 Andy Goldsworthy
Andy has inspired huge numbers of people through his work as an internationally recognised and celebrated sculptor, photographer and environmentalist. The former farm hand, who lives in the Borders, produces site-specific sculpture and land art. His art involves the use of natural objects to create sculptures which draw out the character of their environment.
39 Ross Gazey
As a recent graduate Ross had the idea for a project that would help demonstrate the potential of hydrogen power and bring much-needed development to the communities of the Isle of Unst in Shetland. From his initial idea the team at the Pure Project have now put in place a practical, world-beating demonstration of hydrogen technology in the most northerly part of the UK.
38 Pete Ritchie
Pete is one of Scotland's most inspiring organic farmers. He is passionate about what he does and always keen for visitors to his farm to help people find out more about sustainability. From the start, his aim with his organic farm in the Borders has been to grow food for local people, and to provide them with fresh, seasonal produce. He has also been responsible for a number of Scotland's innovative sustainability projects.
37 Mike Robinson
Mike sits on the board of no fewer than six environmental organisations. These include his position as chairman of the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland coalition, through which he has built up a successful and influential alliance of organisations. He is also heavily involved with Scottish Environmental Link, the Climate Challenge Fund, National Trust for Scotland, Friends of the Earth Scotland and the Soil Association.
Helping to inspire next generation
36 Sara MacLennan
At the age of just 23 Sara MacLennan is already having a huge impact on the views of young people towards the environment.
Over the past two years she has thrown vast amounts of energy into Powerpod, a venture in Edinburgh that uses young people to spread messages about renewable energy to their peers.
A trailer kitted out with solar panels and a wind turbine tours schools, youth clubs and festivals to demonstrate the potential of green energy.
All the volunteers who teach the children about the renewables are themselves young people, aged between 10 and 18.
Ms MacLennan, the project's education and development officer, started work on the scheme straight after completing her economics degree. She is convinced young people hold the key to tackling climate change.
"They are the ones who are going to be making decisions in the future and they also have so much influence on their parents and everyone around them," she says.
And she says it helps to inspire young people if someone their own age was doing the talking.
"They are communicating on the same level. So much is about adults showing young people what to do, but when it's a young person who's excited about it then they take more notice."
She claims it is easy to keep her own levels of enthusiasm for the project high: "I think you have to be passionate, enthusiastic about everything in life. And with young people it's difficult not to be enthusiastic."
35 Dr Lubna Kerr
Lubna runs Wellbeing, Health and You, a social enterprise company. She focuses on lifestyle changes and "self-management". Her aims are to help create a healthy, productive workforce, reduce absenteeism from work and lower hospital admissions of people with long-term conditions. In the past she has won an award for her work with black and minority ethnic people with diabetes.
34 Duncan McLaren
Duncan has been chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland since 2003 and in this role he has been a powerful and inspiring voice for the environmental movement. He has tirelessly campaigned for a sustainable future. Duncan has an incredible knack for spotting weak points in arguments and for pushing against these to get the changes he wants to see from government.
33 Howard Liddell
For about 40 years Howard has been involved in delivering sustainable architecture throughout Scotland and overseas. He is hugely respected for his pioneering ecological designs and for developing an understanding of how to build affordable, low-impact buildings for living and working in. He has won many awards, including the International award for Sustainability for Glencoe Visitor Centre.
32 Elaine Sheerin
Elaine has motivated people to get walking in their own communities in the south side of Glasgow. Through her tireless efforts, she has improved health, fostered a community spirit and gone a long way towards reclaiming the streets for the people of the city. She strongly believes that walking is an activity for everyone. She has got through her admirable message that it is free, sociable and healthy.
31 Frances McCartney
Frances founded the Environmental Law Centre Scotland, a not-for-profit law centre providing community groups, non-governmental organisations and the voluntary sector with advice and representation so they could achieve better environmental protection. This vital resource is helping communities to get access to invaluable advice when seeking to protect their local environment
30 John Ferguson
As he stood on the platform of an oilrig watching 15 flares burn over the North Sea, John Ferguson realised things had to change – and hestarted applying for environmental jobs.
