Green Renters run workshops for sustainable living in rental property.

We take a room by room tour through the average rental property looking at simple and cost effective ideas that can be implemented in a short amount of time that will help make your property more energy efficient, sustainable and save you money.

We also look at general lifestyle changes, ideas and advice for greening your life.

The workshops are practical and friendly in nature with plenty of visual examples, discussion and samples. They generally run for two hours.

Here’s the line up…

1. Stay home and celebrate
Seriously, I ‘ve always suspected that NYE is the night for people who don’t go out any other night of year.

As green planet suggests

if you stay home and host your own ring-in-the-new shindig, you’ll save transportation emissions—and, of course, money. You’ll also be able to better control the environmental impact of your night, from sending out email invitations to preventing the food and paper waste that comes from bars and restaurants.

(more…)

I’m a big fan of Gardening Australia. I love learning about plants I’ve never even seen before, let alone attempted to grow. Jerry provides great insight into how to create a workable organic garden (I know we were doing ok up until the snail infestation!). I also like the step by step projects suitable even for the blackest thumb, all presented in a factual interesting format without the condescension of some television presenters.

The ABC Gardening Expo is a great chance to learn and enjoy all things gardening. Lots of things to buy, people to talk to and information to gather.

I really like the idea of the  Ask It, Solve It Stage – An informal, intimate Q&A panel format featuring ABC TV’s Gardening Australia presenters as well as other industry experts talking on specific plant care and answering all gardening related questions.

As as far as workshops go, we’d be particularly interested in attending Sally Wise’s workshops on making your own jams and preserves from garden produce.

When: October 2-4, 2009
Where: Caulfield Racecourse
Time: 10:00am – 4:30pm daily

I covered this issue briefly before, but it’s been playing on mind of late after coming across a variety of articles, showing that it’s becoming a topic starting to spark some debate…

What am I talking about? The carbon footprint of the internet!

Surfing the internet, you generally forget that behind the site you are browsing are a variety of power consumers. Your computer, your router, your ISP’s computers and routers, the website hosts’ computers and routers and all the intermediary computers that route you between them, and if you came through a search engine, then that has to be factored in to the equation to.

I think we would all generally agree that the Internet is a good thing, so how can we be more environmentally friendly in our web browsing? It’s a tough one, but here’s a few ideas.

Firstly, researchers are working on power saving routing algorithms, (those algorithms that connect you to where you want to be) based on demand, time of the day and climate vs available renewable energy resources. It’s an interesting concept, but as this Treehugger article points out, it could result in most data centres being powered by coal, I guess it very much depends on the client.

Changing the nature of the backbone of the internet is out of reach for most, so more immediately, what can you do to green up your website and internet experience? Planet Green recently published 6 fairly simple and cost effective tips on how to ‘green’ your website, some are fairly obvious, so aren’t…

Finally (for this article anyway) we have Greenscroll, a kind of carbon offset service for websites, they claim to (for admin costs only, i.e. not for profit) invest a monthly amount of money from you into green power energy projects. An interesting concept, I would be intrigued to know if anyone has had experience in using it.

There have been a variety of phone apps released that claim green credentials, guides to products, carbon emission trackers and much more. Having recently acquired a shiny new iPhone I was intrigued to find out what was available, I was pleased to find a fair amount of genuinely helpful and well put together apps, the only (major for us) drawback was that pretty much every single one was US only. Still, for any of our international visitors, this post may be helpful and personally, I’ve decided to contact some of the developers and ask about being involved in creating localised versions of their applications.

Good guide
www.goodguide.com
A slick, (seemingly) well researched app with plenty of information on 1000s of products, their nutritional value and ethical scores.

Locavore
www.enjoymentland.com/locavore
An app that tells you what food is currently in season in your area.

Green Meter
www.hunter.pairsite.com/greenmeter
An app that evaluates your driving style and choice of vehicle, advising you on how to become a more efficient driver. (Worldwide)

iRecycle
www.earth911.com/iphone/
Based upon your current location, or a manually entered location, iRecycle tells you where your closest recycling points are.

Greenpeace Tissue guide
www.3rdwhale.com/apps
An environmental guide to facial and toilet tissues.

3rdWhale Premium
www.3rdwhale.com/apps
A GPS aware green directory.

Carticipate
www.carticipate.com/
Described as a ‘car pooling’ social network, Carticipate is basically an app to post journey’s you’re making or need to make and match up with appropriate drivers / passengers.

EcoRio
www.ecorio.org
An Android application that keeps tabs on your location and choices of transport and keeps a tally on how much you owe in Carbon Offsets.

Green Planet has published an article today on the best edible plants for container gardens. What are your favourites or successes? I find mine depend on the amount of watering, the heat and whether they are visited by neighbourhood cats!

Cate’s successes:

• Parsley
• Pansies
• Baby Tomatoes
• Chillies
• Chives
• Mint
• Lettuces

Cate’s dismal failures:

• Lavender
• Rosemary
• Basil

(I have had a bit more success planting these directly into garden beds however)…

Another nugget from our recent overseas trip…

I recently met up with a Melbourne developer designing a green map website utilising Google Maps to allow users to view sub-catagories of environmental and sustainable organisations in their area (or other areas of course). Currently the project is in beta, but as he’s local, I shall make sure we post about it here when it’s ready.

In the meantime I came across a flyer in NYC about a similar (and further developed) project called Green Map. The site is divided into two sections, one containing existing created maps and one showing you how to create your own. As far as I could see there were no Australian entries, maybe it’s time we got together and did.

Lets do it!

I really like these book plant holders, a great way to recycle old books as they can rot down into theearth. I’m totally making some of these!

Possibly one of the most lovely balcony gardens I have seen…

You can view more shots of it and find out the details here

The ‘In the Hot-House’ festival combines the celebration of music, art, craft, dance, films and food with an exploration of the environmental and social challenges that exist in our own backyards and around the world. Learn how to take action on climate change as some of the best of Melbourne’s environmental and community groups show you ‘What you can do’ and present alternatives perspectives on the crises facing us today.

The festival program continues at the picturesque and inspiring CERES Environmental Park. The program is busting at the seams and consists of art, music, workshops, food, drink, films, children’s entertainment and much more including the premiere performance collaborative performance project with two Moreland based schools, Voices of our Future.
Festival Highlights Include:

Music from The Conch, Orkeztra Glasso Bashalde, Radiant City and more.
Collaborative art projects across the site including Photography, Sculpture and Found Art with contributions from the ‘Outsiders Guide’, Sudeep, Ero, Peter Hutchinson and more coming
‘Voices of our Future’ schools drama performance

Children’s Clown, face painting and kids workshops

Food and drink from local and sustainable companies, including the infamous Good Brew beer bike
Workshops on a wide variety of subjects from environmental issues, open source technology, radical craft, alternative thought, green renting, Slow living and activism.

Run a workshop
Community stalls to inform and educate. Apply for a stall
Film night showcasing short films on environmental and social issues (6.30pm, Sat 18th)
Chris and I are running a “Green Renters” workshop and i am involved in a huge craft installation teaching people to embroider! Stayed tuned for more details.