Elephants brighten London streets

More than 250 brightly painted life-size elephants are making their mark in central London.

In an attempt to raise awareness and money to save the endangered Asian elephant, the Elephant Parade has hit the city's streets attracting an estimated audience of 25 million people.

PHOTO GALLERY: Elephant Parade

Event organiser Elephant Family said the parade, which has been running since May, was expected to raise £2 million ($3.4 million) to benefit 17 conservation charities in the UK.

"The Asian elephant is a truly magnificent creature but sadly it's on the brink of extinction, marooned in ever-decreasing pockets of forest by the spread of human settlements, farming, mining and railways," the Elephant Family organisation said.
Read article

The Elephant Safari Park Lodge
There is where I am heading for this week to visit a friend and have fun with those magnificient elephants, saved from the camps in Sumatra where they are endangered by losing habitat to plantations. So no more posts until next week.

Concerns over asbestos plan

ASBESTOS Diseases Society president Robert Vojakovic is alarmed at Alcoa’s response to an asbestos scare at its Pinjarra refinery.

In April, it was revealed that 1167 gaskets in valves at the Pinjarra refinery contained asbestos.

Workers who had refurbished the gaskets, which involved grinding and buffing, were concerned about exposure to the deadly fibre.

Mr Vojakovic said he was alarmed some workers who contacted the society were under the impression that some exposure to asbestos was acceptable.

“There is no safe level of exposure,” he said.
Read article

Go Greener Australia Competittion

Want to win a prize? Tell me about hemp…

Hemp fabric is one of those things that’s associated with tie-dye and hippies, because it’s known to be eco-friendly but people rarely see it used well. Which is a shame, because as well as being useful and eco-friendly, it can be made into things just as beautiful as we see made with water-guzzling, pesticide-laden cotton.
Read article

When recycling, SA is the can-do state

SOUTH Australians are some of the best recyclers in Australia - helping save more than 2.55 million tonnes of rubbish ending up in landfill in the past financial year - the environmental equivalent of taking more than 205,300 cars off the road.

According to the Recycling Activity in SA report, 70.4 per cent of all waste generated in the state was diverted from landfill, which is the highest level in the past six years.
Read article

How businesses can save money and help the environment

MANY small business people think that being environmentally responsible costs money when the opposite is, in fact, the truth.
Here are three ways you can save money and help the environment:

1. Changing the font on your computer for all printing, including emails, can reduce your ink costs by 30 per cent. (Or don't print anything!)

2. Buy products that are durable and buy them locally so that less time is spent in our vehicles and less money spent on fuel.

3. Change to compact fluorescent light bulbs, they use 66 per cent less energy than a standard incandescent bulb and last up to 10 times longer.
Read article to learn more about every step.

Smith backs PM on population

FORMER electronics tycoon turned anti-immigration campaigner Dick Smith is delighted with the new Prime Minister's opposition to rampant population growth.
Mr Smith also announced yesterday that he would award $1 million cash to a person aged under 25 in a competition to design a population "safety" plan for the nation.

Speaking exclusively to BusinessDaily, the millionaire declared he would dedicate the rest of his life to fighting policy that encouraged population growth.

Under former PM Kevin Rudd, the Federal Government was contemplating a population target of 36 million by 2050.

But yesterday, new PM Julia Gillard said she did not support the target on the grounds of sustainability.

"There are environmental issues about water and about soil. But there are also sustainability issues about planning, about services," Ms Gillard told the Nine Network yesterday, after naming Tony Burke the new Sustainable Population Minister.

Australia's population stands at 22 million and Mr Smith said if it grew past 26 million, the nation could struggle to feed its people.
Read article
Listen to the interview

New PM's shift on population at odds with data
JULIA Gillard's attempt to distance herself from predecessor Kevin Rudd on the question of population growth sits uneasily with the latest population statistics.

Released on Thursday as Ms Gillard took the prime ministership, the Bureau of Statistics figures show population growth slowing sharply during 2009, with the growth rate slipping from 2.16 to 1.99 per cent.

The December quarter increase of just 0.41 per cent is lower than at any time during the financial crisis.