He got "hooked on waste" and helped to draw up Scotland's waste management plan, working to increase recycling and joining the government's Zero Waste think tank. He is now masterminding an eco-innovation park in Perthshire.
29 Barry Sinclair
If you live somewhere as remote as Fair Isle, you have to be resourceful – and the islanders proved so when, inspired by the Seventies' oil crisis, they set up the world's first community-run, standalone, wind-turbine project. Engineer Barry Sinclair, chairman of the Fair Isle Electricity Council, was also the man responsible for keeping the engines running when it opened in 1982. Electricity charges went down from 13p to 4p per kilowatt hour.
28 Clare Symonds
Clare Symonds is an independent planning consultant on the brink of setting up a new group, Planning Democracy. Her mission is to challenge planning procedures, showing how communities can be railroaded into accepting unpopular developments. She says guidelines do not allow enough consultation. She says plans for a new Forth road bridge and coal-fired power station in Ayrshire are examples of inadequate consultation.
27 Dave du Feu
The computing officer for Edinburgh University Medical School is also a very prominent cycling campaigner. With the campaigning group Spokes, he has successfully lobbied governments and councils to do more to support cyclists and maintain cycle networks. He has edited more than 90 newsletters and conducts a survey every year into how much is being spent on cycle projects across Scotland.
26 Tessa Tennant
Tessa Tennant is the chair of the ICE Organisation – a carbon management and loyalty programme. A pioneer of sustainable development, she co-founded the UK's first equitable investment fund for sustainable development and was chair and co-founder of the UK Social Investment Forum and of the Carbon Disclosure Project. Since 1997 she has concentrated on encouraging socially responsible investment in Asia.
25 Bill Ritchie
When he was made an MBE in 2007, Bill Ritchie joked it would mean "a severe dent in my reputation as a revolutionary". The Oxford-educated crofter has been involved in two community buy-outs which revolutionised the political and economic landscape of Scotland. He was secretary of the Assynt Crofters' Trust in its buy-out of the 21,000-acre North Assynt Estate in 1993, and then played a major role in the purchase of the 44,000-acre Drumrunie and Glencanisp estates by the Assynt Foundation.
24 Richard Dixon
Trained as an astrophysicist, the director of WWF Scotland has become a leading campaigner on climate change. WWF Scotland helped to gather 20,000 signatures in support of a climate change bill which would reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2011. Dr Dixon, who also worked for Friends of the Earth Scotland, is a major supporter of renewable energy and an opponent of nuclear power plants. He caused controversy recently by saying a failure to be energy-efficient should be treated as a crime.
23 Allan Thomson
The marine energy expert who, in 2005, created Aquamarine, the world's first commercial wave-power energy plant on Islay.
In 2007, the company he founded merged with Renewable Energies Ltd to create a new company dedicated to developing commercial wave-power technologies.
The company is currently testing the Aquamarine Oyster, the "big floating hinge", which it hopes will become available commercially in 2014.
22 Alastair McIntosh
Writer, activist and campaigner Alastair McIntosh was once described as "Naomi Klein in a Fair Isle jumper". But despite his homespun style, this Scottish maverick academic has quite a following.
Thom Yorke of Radiohead is such a fan of his book Son and Soil that he has taken to waving it over his head at concerts, urging his fans to buy a copy. McIntosh campaigned in support of the community buy-out of Eigg and against the superquarry on Harris and is a director of the Galgael Trust.
Writer in love with landscape
21 Kathleen Jamie
The work of Kathleen Jamie is, said the critic Richard Mabey, "as close as writing gets to a conversation with the natural world". The Fife writer has been chosennot for environmental activism – but for the way she helps us look afresh at our surroundings.
One of her most recent projects has been to write a collection of pieces about Jura for Spirit of Jura, about the writers' retreat on the island.
