Just like any other women’s magazine, but with an ethical twist, Daisy Green hopes to make saving the planet palatable. Sarah Foster meets its founder, Nicola Alexander.

NICOLA Alexander has a confession to make. She’s in her living room, the recycled paper bricks she uses for fuel piled up nearby, and all of a sudden, the secret is out.

“This skirt was a quid from the charity shop,” she cheerfully admits. “I’ve never chucked a piece of clothing in the bin – they always go to charity. As a woman, it’s really frustrating to think that we get so much from following these trends directed by other people. My thing is about buying these expensive clothes and then putting them in the bin. It does upset me massively.”

From someone else, this might sound like a bit of a rant – the sort of thing that might make the average woman head for the hills – but from Nicola, it’s somehow acceptable. Warm and intelligent, with a broad Geordie accent, she embraces green principles but without feeling the need to ram them down your throat. It’s this concept – that you can be ethical and easygoing – that underlies her online magazine, Daisy Green. She explains how it was born.

“It came about last April,” says Nicola, 34, who lives in Gateshead. “I went on holiday and my mam had bought me a magazine and I was reading it and nothing in it appealed to me. I was having a chat with my husband Roy and he said ‘you should start your own’. We thought about what we should call it and I said ‘it will have to be Daisy because it’s my favourite flower and it will have to be Green because it’s an ethical magazine’.”

For Nicola, this was a big step. She freely admits she’s not a writer and with a background in teaching, she lacked the credentials for such a venture, but once she started, she couldn’t stop. “I started a blog – like an online diary where you just write about what you’re interested in and people will either read it or they won’t,” she says. “Probably by the end of August I had about 1,000 people following it, which surprised me no end, and I started writing to a lot of ethical, green companies and finding out what they do and why their products are better for us.”

Initially, Nicola focused on fashion, sourcing makers of ethical clothes and finding ways of avoiding her pet hate – buying cheaply and on impulse only to dump things in the bin. Then, as other people came on board, she broadened her horizons. “My colleagues said ‘there’s much broader scope for what this magazine could be if you include beauty products, lifestyle, what you buy for your house and how you live in it’ and then it became a standard women’s magazine’,”

she says.

The team consists of Nicola herself, her best friend Suzanne Whelan, who’s the lifestyle director; editor Sallyanne Flemons, fashion editor Elizabeth Johnson and the exotically-named Lupe Castro, the London-based ethical stylist. The five women are helped by Nicola’s husband, who, as a scientist, checks the validity of products’ claims. They may be a bit of a hotchpotch bunch, but all are committed to the cause of making green living accessible.

“I think what we are trying to do is say we are really normal girls. I think many people feel preached at and we are trying to be the complete opposite to that.”

A visit to the website, daisygreenmagazine.

co.uk, confirms that as an online women’s magazine, it pretty much hits the mark. The layout is professional and slick and the tone chatty and familiar – ideal for its target market. A lot of research went into the project and as Nicola explains, there aren’t many similar platforms.

“There are probably about half a dozen other ethical online magazines. There was certainly room for another one. I think a lot of people are starting to think about how they buy, especially in these credit crunch times.”

WHAT Daisy Green aims to do is gently steer you in a green direction by pointing out small changes that can really make a difference, such as buying clothes made from organic cotton.

A vegetarian since the age of 11, ethical living is in Nicola’s blood and she is passionate in her beliefs – especially when it comes to the exploitation of workers. “If a top costs £4 then whoever made it is not getting paid – it’s as simple as that,” she says flatly. “Because these communities are so far away, it’s like they don’t exist. These people are still there living these lives that you wouldn’t wish on anyone to make clothes for us that we then throw away.”

It may be only one year old, but Daisy Green is taking off. Last month, it had 10,000 hits and events to complement the site, like an ethical fashion show and clothes swap parties, have been a big success.

Nicola has high hopes for the future, including taking on extra staff and joining forces with green manufacturers, but up to now, she’s pretty happy with the magazine’s progress.

“Once you start you get addicted to it, it takes over your life,” she says. “Daisy Green’s like my alter ego. It’s grown strong and good.”

■ daisygreenmagazine.co.uk