The change reflects a lower birth rate as a mini baby boom eased and also lower immigration in the financial crisis. Recent changes to the rules on foreign students and working visas suggest the lower immigration rate might be here to stay.
Read article

Leaders at odds on growth
The ACT must populate or stagnate, according to Chief Minister Jon Stanhope who has signalled his opposition to any attempt to cut skilled migration to Australia.

Full steam ahead on SA population growth
More than 1.5 million people call South Australia home.

The SA Government says, like it or not, that figure will grow to well over two million in the next 30 years.

Next Door Day

Pete Best, Councillor, Como Beach Ward, South Perth has a blog called Como, South Perth, and Life and posted an idea about organising a "being nicer to our neighbours" day and called it Next Door Day, on 24 October. Read about it here and give him some feedback!

The good egg

My friend Trish started recently with cooking classes, her Food Philosophy:
The Good Egg is about cookery lessons, food knowledge, food sourcing and informed eating.
And I can tell from many experiences she is the real deal, she knows what she is doing and it's delicious! When you are interested to learn more you can contact her by email trishw@bigpond.net.au or mobile 0413 120 071.

Here some of her upcoming classes:

FISH
Tuesday 29th June 10am
We’ll talk about various types of fish, how and where they are caught and the various attributes of each. Cooking fish in various ways will be demonstrated in this class.
Lunch, class notes and recipes will be provided.
COST $80.00


BLACK DIAMONDS
Thursday 8th July 11am
In this class we will be milking a Manjimup truffle for all it’s worth. We will prepare the truffle in various ways and make comparisons during tastings. Additionally we will learn about this hugely successful burgeoning industry in our South West.
Generous tastings, class notes and recipes will be provided.
COST $80.00


FORTHCOMING CLASSES
Seventy day air dried beef. An opportunity not to be missed.
RESERVATIONS

Liability insurance for designers

Click on picture to enlarge

Waste to wonderful: the 10 oddest new uses for our rubbish

For some very lateral-thinking entrepreneurs, finding waste meant finding an opportunity to make money. They are some of the oddest uses for waste you're likely to hear.

UNDER OUR NOSES, our bottoms, in our garbage bins, on our streets and in our landfills is waste. Lots of it. But for some very lateral-thinking entrepreneurs, finding the waste, meant finding an opportunity to make money. The 10 ideas that follow are no simple cash-a-can exchange scheme, however. They are some of the oddest uses for waste you're likely to hear.
Read it here

-Fish from beer waste
-Vegies from urine
-Platinum from road grime
-ET from your downtime
-Landscaping from printer cartridges
-Families from left-overs
-Electricity from guests
-Fuel from fish
-Biodiversity from waste
-Recycling, reduction and recovery

US bans endosulfan use

AUSTRALIA will review its use of endosulfan after the US this month decided to phase out the insecticide.

The US is the 60th country to deregister the chemical and asserted it could cause nerve damage and reproductive complications in farm workers.

The US Environmental Protection Agency said the chemical created "significant risks to wildlife and agricultural workers" which outweighed "limited benefits to growers".

Endosulfan is used to control insects by macadamia, cotton and fruit growers.
Read article

Volunteer Staff Positions at Youth Tree

APPLICATIONS OPEN JUNE 21st - July 19th 2010

Youth Tree is a youth-run not-for-profit organisation that uses creativity and fun to involve young people in volunteering. We are looking for some seriously switched on people to join our volunteer staff as we strive to make volunteering as mainstream as cheeseburgers and breathing.

We are looking for passionate, creative, hardworking and friendly people (often more accurately described as "nerds with social skills") aged 16-30 to fill the following positions:

• Big Help Mob - Marketing Manager
• Big Help Mob - Operations and Logistics Manager
• Big Help Mob - Creative Co-Director
• Big Help Mob - Partnerships Manager
• Big Help Mob - Film Co-Producer/Director
• Big Help Mob - Logistics & Training Officer
• Youth Tree Advocacy Officer
• Youth Tree Publications Officer
• Tree Monkey (Business Development Manager)
• TEDxPerth - Film Co-Producer/Director

Read more about the positions and fill in the online form by 5pm, Monday July 19th.

