27 Feb 2009

Free ceiling insulation now available, says Kevin Rudd

HOMEOWNERS can install free ceiling insulation immediately as the Federal Government has opened access to its $3.9 billion energy efficient homes program.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Peter Garrett said new guidelines were now available to allow 2.7 million householders to check if their homes are eligible.
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Or go direct to the website with information: click here

It was the first thing we did when we bought our house almost five years ago; getting a R2.5 layer of wool on our ceiling! Only than there wasn't such a nice rebate program and the cost were a bit higher, we paid $1,800.00 while the government assures people it shouldn't cost more than $1,200.00-$1,600.00

Take action: Support a green recovery for Europe

The European Union has a historic opportunity to shift away from short-term, protectionist measures and take bold action to create jobs and save the planet. We need all European governments on board. So let’s send our top political leaders a flood of messages, urging them to embrace a green New Deal that lays the foundation of a sustainable economic recovery. Use the form below to send our pre-written message and by inserting your country the contact of your leader will automatically be inserted, or - even better, delete the text and write your own!
Send your message now!

26 Feb 2009

Design Loves a Depression

Few of the arts benefited from the late economic boom more than design. After all, when the wealth is flowing, people don’t covet the concerts you see or the books you read. They covet the couch you bought, and then they buy a cooler one.

Looking back, those of us with front-row seats might have known that this design surge would not sustain itself. Two years ago, at the Milan furniture fair, Marcel Wanders, a Dutch designer known for arty provocations, held a thumping party to show off his 15-foot-high lamps and other furniture of distorted Alice-in-Wonderland scale. Never mind that his work was upstaged by his girlfriend, Nanine Linning, who hung upside down half-naked while mixing vodka drinks from bottles affixed to a chandelier. Form followed frivolity. Function was left off the guest list.

Now, given that all those slick Miami condos are sitting empty in the sky, designers like the Campana Brothers, with their $8,910 Corallo chair, and Hella Jongerius, with her $10,615 Polder sofa, might have a harder time selling their wares. Already designers are biting their knuckles over the damage reports.

Will today’s designers rise to the occasion? “What designers do really well is work within constraints, work with what they have,” said Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. “This might be the time when designers can really do their job, and do it in a humanistic spirit.”

In the lean years ahead, “there will be less design, but much better design,” Ms. Antonelli predicted.

There is a reason she and others are optimistic: however dark the economic picture, it will most likely cause designers to shift their attention from consumer products to the more pressing needs of infrastructure, housing, city planning, transit and energy. Designers are good at coming up with new ways of looking at complex problems.

If household furnishings are to avoid landfills, says Julie Lasky, editor in chief of I.D. magazine, they must be capable of withstanding the vicissitudes of fashion — like the Aalto stool, but at a fifth of the price. “It will be about finding the sweet spot between affordability and durability,” Ms. Lasky said. This kind of innovation means rethinking the economy of production and distribution so that goods are made cheaply closer to home (or in the home, if the most radical ideas are to be taken seriously).

One way or another, design will focus less on styling consumer objects with laser-cut patterns and colored resin and more on the intelligent reworking of current conditions. Expect to hear a lot more about open-source design, and cradle-to-cradle, a concept developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart that calls for cars, packaging and other everyday objects to be designed specifically for recycling so that their parts and materials are used and reused without waste.

If Ms. Linning’s dangling from the ceiling was a cultural moment now passed, we can look forward to others for an age in which beauty and austerity go together.
Read whole article.
Oxfam Australia and Make Poverty History have made short films about six diverse, inspiring women who have decided to fight climate change.

Although the films feature women fighting climate change in their communities, climate change will affect everyone and the only way we are going to reduce climate change is together – this event is NOT just for women, everyone is needed will we be able to tackle the problem.

RSVP: click here or send email

- Click on picture to make it bigger -

25 Feb 2009

Call for Exhibitors and Papers

Australia Green to be launched at Darling Harbour January 2010
Australia's premier Green Building, Design and Technology Show has just got bigger and better.

AUSTRALIA GREEN 2010 Speakers - Call for papers

Map shows the radioactivity beneath your feet

The continent's key natural radioactive elements: uranium is blue, radioactive potassium is red, thorium is green.

It Is not just the long summer days and the scantily clad bathers on Bondi Beach that keep Australia hot. It is also the radioactivity beneath the continent's red dust.

Australian scientists have achieved a world first by compiling a highly detailed "radiometric" map of the continent's key natural radioactive elements.

Most of the country is brightly shaded, but Australians did not have to worry about radioactivity beneath their feet, Geoscience Australia's James Johnson said yesterday.

"We are detecting very low levels of these elements. It's a very sensitive method. There are not rocks you can't walk on," Dr Johnson said
Read article

23 Feb 2009

Read Online or In Print: What’s the Greener Way to Get Your News?