Mark Lambert, director of the Scottish Book Trust, said: "We chose Kathleen because she is without rival as a poet and an observer of the natural environment. She very simply but very powerfully gives a sense of how incredible Scotland's landscape is, without being at all strident.
"She does what all great writers do, which is show and not tell."
David Robinson, The Scotsman's books editor, said: "Kathleen Jamie writes nature poetry with the same attention to detail as a great landscape photographer. She is precise, illuminating, and above all clearly focused."
20 Robin Gourlay
Children through-out East Ayrshire eat more healthily as a result of Robin Gourlay's efforts.
The head of facilities management at East Ayrshire Council adopted the Soil Association's Food For Life targets and as a result the produce on children's plates in schools can be traced back to local farmers.
19 Fatima Uygun
Fatima Uygun has campaigned tirelessly for her local swimming pool in Glasgow to remain open while the director of the Govanhill Bath Communities Trust.
After five years, Glasgow City Council allowed the community to take on the baths and work is now in hand to raise funds to restore them.
18 Adam Watson
Adam Watson – who is known as "Mr Cairngorms" – probably knows more about snow than anyone else in Scotland. As a lifelong campaigner and researcher, his passion for the mountains has been both influential and inspiring. His writings include 15 books and hundreds of scientific and other publications.
17 Richard Yemm
If you see a snake-like red device floating on the surface of the sea, Richard Yemm is probably the brains behind it.
He invented the Pelamis wave-energy device – the first commercially viable creation of its kind. Already deployed off Portugal, there are also plans to use the device to create wave farms around the UK.
16 Philip Ashmole
Philip Ashmole has played a key role in returning the landscape in the Southern Uplands to that which existed 6,000 years ago.
As co-ordinator of Carrifran Wildwood, he helped raise £400,000 to buy a 1,600-acre valley in the Moffat Hills, where more than 500,000 native trees and shrubs have been planted by volunteers.
15 Andy Wightman
Vast areas of Scotland are still owned by a handful of wealthy individuals but that is gradually changing.
Andy Wightman, a writer, researcher and campaigner, has pushed the issue of land reform and ownership up the agenda. This has helped bring about reform to legislation to make it possible for communities to buy land on their doorsteps.
14 Lucy Conway
Lucy Conway has been one of the driving forces behind efforts to turn the Isle of Eigg green. The island is leading the way in Scotland in its attempt to become zero-carbon, by installing renewable energy devices on homes and across the community. Ms Conway has inspired residents on the island to take action to get involved.
13 Brendan Dick
Prince Charles is among those with praise for Brendan Dick's achievements.
The director of BT in Scotland has led the company's climate-change programme, and has been the Prince's ambassador for corporate responsibility for the past year. Prince Charles said Mr Dick was a "natural leader" who inspires others.
12 Mark Ruskell, Patrick Harvie, John Swinney, Richard Lochhead
These four men, current or former politicians, are responsible for the Climate Challenge Fund. This £18.8 million pot of cash has revolutionised community action on climate change. It is doled out by Holyrood.
11 Mark Sydenham
Since it was launched, The Bike Station has kept more than 8,000 bicycles out of landfill – instead, they are being used to help Scots to lead a more active lifestyle.
The bikes have come from skips, ditches or even canals across the Edinburgh area and the charity has taken them in, repaired them and then resold them at affordable prices.
Much of the hard work has been carried out by project leader Mark Sydenham.
Dave du Feu, of cycling campaign group Spokes, said: "He's got an entrepreneurial spirit, but one that aims for the good of the community, rather than his own gain."
10 Bill Acton, Gordon Cowtan, David Howell, Martin Turner
Known as the Fintry Four, these men have arguably created the greenest village in Scotland.
Their dream of clean green energy and a zero waste community was not given much hope by many, but now considerable sums of money are made from the community wind turbines. The money is used for insulation and other energy efficiency measures for local people. Such schemes all over Scotland could save 2.4 million tonnes of per year.