Experts demand European action on plastics chemical

LONDON - Scientists and international health organisations from around the world called on Europe's food safety watchdog on Wednesday to regulate against exposure to a potentially harmful chemical found in plastic containers.

In an open letter to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), a group of 60 scientists and health campaigners from 15 countries said they feared exposure to the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) could damage health, particularly among vulnerable groups such as babies and pregnant women.

BPA is a mass produced chemical used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics. It is found in plastic food and drink packaging, such as baby bottles and sports bottles, and as an epoxy resin in canned food and drinks and storage containers.
Read article

And another article

Close Hazelwood: Labor MP

A LABOR MP has backed calls for the federal government to intervene to help close and replace Australia's ''dirtiest'' power station, the Hazelwood coal-fired plant in the Latrobe Valley.

Kelvin Thomson, the member for Wills in Melbourne's northern suburbs, praised a report that suggests the Hazelwood plant could be replaced by 2012 at a cost of about $320 million a year.

In a speech to Parliament, Mr Thomson said there was a case for the Commonwealth and Victorian governments to help negotiate an early close with the plant's owners, International Power.
Read article

Australia can run on renewables in 10yrs

A new report says Australia could power itself entirely by renewable energy within a decade, halving the country's greenhouse gas emissions.

While going down the renewable road would be more expensive, the report, written by engineers and consultants for the Beyond Zero Emissions group, shows it would also yield energy security benefits.

"Today, Australia's energy is supplied by fossil fuels such as black coal and natural gas which are commodities benchmarked to international energy markets," the group's executive director Matthew Wright said.
Read article

Solar, wind power may meet 2020 energy use
A MASSIVE introduction of solar-thermal power plants and wind farms would allow Australia to generate all its energy needs from renewable technologies by 2020, research shows.

Tree planting this weekend - help needed!

Click on picture to enlarge.

If you can come to one or more that would be really appreciated! Bring your friends and family too as it’s a fun day out and the weather will be sunny.

Mistake leads to two trees getting the chop

THE front verge near the newsagency in Ardross Street in Applecross is looking bare after two jacaranda trees were “accidentally” given the chop because of a “mix-up” in street numbers.

The large trees on the street that the jacaranda festival calls home were cut down and left as stumps after a mistake by the City of Melville last week.

But the council has promised to pull out the stumps, restore the fake turf surrounding the trees and replace them with similar jacarandas.
Read article

Aren't those tree choppers thinking when they see perfectly healthy trees?

The burning question of renewable energy

A DESPERATE battle is being fought on the sidelines of the government debate about the new renewable energy target (RET) legislation and it is set to resume this week. The fight is about burning native forest timber and calling it renewable energy. The dollar figures involved - and megawatts of power generated - are small, but the environmental ramifications are huge, and emotions are running high.

The federal government, urged on by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, continues perversely to support logging our remaining native forests even though a sagging woodchip market puts no value on the resource.

At the moment, under renewable target rules introduced in 2001, wood waste from native forest can only be burnt for renewable electricity if the trees were logged for a higher-value purpose such as sawmilling.
Read article
Renewable Energy: Wind, Solar, Hydro Power, Geothermal, Wave Enegery...

The true cost of our daily bread

'Food mile' labels don't always tell the whole story, writes Ben Cubby.

When the British supermarket giant Tesco decided to start labelling its produce with 'food miles' to let people know how far it travelled before reaching the shelf, the move was greeted with a bizarre mixture of fear, derision and relief.

The fear came from the global food industry and many primary producers, who remain worried that people will be put off by finding out how far their food has come.
Read article

The farmer gets $5 a kilo. You pay $69

KEL SHARMAN, a Tasmanian beef farmer, was astonished to find out that meat from a beast he sold for about $5 a kilogram last month was on sale at a Surry Hills butchery this week for $69.

"You're joking," Mr Sharman said. "I'm in the wrong line of business."

In theory, every piece of meat sold in Australia can now be identified and traced to its source paddock via the bar code on its packaging.

