Events

Green homes can help solve the housing crisis

Nick Rosen talks at Port Eliot Festival, Sunday 22nd July

*Author of HOW TO LIVE OFF-GRID launches plan to build homes for less than £50,000 ($80,000).

*They consume 25% of average energy and water

*Using the new Localism Act to create a proof of concept

Off-grid settlements – historically a fringe interest in the UK, although they have a long history in other countries, including the US – offer an important new alternative — important because they help solve three problems:

– Cheap housing – how to enable it
– Energy security – how to improve it
– Rural regeneration – how to kickstart it…

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Crowdsourcing permaculture

Sophia Novack is creating a huge, Open Source Permaculture dictionary and a free Urban Permaculture Guide eBook. She has crowd-funded the project on Indiegogo

Now her vision is to create a comprehensive online resource with information flowing in from around the world, so anyone wanting to create more sustainability in their community can have the resources at their fingertips.…

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Award for most sickening press release of the year

The Guardian, Ecover and National Grid – yuck. Lucy Siegle – yuck yuck. This sort of thing makes any sincere environmentalist want to go and cut down a tree:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The winners of the 2012 Observer Ethical Awards, in association with Ecover, were announced at a ceremony last night in London hosted by the Observer’s ethical living correspondent and TV presenter, Lucy Siegle, alongside the awards celebrity judges and sponsors.

The Observer Ethical Awards are now in their seventh year of celebrating the projects, businesses, ideas, campaigns and activists making sustainable change a reality.

The list of winners include:

Sport
Dartford Football Club
Dartford Football Club, an ethical stadium with water recycling, bike racks, grass roof and solar panels. The judges felt it was a great project that engaged with a hard to reach community.

Ecover Ethical Kids
Fact Fashion
Fact Fashion draws attention to issues, like the conservation of scarce resources to changing behaviours, by producing fashion items that display the powerful numbers associated with these problems. The judges felt it was different from any other awards entry they had seen before.

Local Hero sponsored by The Body Shop
Dr S Oliver Natelson
Dr S Oliver Natelson is a community campaigner that has worked for over 30 years supporting the local wood and nature reserve in Barnet. The judges felt that he is the definition of a hero, incredibly inspiring and informative.

Grassroots Projects sponsored by Timberland
Climate Change Schools Project
The Climate Change Schools Project (CCSP), based in Durham, is a not-for-profit-project that puts climate change at the heart of the national curriculum.

Business initiative sponsored by Jupiter Asset Management
Ecotricity
Ecotricity is a green energy company and supplier and generator of eco electricity and gas and the judges felt that what it is doing will change the energy world.

Blog sponsored by environmentguardian.co.uk
DfID – Hannah Ryder
A blog from a UK civil servant showing how economics, poverty and action to avoid climate change and to protect the environment in developing countries relates to real life. The judges felt that Hannah’s blog was well written, talked about important topics and was an effective way of sharing information.

Arts and Culture sponsored by Festival Republic
When China met Africa
A film highlighting the new problems associated with the Chinese expansion in Africa. The judges felt that the power of the film is that is does not make any judgments – it raises a lot of issues and questions but leaves it to viewer to make their own decisions.

Big Idea sponsored by National Grid
SafetyNet
The SafetyNet is a new trawling system that cuts down on the catch and subsequent discarding of juvenile and endangered fish. The judges felt that although this project was still in the very early stage it was one of the most important ideas the world is going to see.

Fashion & …

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Unplug for an hour

Small initiatives can sometimes have a big effect, and its that time of year again when Australians are asked to turn up their environmental conscience for just an hour. Earth Hour will be held at 8.30pm on Saturday, March 31. The day will see unplugged community events held across the country.

The hour of no power Everyday Australians will be celebrated for their grassroots contributions to a more sustainable future for the planet in the Earth Hour Awards.…

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Afghan cook stove

A video from USAID shows the details of how to design a cheap efficient stove to cook your food and heat your home.

you have to sit through a little lesson on life in today’s Afghanistan, but you get to see how to put together their traditional cookstove, which can also be used as a space heater.…

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Hollywood loves to hate freedom and indie lifestyle


Wanderlust Trailer — sucky mockery of  folks living their dream

Wanderlust is a new film starring Jennifer Aniston. It is the latest showbiz product to pour scorn on the off-grid lifestyle.

Feb 19th there was the 500th episode of The Simpsons, which had a laugh about people living on the edge of Springfield in an “off the grid community”.  Then there was Apocalypse Preppers, a TV series about a gang of carefully chosen eccentrics who live off-grid for all sorts of crazy reasons of their own.

Now there is Wanderlust – a film in which a couple quit their stressed out city life in order to live in a (non-vegan) nudist commune, where Aniston is taught to “stroke the shaft” of a cow in order to milk it.…

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