March 11th, 2010
We’re hosting a stall at the Green Earth Festival. Come along and have a chat, enjoy some free samples and find out about what we’ve been up to and ways you can green your rental property…
Saturday March 13th, Brisbane Botanical Gardens
Green Earth Festival is a free, family orientated, community event which aims to stimulate awareness by bringing environmental, green, health and lifestyle, cruelty-free, recycling and sustainable issues into the public eye; encourage people to make simple changes in their everyday lives to help our environment and the world we leave for generations to come.
www.greenearthfestival.net
March 11th, 2010
Energy efficient light bulbs (otherwise known as compact fluorescent light bulbs or CFL’s ) contain a small amount of mercury which is a toxic metal and every product containing mercury should be handled with care.
Recycling is the best way to dispose of used CFLs.
In Victoria you should take them to your nearest Council Civic Centre for recycling. Or you can take fluorescent tubes to a Detox Your Home permanent drop-off facility,such as the Darebin Resource Recovery Centre. It is free.
You can also take your fluorescent tubes to a Detox Your Home mobile collection.
NSW households should utilise the free household chemical “Cleanout” program managed by the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change. These are held regularly, and details are available on the www.cleanout.com.au website.
As a last resort, burnt-out or broken CFLs should be wrapped in newspaper and placed inside a plastic bag, firmly sealed, and then placed into your household rubbish.
You should NOT place CFLs in your kerbside recycling collection because they can break during transport and contaminate recyclable items.
March 9th, 2010
In our garden we have an over abundance of zucchinis growing! They’re easy to grow and great for swapping, baking and making into soups and fritters. Here’s one of my favourite ways of using them:
Ingredients
| 125g butter/nuttlex |
| ½ cup (110g) brown sugar |
| 1 egg/ vegan egg replacer |
| ½ teaspoon vanilla essence |
| 1½ cups grated zucchini |
| 1½ cups self raising flour |
| 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon |
| 1 cup instant oats |
| 1 cup muesli |
| 2 cups dark/dairy free chocolate chips |
Preparation method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
2. In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in the egg and vanilla, mix well, then stir in the grated zucchini. Sift together the flour, baking soda and cinnamon, stir into the zucchini mixture. Finally, stir in the oats, muesli and chocolate chips.
3. Drop dough from a teaspoon onto an ungreased baking sheet. Leave about 5cm between biscuits. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven
Recipe sourced from All Recipes with changes by Cate
March 9th, 2010
We’re too late for their recent information session, but Melbourne Carrotmob have been busy on the streets of Boroondara encouraging small businesses to ‘go green’ by promising a plethora of customers if the businesses plough the profits back into environmentally friendly measures…
A carrot instead of a stick as it were…
melbourne.carrotmob.org
After all, businesses are generally renters to!
March 2nd, 2010
Ways to make your fridge energy efficient from Colleen Quinn:
- Don’t keep your fridge too cold. A change of one degree can effect energy consumption by 5%. Freezers should operate at -15°C to -18°C while fresh food compartments should be held at around 3°C to 5°C.
- Clean the coils annually.
- Cover food and drink to avoid evaporation in the fridge, which can force the compressor to work harder.
- Keep your freezer filled. Frozen blocks of food keep freezer temperatures more stable.
- Don’t clutter the fridge top; it can hamper the compressor’s proper air circulation.
- Don’t put your refrigerator in direct sunlight or next to an oven or dishwasher.
- Check the door seals. They should be able to hold a piece of paper in place.
- Defrost the freezer regularly and avoid frost build-ups of more than a quarter-inch.
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March 2nd, 2010
images © Burkhard SchällerI was excited to see a post about this mobile kitchen from the Talents section at Ambiente 2010 Consumer Goods Fair in Frankfurt. It was created by German interior designer Burkhard Schäller and features three mobile and collapsible components for chopping, water and cooking which can of course, be moved around easily. The fact that it folds up could mean awesome possibilities for those in shared rental spaces who are longing to eschew the communial kitchen, and I imagine there would be ways of setting this up as an outdoor or even studio kitchen.
March 2nd, 2010
Well, support a great venture as part of Yarra council’s Sustainable awards scheme and vote for them…
More details here.
March 1st, 2010
An event that might interest the home food gardeners
Saturday 13th March
City Square, Swanston Street
10am – 2pm
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March 1st, 2010
In the spirit of practising what we preach…
We have a subscription to the awesome and informative Wired magazine and for some random reason they sent two c of the same issue this month so we thought we’d have a giveaway, all you need to do is answer a simple question…
The feature article in this issue of Wired is about ‘Money’, what would you do if found an unexpected $50 in your wallet?
Respond via comments, and best answer received by March 13th wins!