In practice, it is extremely difficult to do because of the complex, often disjointed relationship between the shop and the farm, abattoir, transport, storage and distribution companies. Many retailers are unable to say where their produce comes from on a given day.

But the Herald has traced the origin and carbon footprint of a basket of groceries, using methods and data from the CSIRO and the federal Department of Climate Change.
Read article

Tips to keep your home warm

Try these tips to help keep your home snug this winter and you'll not only reduce your energy use, you'll also save on heating costs.
INSULATION
WINDOW COVERING
FIGHT THE COLD
BATHROOM
FLOORING
SOFT FURNISHINGS
Read article

Cadbury shies away from Aussie cynics

CADBURY is steering clear of prominent advertising of its Fairtrade accreditation in this country because, it says, Australians know so little about ethical and green brands.

The chocolate bars of its flagship brand, Dairy Milk, began to appear in the shops with the Fairtrade label in March.

But its corporate affairs chief, Daniel Ellis, says the company has not plans to trumpet its new certification. Speaking at a forum on green branding in Melbourne yesterday, he said the company believed Australian consumers were poorly informed about ethical and environmental accreditation, and such claims could leave the brand open to accusations of ''greenwashing''.

'If we come out and say 'Isn't our chocolate great? And now its Fairtrade', there would be so much cynicism that it's just another marketing ploy.'
Read article

Our own extinction is forecast, but he's going by dead reckoning

WE humans are about to be wiped out in a few decades. The grandchildren of many of us will not live to old age.
Hear it from Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University and the man who helped eradicate smallpox.

"Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years," he told The Australian this week.
Read article

Online student design competition

Anno is an online student design competition covering the disciplines of advertising, architecture, fashion design, graphic design, illustration, industrial design and photography. The competition is open to anyone currently studying in any of these categories at a tertiary level.


At the end of each month the top 25 ranked works will be archived for inclusion in the quarterly judging. The winning works from the semi-finals, will be featured in the Anno Annual 2010. The annual will be available for purchase online and at bookstores worldwide. The top work for the frst month, as chosen by our select judging panel, will be featured in a digital exhibition at Melbourne’s Federation Square during The State of Design Festival.

Visit the Anno website for all the details and to enter.

Recharge while parked

Perth drivers will soon be able to recharge their electric cars at the city's newest multi-storey car park.

The Elder Street car park will open next month with 12 electric car bays powered by solar panels on the roof.

The car park also has sensor-controlled lighting, natural ventilation and drains returning rainwater underground.
Read article

WA households chew through energy

WA's largest energy provider Synergy says households could save hundreds of dollars if they invested in energy efficient ways of living.

An Australia Bureau of Statistics report released today has revealed more West Australian households are buying high energy use appliances such as air conditioners and plasma tvs.

This is on the back of an Australian Conservation Federation study that ranked Perth the least sustainable of Australia's 20 largest cities.

Synergy spokesman Andrew Gaspar hopes higher tariffs will change the mindset of WA users.
Read article

Government is pushing plans for a nuclear waste dump

Australia's government is pushing its plans for a nuclear waste dump in a remote part of the country's Northern Territory.

It has signed an agreement with the traditional owners of the land who will receive $10m in compensation, most of it in cash.

But the proposed nuclear dump has divided local people

Australia to send toxic waste to Denmark

Denmark will allow Australia to ship thousands of tonnes of toxic waste to be disposed of since it does not have the technology to carry out the work, officials said.

Australia does not have the proper technology to deal with the 10,000 tonnes of HCB, or hexachlorobenzene, which is produced through the manufacturing of chemical products and explosives.

Danish environment minister Karen Ellemann said her country had to act because of treaty obligations. The shipment and treatment of the waste will also result in a major contract for a Danish company.

Denmark "has the obligation to help other countries when they are confronted to an unsolvable problem," she said in a statement.

Ellemann said it was "very problematic to transport dangerous waste from one area of the globe to another."
Read article

Chemical stockpile to be sent overseas
A DANGEROUS chemical stockpile in the Sydney electorate of Environment Minister Peter Garrett will be shipped overseas after Danish authorities agreed to help dispose of the waste.
For decades, the mining, explosives and chemical company Orica has stored more than 60,000 drums of the now-banned fungicide hexachlorobenzene (HCB) at an industrial site in the Sydney suburb of Botany.

