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Leading environmentalist, Peter Melchett, has been forced to resign from the board of Greenpeace International after a furious reaction from many grass roots activists to the news that he has become a part time consultant, to the controversial PR giant Burson Marstellar.

Lord Melchett, former director of Greenpeace UK, told the programme earlier this week that he hoped working with the PR firm would help to improve the environmental performance of it's corporate clients.

Read that earlier report below.

The former Greenpeace director Peter Melchett has defended his decision to take a part-time consultancy with a controversial PR firm. As well as farming and directing policy for the Soil Association, Lord Melchett will advise the corporate responsibility unit of Burson Marsteller.

Greenpeace have not opposed the move but some radical greens are upset that he's joined a firm with clients that have included the Romanian dictator Ceaucescu, the Argentinian junta, Union Carbide after the Bhopal disaster and even Lord Melchett's great adversary the biotech firm Monsanto.

The green author George Monbiot said the move was shocking given the firm's list of clients.

"This is an extraordinary decision and it’s hard to understand how he could have taken it if he hasn’t in some way lost his integrity as an environmentalist," he told us.

And a long-time Greenpeace activist made the following comments on the PR Watch website: "The Lord Melchetts of the activist (and now corporate) world are only one symptom of a broader contagion. Is there even a real environmental movement any more?"

"How easy it is to confuse salaried NGO actors with real movement leaders. And when they leave to work for corporations, if they haven't built a base that can carry on the radical push for change, how weak the organisations become that they leave behind. But alas, Lord Melchett hasn't even fully left Greenpeace: Should Greenpeace International allow an employee of Burson Marsteller on their board?"

Lord Melchett says he won't change his principles, and asserts that it's good to talk to business.

"I’m interested in seeing change for the better change in government policies and practice and change in commercial and corporate policies and practice that will benefit the environment," he told the programme.

"If I can use the experience I got at Greenpeace to give people advice about what I think should happen - and that hasn’t changed - that’s for the good."

Other former activists share his view. Tom Burke, one of the founders of Friends of the Earth UK is now a salaried adviser to BP and Rio Tinto. He says it's wrong to polarise the environmental struggle

"Seeing this as some wonderful version of Star Wars is very naïve. Once you move beyond campaigning to try to solve some of these complex and difficult problems, the first thing you understand is that means mobilising lots of resources - including the corporate sector," he said.

"So the fact that Peter's gone to work in part for that sector is in part a follow-up to some of his Greenpeace work which had a strong solutions focus."