9 Jan Bebbington
Jan has been at the forefront of research and advocacy on accountancy and sustainable development. Her work using accountancy tools to track environmental problems is respected across the world, and her research and organisation have ensured that St Andrews University is now a leading centre on sustainability.
As vice-chairwoman of the Sustainable Development Commission in Scotland, Jan has led work to advise and scrutinise the work of the Scottish Government.
8 Jeremy Sainsbury
Ten years ago the Dumfriesshire-based renewable energy consultancy Natural Power had a total of six staff. Now it has more than 100 working across six countries. Director Jeremy Sainsbury has been part of the management team that has driven it to success. Natural Power is one of Scotland's leading independent renewable energy developers and has an enviable track record in receiving planning consents. The company is responsible for a long list of wind farms across Scotland, and has plans for many more elsewhere in the world.
7 David Cameron
David Cameron was not going to sit back and watch his local community's population dwindle and businesses die.
Largely as a result of his efforts, the islanders on North Harris now own the land they live on. It truly was a historic day when the North Harris community purchased 55,000 acres of the local estate. They have also received considerable financial support to develop their own wind farm, with all profit going back into the local community. David's passion has inspired renewable energy projects and land ownership far beyond North Harris.
6 Eva Schonveld
The global Transition Town movement aims to reduce the threat of peak oil and climate change on communities – and to transform Scotland one community at a time.
This is done by positive changes to local transport, food and waste. Eva Schonveld, co-ordinator of Transition Scotland, is the only person in the world to have secured core funding for full-time staff, as opposed to volunteers, for this kind of community initiative.
Dozens of communities across Scotland have either signed up to the initiative, or taken an active interest.
5 Rachel Nunn
Rachel Nunn is described as a force of nature by many who meet her. Her enthusiasm and determination have seen her lead the creation of Carbon Neutral Stirling, a pioneering organisation looking to engage people across Stirling in tackling climate change. The project began as a voluntary campaign in Rachel's front room, but now has government backing and a small team working across Stirling to deliver her vision. She said that when she read about the possible impacts of climate change, she could not sit back and do nothing.
4 Abbie Marland
It is not often that an individual environmentalist wins the argument against global oil corporations. However, it could be argued Abbie Marland did just that.
She tirelessly campaigned against a plan for ship-to-ship transfer of vast quantities of crude oil in the Firth of Forth. Largely as a result of her efforts, the proposals were rejected by Forth Ports in February last year. They would have seen almost eight million tonnes of crude oil pumped between tankers each year, raising fears of an environmentally catastrophic spill.
3 Ian Marchant
When Ian Marchant took over Scottish & Southern Energy in 2002 at the age of 41, he was hailed as the FTSE 100's youngest chief executive. He has proved to be very different from the old generation of energy company bosses, becoming a keen supporter of renewable energy long before it became fashionable. SSE went on to receive consent to build Europe's largest wind farm – the Clyde wind farm in South Lanarkshire. As well as nailing SSE's colours to the low-carbon mast, Ian has also been vocal in support for government action on climate change.
2 Howard Wood
It took more than a decade of tireless effort but success was sweet as Scotland's first no-fishing zone was given the go ahead last year.
Leading the efforts of the environmental campaigners who forced it to happen was Howard Wood. He got together with other Arran residents to set up Community of Arran Seabed Trust (Coast). When the government approved Scotland's first no-take zone in Lamlash Bay, Howard's incredible efforts paid off and he showed that the fishing industry can work hand-in-hand with environmental interests.
1 Karen & Mike Small
Like all the best ideas, it was very simple; it started small, but quickly spread and the consequences have been enormous.
Karen and Mike Small have inspired hundreds of people across Fife and thousands more across the country to eat locally-produced food.
It all started as an experiment challenging a handful of people to eat only food grown in Fife for a year – the Fife Diet was born. As word spread, more and more people started taking part.
Not only does it reduce the carbon footprint of those taking part, it encourages healthy eating, use of seasonal produce, and it supports local business. Without the tremendous enthusiasm of Mike and Karen, this hugely influential initiative would never have become the success it is.