Really, Really Free Market 20 June in Hyde Park

More info here

Population growth challenges capital cities

MELBOURNE is the nation's best capital city in planning for population growth, while Sydney ranks ahead of only Darwin and Hobart, neither of which has a full city plan.

A KPMG report, to be released today, urges the federal government to take on an expanded role in urban policy, as cities are considered the engine rooms of future productivity. It also recommends a cabinet minister be made directly responsible for urban affairs.

The criteria included land-release policies, urban design, integration of nationally significant infrastructure, the clarity of future planning measures and policies to encourage investment.
Read article

YouTube clip follows whaling legal bid

Federal Environment Protection Minister Peter Garrett has opened another front in the war against whaling - this time on YouTube.

Australia launched legal action against Japan's whaling operations in the International Court of Justice a fortnight ago.

Australia is opposed to an international proposal that would allow the resumption of limited commercial whaling.

The move is to be considered at next week's International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Morocco.

Mr Garrett says in his video message the gathering is "the single most important annual meeting of the commission in almost 30 years".
Read article

Perth is the least sustainable city.

Australia's sustainable cities

Darwin has been ranked the country's most sustainable city in a new index created by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF).

The Sustainable Cities Index tracks the progress of Australia's 20 largest cities across 15 indicators including air quality, ecological footprint, green buildings, water, biodiversity, health, density, wellbeing, transport, employment, climate change readiness, education, food production, public participation and household debt.
...
Perth was the least sustainable city.

It was dragged down by recording the highest level of water use, ecological footprint per person and car ownership, with 641 private vehicles for every one thousand people.
Read article

Oranje koorts - orange fever

That's what they call it in The Netherlands, my country of birth... When there is football, the whole population seems to get mad and turn whole streets into orange color. Literally they decorate houses with all kind of orange rubbish, plastic stuff. Stuff that will be going directly to the dump after the games...

They not only decorate streets, themselves and their kids, but all supermarkets and other companies are giving away football freebies, small cheap items in orange often made from plastic in low cost countries with a short life expectancy in mind literally forced on to you after spending 15 €.

I hate this kind of marketing, the pollution and imposing of this kind of crap to random customers.

Why are they still doing this kind of things while half of the world is trying to live more sustainable? Who is behind this?
How can we stop it?

The zero waste home

Fellow blogger, Bea Johnson, writes about her journey of zero waste:

"I have put my family on a waste diet for the past 12 months, analyzing whatever comes in contact with the bottom of our one home trash can and slowly trying to get it as close to zero waste as possible. In this past year, I have learned to shop, refuse (what is given to me), reduce, reuse, and recycle as little possible (for only such a small percentage of our trash is actually recycled) along with up and downs (boosts of self trash control esteem and let downs). You'll see what I am talking about. This is day one of my zero waste diary".
I've added her blog on the rigth here under links.

SMH had an article about her yesterday, click here.

Concervation council kills a lot of trees with their campagne

I am very sad how the concerveation council is trying to get more money...

Today we got two envelopes in the postbox, one for me and one for my husband (where do they get our contact details from, as I never give my address only email) In each envelope are three bleached white A4 pages and another envelope. The envelopes are at least not bleached and look like recycled paper. The information on the pages is no news, it's what I've been posting here and is all over the news.

They are using my name at least 8 times, so they must have a PR computer program to personalise each letter and all of these sentences are aimed on donating money.

My problem with this kind of spam is that:
- They spend a lot of money on this, money they want us to donate to spam more!
- They are using a lot of paper, while I am also on their email list and always get their digital posts to donate money as well.
- They are not working on a better world, as because if they would do so they wouldn't spend this money on killing more trees!
- They would at least ask you to reuse the envelop it came in instead!
- Instead of using another paper and envelop to tell them how much money you want to donate, why not give an BSB and Account No. so we can do it with internet banking? As you need a credit card or those old fashioned cheques made of paper... I use neither!
- They mention that they could, with my support, see these critical areas protected under Commonwealth legislation before it is too late. But they don't mention how! Only that they will get the message out into the media...