Treehugger has an interesting topic on their newsletter today; What is better for the environment printed news or digital news? Check it here or read the conclusion:

Online & Print Both Have An Eco-Impact, Where It's Located Is Just Different However, as something to look to for the future, and how we allocate resources in general today, I think it’s still worthwhile paying attention to. Not to mention that the claims that getting your news online really helps the environment aren't categorically true. It may cut down on paper usage, which is no bad thing, but unless your electricity comes from carbon free sources, your just shifting the resource consumption from one place to another.

Worldchanging Interview: Peter Newman and Timothy Beatley

If the world is going to figure out one-planet prosperity, a bright green way of life that can lift everyone out of poverty while averting catastrophe, to some very serious extent, we Americans will need to invent our own version of it first.
Sustainability experts Peter Newman and Timothy Beatley share a similar view about both the opportunity and responsibility facing the United States. And they believe that the change must take place first in our urban communities.

Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University in Western Australia, coined the term "car dependence," and has devoted his life's work to helping governments understand the urgent need for improved public transit and land use in the 21st century. Beatley, Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, believes cities and nations should more freely share solutions for policy and development, to help us face the common challenges of sustainability and combating climate change.
Read article

Don't like reading? Check the four video's on Youtube, this is part 1.

Bid to make solar cells cheaper

Last week I finally saw the documentary Here comes the sun on Dutch TV via Internet about Solar Energy. As Australia is the ideal country to go solar it's Germany who is leading the market. Click on the logo below to see the documentary, the commentary is in Dutch but all interviews are in English.

Bid to make solar cells cheaper
The CSIRO is developing new solar technology which could see plastic solar cell sheets printed like polymer bank notes.

The technology could mean solar generated power will be mass-produced in as little as four years.

Greens push solar tariff
A State Government panel is considering the establishment of gross or net "feed-in" tariffs to be added to the electricity bills of all households to cover payments made to people who generate surplus solar energy on their rooftops and sell it to power companies.

You can still sign the petition: Let's get Australia moving on solar feed in tariffs!


Tokyo Electric to build solar plant in California: report
Tokyo Electric Power Co. will build a solar power plant in the US state of California through its subsidiary Eurus Energy Holdings Corp., according to a report.

It plans to begin operations at the 1000 kilowatt plant by 2010 on a site yet to be selected, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Tokyo Electric is one of four Japanese corporate giants moving into the US renewable energy market with solar and wind power technologies, the daily said.



UPDATE:
New solar cells you can bank on
IF YOU thought there was big money in solar energy, you were closer to the truth than you might have imagined. Prototypes of a new generation of flexible solar cell have been produced using equipment built to print Australia's polymer banknotes.

The breakthrough, conceived by the CSIRO, has the potential to enable mass production of solar sheeting at a far lower cost than traditional silicon-based cells

Update 27-2: ACT solar feed-in tariff bill passed
and Greens want ACT solar feed-in tariff extended to large producers

Update 4-3: Solar credits a con, say greens
If cashed in, the phantom certificates — those issued for energy that has not been generated — will be counted towards the Federal Government's renewable energy target of 20 per cent of power coming from green sources by 2020.

What a waste ... recycling in the dumps

AUSTRALIA'S recycling effort is on the brink of collapse, as ripples from the global financial crisis start lapping against kerbside rubbish collection.

Householders who sort bottles and newspapers into coloured bins may not know the waste is likely to go into fast growing stockpiles because prices for used plastic, cardboard, paper and many scrap metals have fallen by up to 75 per cent since October.

This has made it cheaper in some regions to send sorted rubbish to landfill rather than recycling stations, industry sources have told the Herald.
Read article

Reducing carbon footprint 'waste of time'

THE millions of well-intentioned Australians turning off light bulbs, installing insulation in their ceilings and solar panels on their roofs, cycling to work or buying low-emission cars are wasting time and money.

Under the scheme, the more individuals save on their emissions the more corporate polluters such as coal stations and aluminium smelters are allowed to emit.

"Individual efforts to reduce energy use will have absolutely no effect on the level of Australia's emissions," he said. "The least understood feature of the ETS (Emission Trading Scheme) is that the more effort households put into reducing their energy use, the more spare permits they are freeing up for the big polluters. It is a zero-sum game."

"Under the ETS as it is designed if you do reforms in your own home it allows the electricity companies to sell those permits to another carbon emitter."
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IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!!

Demand increases for eco-fashion

PARIS: Green-friendly fabrics may be expensive, but increasing consumer demand for the environmentally correct is now forcing Asia's textile giants to go the extra mile to produce clean cloth.

In a sign of the times, at Paris' twice-yearly Texworld textile trade fair this week, around 60 of the 660 firms exhibiting from around the world flew the green flag, a sharp increase on previous sessions, organisers said.

