024 REPORTER
PROFILE Poppy Szkiler
From an acting career in the public eye to inheriting a charitable effort to save the public’s ears, Poppy Szkiler has been championing efforts to push organisations to adopt more aurally healthy design solutions by providing certification and verification for the industry’s real trailblazers when it comes to our hearing health
WORDS BY EMILY MARTIN
POPPY SZKILER is the CEO and founder of Quiet Mark, the global certification programme public health campaign to highlight the negative impacts excessive noise has on both emotional and physical health. Since its launch ten years ago, Quiet Mark has provided expert third-party acoustic testing of consumer and building sector products with a certification service and free online guide to help consumers and specifiers easily find verified low-noise high-performance products and acoustic solutions to unwanted noise. ‘I came to the campaign very late, when
I was 35. Prior to that I was on a very different track,’ says Szkiler. ‘I was in the film industry working as a film and TV actress, but I have brought many ways of working to the table and [it wasn’t until] my mother inherited the family charity from my grandfather [that I got involved].’ Szkiler is the granddaughter of John Connell OBE who lobbied the Noise Pollution Act through Parliament founding the Noise Abatement Society (NAS) in 1959. Connell believed that being exposed to excessive noise profoundly affected health, children’s learning, productivity and general quality of life – he called noise ‘the forgotten pollutant’. His practical problem-solving included introducing rubber dustbin lids and plastic milk crates to reduce urban disturbance, stopping night flights and, in the early ‘70s, he commissioned detailed planning for a revolutionary Thames Estuary Airport directing flight paths out to sea.
After the inheritance of NAS, the family
were finding it dificult to raise the money to campaign for its public health issues. ‘Noise is invisible, and we haven’t got cute animals to pull heart strings!’, explains Szkiler. ‘In order
for people to give money it needs a very robust plan, so we sat down and had a good think and said “why don’t we certify an award to industry or manufacturers who are really going the extra mile [and] who are creating innovative acoustic solutions and champion them?”.’ The company conducts expert acoustic testing and verification of products with its Quiet Mark accreditation and is driving change in manufacturing worldwide. Szkiler embraces the campaign, which she talks about with inherent passion. The damaging effect of excessive noise on health, productivity and social cohesion is seriously underestimated. World Health Organisation research shows that environmental noise pollution affects mental and physical health and is now second only to air pollution as the world’s largest killer pollutant. Across an estimated population of 340 million people, at least one million years of healthy living are lost each year due to noise pollution in Western Europe. Hitting an area that had never been
touched before, but was hugely needed, Quiet Mark has been running to fill the knowledge gap and provide practical solutions on a global level. ‘What we mostly do is passion beyond reason,’ says Szkiler. ‘It is truly about providing solutions for people who are suffering with a pollutant. You know, noise is a pollutant…if we were to see noise pollution with our eyes it would be mounds of rubbish and piles of disharmony which affects every part of our body.’ Szkiler started Quiet Mark with this licensing model. Being a confident person to speak in public and on film, she was able to utilise these traits for the new business. ‘But also, being able to market something which was very complex; the science of sound is very
complex and…there was a gap to equip and empower consumers, trade buyers, specifiers and Quiet Mark started to become the dialogue and marketing bridge between the complex science and people who jolly well needed the solutions,’ she adds. Associated with NAS, Quiet Mark
seeks to accelerate change to protect future generations from a worsening aural environment by disseminating new methods of sound management, running an awareness programme for schools, incentivising industry to design low-noise technology and providing the only national helpline dedicated solely to the problems of noise. ‘Our heart really is to serve the public, because of the association with the charity,’ Szkiler says. ‘We are, cut in half, through and through, campaigners, and we want to help humans have a better life. Whether that’s an interior designer, designing for a high-end residential complex or a mother with two children at home with noisy appliances and hasn’t got time to [research] her next careful purchase. We do all of the work to equip, empower and enable any buyer, to have at their fingertips, the very best solutions to make life better.’ In February 2020 Quiet Mark launched
its Acoustics Academy to include third-party verification of specialist acoustic materials for the building sector. This includes walls, floors, ceilings, doors and windows. This brand-new online platform further equips and empowers architects, builders and designers with a guide to expertly verified leading acoustic solutions for every building application area. For an architect, this could mean cutting out an acoustic specialist and saving on project costs. But when is noise a problem? And at what
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125
