Passion Is the Plan: My Takeaways from Interior Design Declares' Climate Action Week Panel
Yesterday I went along to Interior Design Declares' panel discussion, From Declaration to Action: How to Make Change Happen, held at Humanscale as part of London Climate Action Week. It marks the fifth anniversary of Interior Design Declares, and the event was built around the organisation's newly updated pledges. The real question on the table, though, wasn't what the pledges say. It was how we actually turn them into action — and that's what the three panellists wrestled with, each from a completely different angle.
The panel was chaired by Tiffanie Darke, the journalist behind the Substack It's Not Sustainable, who writes for the Financial Times, Vogue and the Guardian, and brings a fashion lens to sustainability that translates surprisingly well into interiors. Alongside her were Baroness Luciana Berger, Simone Suss — founder of Studio Suss and a founding signatory of Interior Design Declares — and Delyth Fetherston-Dilke, a former entertainment lawyer turned upholsterer turned activist.
By the end, I sat there trying to work out what the conclusion actually was. And I don't think it was a neat policy point or a tidy action plan. I think it was something simpler and harder to bottle: everyone in that room — panellists and audience alike — was there because they cared. Properly, emotionally cared. About sustainability, about circularity, about the environment, about finding real solutions that the industry and the people in it could actually take away and use. And it was that passion, that love, that emotional connection running underneath every story told on stage, that felt like the real outcome of the afternoon.
The footstool that started it all
Simone told a story that's stuck with me since. She'd worked on a regenerative project where Delyth helped restore a footstool, and the process gave Simone and her client a genuine emotional connection to that one piece of furniture — something a flat-pack replacement never could. It's a small story, but it's the whole argument in miniature: when you understand what something is made of, who made it, and what it cost to make, you don't want to throw it away. You want to keep it.
Delyth, and the chemicals we can't see
Delyth's focus was the chemical fire retardants used in upholstered furniture, and she is fighting that battle with everything she has. Back in 1988, the UK introduced an open-flame test for furniture that effectively required manufacturers to treat foam with chemical flame retardants as standard. It was a well-meant decision, aimed at reducing fire deaths, and at the time nobody fully understood the health cost of the chemicals being used to do it. We understand a lot more now. Those chemicals have been linked to cancer and other health harms — for the people who make the furniture, the people who use it, and the firefighters who attend the fires it's meant to protect against. There's a grim irony in it: people who run into burning buildings because they're passionate about saving lives are, through their own protective equipment and the smoke they breathe, absorbing the very toxins meant to prevent the fire in the first place. Some of those chemicals have even been found in breast milk, passed from mother to child — which is what makes this not just a today problem, but a generational one. It's part of why there's growing concern about falling fertility rates more broadly; researchers have spent decades tracking declining sperm counts and pointing to chemical exposure as one likely contributor, though the full picture is still being studied. None of this made headlines for a long time, but it's been documented — in the Chicago Tribune's "Playing with Fire" investigation, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and in the documentary Toxic Hot Seat. Delyth's campaigning has been part of the pressure that's now pushing the UK government to finally move away from that old open-flame standard. She does this largely unpaid, out of conviction, because she's seen the human cost of it up close. That's love, expressed as activism.
Luciana Berger, and the power of a seat at the table
I met Baroness Luciana Berger for the first time that day, and reading her bio beforehand only told me half the story. She was shadow minister for mental health and for climate change, has championed green investment banks and a pro-environmental business agenda, and campaigned to ban social media for under-16s while also working closely on the Assisted Dying Bill. Her grasp of detail was extraordinary — I wish I had her memory. Yes, she's paid to do this job. But it's clear that being paid is just what makes space for the passion, not the reason for it. She talked about how to actually lobby an MP, how to bring a cause to the fore and be heard — practical, useable advice for anyone who wants to turn frustration into pressure that lands somewhere.
Simone Suss, and the power of the spec
Simone spoke about regenerative and circular design, and about something interior designers don't always think of as power: the spec. Where we choose to source from, and which suppliers we choose to put a client's budget behind, is enormous leverage. Do those suppliers look after their employees? Do they avoid child labour? Do they avoid loading their products with toxic chemicals? Interior Design Declares exists to educate designers, clients and suppliers on exactly this — and, just as importantly, to build a community of people who care enough to ask the question in the first place.
Tiffanie Darke, and starting with yourself
Tiffanie's own approach, both as chair and through her writing, is to avoid the doom-and-gloom that switches people off. Climate change is such a huge subject that it's easy to feel like nothing one person does will matter. Her answer is to start small and personal - mirroring my own approach - what are you putting on your skin every day? An app like Yuka lets you scan a shower gel or shampoo and see how many chemicals are in it. The same logic applies to food, and to the clothes against your skin — synthetic fabrics shed microplastics and nanoplastics that end up on your body too. Choosing more consciously in all of that does two things at once: it protects you, and it supports the smaller, better businesses trying to do things properly, which helps them grow and become more available to everyone else. It's the individual version of exactly what Simone described for the industry — choosing carefully, with your money, where you can.
Where that leaves me
So: Tiffanie, relentlessly positive and personal. Luciana, channelling political access into real change. Simone, wielding the specification budget as a tool for good. Delyth, contagiously passionate about a danger most of us can't see. Four very different routes into the same place — and the thing they all shared wasn't a tactic, it was a feeling. Love for people, for health, for the planet, and for future generations who'll inherit whatever we leave behind.
There's a lot of what I'd call zombie consumption out there — buying and discarding without ever really thinking about it. What this event reminded me is that the antidote isn't guilt or doom. It's consciousness, and it's contagious in the best way. If we can each bring a bit of that passion into our own choices — as designers, as consumers, as people — then we start to flood the world with exactly the kind of thinking it needs more of.
*Authorship…. I wanted to explain how this was written to be open about the process as I did use AI as a tool. I dictated what I wanted to say and then used AI to create the article.