That's what we are doing with a lot of different groups here in Perth already!

These envelopes confirms my ideas about the concervation council even stronger! In 2007 I volunteered for the Walk Against Warming, organised by the concervation council, as I thought it would be to gain awareness, and that it was! The only thing volunteers were to do was rattling buckets in front of peoples noses to donate so they could pay for the "lousy quality ugly cheaply made in China t-shirts" we had to wear! This was so dissapointing that my view on volunteering changed a lot!

Like the German guy I spoke in Claremont last year, he was asking for donations to save the black cockatoo, we started chatting about it, he had never seen one, but the work, standing in the street with the donation box, earned him far more than a job at a fast food chain! He got paid for it! So that means you are paying his salary by donating!

I think we can get a lot of awarenes by giving good examples, talk to our friends and family and suggest a better way of living for the environment instead of asking for money all the time!
I am spending a lot of time on the environment, for free! Like many others, because we believe in it. This blog, which I fill up for the last three years with interesting info on the environment and sustainability is an example of that.

What do you think about this idea of raising money to buy more paper to raise awareness?

Update August: And they did it again, another two envelopes in my postbox... so there is were all that donated money goes... into killing trees to create more paper...

Stormwater poses beach health risk

Stormwater that potentially contains hydrocarbons and heavy metals is lingering off Perth's beaches for up to 30 days after draining into the ocean, according to a world-first study.

Modelling from the UWA Centre for Water Research has shown that stormwater stagnates near the shore for up to a month - raising the risk of an algal breakout - rather than being flushed away quickly as previously thought.

The problem is compounded by tidal flow from the Swan River, which is contaminated by run-off from hundreds of suburban drains.
Read article

Aldi first to show impact of products on greenhouse gas emissions

A NEW sticker on a bottle of olive oil may kickstart action to give Australian shoppers clear information about the impact on the environment of the products they buy.
The label shows the greenhouse gases generated by a product – including its raw materials and manufacturing process – to allow shoppers to compare emissions as part of buying decisions.

The local arm of German grocery chain ALDI has become the first company in Australia to join the labelling program, which operates in 19 countries and is run here by Planet Ark.
Read aricle

$47 million to power WA astronomy project

The Federal Government has announced $47 million in clean energy initiatives to power a radio astronomy project in the Murchison.

Australia is competing with South Africa to host what will be the world's most powerful radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array(SKA).

The Prime Minister says the funding will go towards developing solar and geothermal technologies to power a radio astronomy observatory and supporting computer centre.
Read article

Forest Products Commission lost $109 million in the last 10 years

Protesters scale Bell Tower

Anti-logging protesters who this morning scaled Perth's bell tower to hang a banner are being questioned by police. Forest Rescue's Simon Peterffy and three others used ladders to climb to the fourth level of the tower at sunrise.

"Terry Redman the Forestry Minister has repeatedly refused to answer questions in parliament about how much money was being lost by the Forest Products Commission" Mr Peterffy said.

"So we went up the tower to let the public know that they lost $109 million in the last 10 years."
Read article and here

Greentag Ecolabel Certification

Buildings have a huge impact on the environment – it helps to know that the products and materials you are using are eco-preferable or healthy.

The latest program from ecospecifier product and sustainable technical knowledge database gives designers and specifiers more confidence than ever about their product choice.

GreenTag™ is a third-party, ecolabel certification system.

Scientific and life cycle assessment (LCA) processes underpin it, with environmental data from public, corporate, project and library sources going back to the Sydney Olympic Games.

The two key parts of the system are: LCARate Certification and LCAGreenRate Certification.

Materials Calculator categories recognised are:

• carpets and flooring
• furniture
• walls, partitions and ceilings

More info on website

If we thought we'd saved the whale, we were wrong.

The global ban on whaling has stood for almost 30 years, but its days are numbered. When the International Whaling Commission meets on 21 June it will vote to harpoon the whaling ban and legalise commercial whaling for the first time since 1982.

