Photo: Otto Masters
Nicole Rycroft describes herself as a “professional tree hugger”. Growing up in the Australian bush, the environmental campaigner was obsessed with nature, recalling how she would often watch wildlife documentaries with her grandmother as a young child. “That appreciation of the world we live in got woven into my fabric at an early age,” she tells Vogue during a recent visit to London.
But it was when Rycroft contracted a virus that halted her professional rowing career that she really began to consider what impact she could have on the planet. “It literally stopped me in my tracks,” she says. “I went from tracking towards going to the Word Championships with my rowing partner to not being able to walk to the corner shop. I was incapacitated for a couple of years – it really made me focus on what you really value and how you want to spend your lifeforce.”
Inspired by a campaign to save the Daintree rainforest in Queensland, Rycroft, who is now based in Vancouver, Canada, decided to make protecting ancient and endangered forests her life’s purpose. “I started Canopy with the conviction that we are smarter than using 400-year-old trees and cutting down climate-critical forest ecosystems and orangutan habitat to make pizza boxes,” she says of the decision to set up her non-profit nearly 25 years ago.
Fast forward to today, and Canopy has helped to conserve 39 million acres of forest in the US, Canada and Indonesia, as well as working with more than 900 companies to help save ancient and endangered forests globally. Initially, the focus was on tackling the publishing industry, with the non-profit helping to “green” the Harry Potter series – ensuring the books were printed on ancient forest-friendly paper.
Soon Rycroft’s attention turned to the fashion industry, after finding out that many of the fibres that we wear – including viscose, rayon and modal – were coming from some of the world’s oldest…
