It's not often that a marketing video for a mobile phone network talks about wildflower meadows and land management practices, but Ecotalk isn't your average mobile phone network. Founded by UK-based renewable energy company Ecotricity—which has brought us collapsing smokestacks, vegan biogas and some cool urban wind turbines—Ecotalk offers a wind and solar powered cell phone network with no exit fees, 30 day rolling contracts, and a promise to channel profits into giving land back to nature.
And that's where the land management stuff comes in.
You see, the UK has lost 97% of its flower rich grasslands since the 1930s, and insect populations have suffered as a result. Ecotricity has already been buying up farm fields and exploring new, more nature-friendly management practices. In 2004, for example, it planted a new woodland with 20,000 trees for each of its first 20,000 customers near its first wind turbine in Lynch Knoll, Gloucestershire, leaving another 20 acres to be managed as grassland. (The company has also focused on bee-friendly wind and solar farms.)
Now Ecotalk is stepping up that commitment, working with charities like Buglife, Natural England, Friends of the Earth and The Wildlife Trust to identify and purchase pollinator-friendly wildlife habitats which will eventually form a network of ecosystems across the country.
Not bad for a mobile phone network.