In a giant leap backwards for global marine conservation, the 88 nations of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) look set to agree a plan that would:
- end the global ban on commercial whaling
- grant new whaling rights to Japan, Iceland and Norway to kill thousands of whales
sanction whaling in whale sanctuaries - areas like the vast and wild Southern Ocean that IWC itself has supposedly set aside from all whale hunting, and
- allow hunting of endangered whale species.

In Japan, Iceland and Norway the whaling industry is heavily subsidised while demand for its product - whale meat - is declining. Perhaps most tragically, this deal would breathe life into the dying whaling industry, resuscitating an outdated, unnecessary and barbaric practice.

Australian Marine Conservation Soceity is fighting to stop this from happening, but really need your help.

TAKE ACTION

Another TEDX Perth night 21 June

WHERE: The Theatre at SCITECH DISCOVERY CENTRE, City West (go through the main City West entrance and up to the second floor)

WHEN: Monday June 21st, 6pm - 9pm

BRING:
1. Food to share (preferably wholesome, healthy food). Not too much. Just enough for one person, then we'll all share.
2. A cup to drink out of
3. A pen and notepad
4. Anyone else who you think would be interested in watching and discussing riveting talks from people sharing the world's most incredible ideas

Free entry. Please bring food to share.
More info on TED
TED on Facebook

Innovator of the Year 2010

For further details on how to submit your entry, visit website

Sunday = planting day!

Click to enlarge

How taxing is the resource industry?

The Mining legacy in Western Australia

The Federal Government’s proposal to introduce a resource-rent (super-profits) tax has re-ignited debate on the real legacy and value of mining in Western Australia. This event will examine some of the broader issues and tough questions that the miners and governments don’t always want to talk about.


· What are the real social dividends for Western Australians arising from the mining industry?
· What is the environmental legacy of the mining industry in WA, and how is this being managed?
· What taxpayer subsidies are provided to the mining industry and what is the value of these subsidies?
· What are the impacts of our resources beyond the mine site and where do they eventually end up?
· Who pays the bills for mine rehabilitation and how much does it cost?
· Is there an appropriate balance between access to minerals and conservation of our environment?

FREE seminar

Speakers include;
Piers Verstegen (Director, Conservation Council WA) – Introduction and overview of mining in WA
Dr Gavin Mudd (Monash University)- Changing sustainability profile of the Australian Mining Industry
Spokesperson-Department of Mines and Petroleum (TBA)review of legacy issues and regulation
Dr Nick Dunlop (Conservation Council WA)- environmental outcomes from mining

When: Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Time: 6.30pm Where: City West Lotteries House, 2 Delhi St, West Perth

Gold Coin Donation appreciated, light refreshments provided

RSVP: to conswa@conservationwa.asn.au or 9420 7266

Property owners told to get green

Property owners will be forced to have an energy efficiency rating attached to their buildings within months or risk facing hefty fines under a proposal by the Federal Government.

But landlords could slash waste and save thousands of dollars by having their buildings rated before the scheme becomes mandatory, according to Colliers International.

The national Building Energy Efficiency Disclosure scheme is being debated in Canberra. Apart from minor details, it has bipartisan support and is expected to start between October and December.

The scheme will make it mandatory for all commercial buildings with a net lettable area of 2000sqm or more, which are sold or leased to a potential purchaser, tenant or sub-tenant to have a registered Building Energy Efficiency Certificate.
Read article

There are two kilos of toxic chemicals in every TV...

There are two kilos of toxic chemicals in every TV...and we are throwing millions of them out as we go digital. What's Stephen Conroy doing about it?

When the Digital Switchover Taskforce sat down to nut out the details of Australia's big move to digital television, some lone bright spark thought to ask people what they're doing with their old televisions. With the analogue era coming to a close, 2.8 million TVs have been 'thrown away' since the beginning of 2009.

There are two kilos of toxic chemicals in each TV, which means about 5,600 tonnes of hazardous waste has been dumped. And the federal government is twiddling its thumbs in response.

The Taskforce website has zero information on how to recycle old TVs. This shows to what extent the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy is out of touch with the rest of Australia.
Read article