In China, Bangladesh and India, the world's top textile producers, as well as in Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan, natural fibres, organic yarns, fair trade practices and clean processing are creeping into an industry often chided for polluting soils, wasting water and employing child labour.
Read article

18 Feb 2009

The World Without Us

Award-winning American journalist Alan Weisman poses an extraordinary question: how would the Earth change if human beings vanished for good tomorrow? Weisman takes readers on a journey into a future unburdened by the human race – the ultimate predator and consumer of resources – and asks how the natural world would respond to our disappearance. Would the Earth’s climate recover from the effects of human activity? Would nature destroy our sprawling cities? How would nature reduce our myriad plastics and toxic synthetics? Don’t miss a fascinating exploration of our very surprising legacy as he identifies how long our greatest achievements would last and how severe the fallout of our failures would be. The World Without Us

Sat 28 Feb, 8 – 9pm
Winthrop Hall
Tickets: $20
Ph: 6488 5555

How to stop your yellow and white pages deliveries:

I'll already wrote about the annoyance of the automatic delivery of kilos of wasted paper last year, but this time Julie came with the answer on her blog how to stop it!

Don't want to read the story but just get into action to not to receive specific (yellow/white pages) Sensis directory print products call 1800 810 211, or email

17 Feb 2009

What to do with that DVD collection.

Hi Wilma,
Planet Ark are running a take action campaign, and I would like to try and help them get the word out. I have done a blog post on my own blog about taking action with my dusty dvd collection, and I hope to work with Planet ARK to do a more specific and target (and on message :-)) blog on the Scoodi blog in the next few days. I was hoping that you might be able to link or trace back one or both of the blog posts on your own blog, to help us get the message out,and to support Planet Ark's good work.
Many thanks
Pete


Of course I do this Pete!

Sign up here to receive your weekly ‘Green Resolutions’ email. Each week, starting in January, we’ll send you a practical resolution on how to live a cleaner, greener lifestyle, and a plan on how to do it - straight to your inbox. Click here.

16 Feb 2009

Recyclers find it hard to make ends meet

The global financial crisis has caused a 60 per cent crash in the price of recyclable goods and some WA recycling companies have no market for the material they have recovered, the nation’s peak recycling lobby says.

“It would be an economic and environmental tragedy to see the few remaining recyclers go to the wall and without assistance from State and Federal governments that’s a very real possibility,”

Mr West said WA already had the unenviable reputation of being Australia’s worst recycler with just 20 per cent of material recycled — or almost half the national average.

But at least one council has found a use for recyclable material. The Shire of Manjimup is set to finally crush the “bottle mountain” which has dominated the town’s tip for the past two years. It will be turned into materials for concrete, drainage and road base.

Read full article here.

Aim for sustainable population and generous immigration

Last October, the Commonwealth Treasury released modelling intended to inform the design of the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme. The modelling assumed net migration to Australia of 150,000 people a year through to 2050, which would result in an Australian population of about 33million by 2050.

Australia's actual net migration in 2006-07 was 177,600, the highest on record at the time. The preliminary net migration figure for 2007-08 is 213,500. Because the Government further increased skilled migration numbers in 2008, it is likely net migration for 2008-09 will be higher still.

Those who are sceptical of calls for a sustainable population policy are also fond of pointing out that our modern, high-consumption lifestyle is the most pressing cause of our environmental problems. They are correct that we must tackle our high pollution and consumption levels and shift to a more sustainable lifestyle. According to the World Resources Institute, Australia's greenhouse pollution level of 26tonnes of CO2-e per person per year is double Germany's, six times China's and 11 times Indonesia's.

Read the full article here.

Interested in the facts on Australia, click here.

Interested in Sustainable Population Australia Inc. click here.

12 Feb 2009

Perth Green Drinks organiser wins The Edge 2009 Green Award!

Wilma van Boxtel, a local product designer and organiser of the Perth Green Drinks, won the prestigious green award in Sydney last week during the Australian International Furniture Fair. She won this award for her poufs, the ZeoPod 01, and was finalist in the commercial catagory as well.

This is the second award in a row, last year she won the Bronze Star Award for design, innovation and marketability 2008 at the furniture fair in Melbourne.

The ZeoPod is a sustainable product; the shell is made from 100% biodegradable plastic with an eco foam cushion and eco wool cover. More info on the Zeopod click here.
Also here, or here.

2 Feb 2009

Jon Dee and Bayer-UNEP begin search for Australia’s “eco” students

Australian university students with something “eco” on their minds are being asked to step forward with their ideas on sustainable energy solutions for the 2009 Bayer-UNEP Eco-Minds Forum, and be in with a chance to represent Australia at an International Forum in Auckland, New Zealand.

For entry details and application forms, students can log on to www.eco-minds.bayer.com, or contact the Australian Eco-Minds Co-ordinator on (02) 4736 0892.
Entries close on 28 March 2009.