Happy holidays

Wherever you are on the planet, I wish you and your family and friends a safe and happy holiday period! May 2012 bring you peace, love, inspiration and some environmental splendour!

Best wishes,
Green Dreaming Pin It

Ian Lowe's sustainable future

"A sustainable future will involve using resources more efficiently, maintaining natural systems, developing social cohesion, nurturing our cultural traditions and finding durable economic activities".

This a quote from Ian Lowe's Quarterly Essay called Reaction Time: Climate Change and the Nuclear Option. Issue 27, 2007. Pin It

BrisScience now online

What a Christmas present! You can now watch past presentations organised by BrisScience online. These are available at: http://vimeo.com/channels/brisscience. Five presentations from 2011 are now available on this website, with more to come.

Science in your lounge room. How can it get any better? Pin It

Seed saving....chillies

I acquired a large number of what I know as birds-eye chillies from a friend the other day. As the family aren't huge "hot" food fans, I decided I would see whether I could salvage (or save) the seed from the fresh chillies with the objective of putting them into the ground and growing my own chilli plant.

My initial thoughts were to just chuck the chilli 'pods' (fruits) on to the ground at the location I want these plants to grow. I then decided perhaps I could give them a little more help than the complete lazy gardener. So after a little google investigation, I ended up cutting open the most ripe chillies and scraped out their seed on to some paper towel. I will now leave these seeds to dry for a week or two and then collect and store them in an envelope until I am ready to "plant" them out.

A gardener blog I just came across explains how they went about saving their chilli seed and it has some pretty pics as well. Have a look at the Suburban Tomato's blog post about their process.

What I will do with the chillies if I am successful in growing any chilli plants is another matter, but maybe the family taste buds will have evolved! Fingers crossed. Pin It

Do you read books?

If you're still in the paper realm of books (which I love) a library is a great source of reading material and overall reduces your environmental footprint!

How you might ask? Well, instead of producing book material only for your personal pleasure, which once you've read it often ends up on your bookshelf, libraries allow many readers to access the same material, thereby reducing the number of times the book or reading material needs to be printed and in turn reducing the amount of raw materials required!

Other ways to improve your environmental footprint whilst still enjoying printed books:

• purchase books/reading material for your collection but share them with friends;
• if have books that you don't want anymore, hand on to friends, give to charity bins, hold a book swap, freecycle;
• buy second hand books, particularly from charity organisations;
• catch a bus to the library; or
• car pool to library.

If you're worried that you're local library doesn't have the specific book or type of books that you like, quite often libraries can buy books that you like (if they deem them likely to be attractive to a wider audience) or alternatively they may have an inter-library loan service (this may attract a small fee depending on the location of the material you require). Pin It

2011...what has been achieved by GetUp! and its members

If you'd like to see what the GetUp! campaigns and the members of this movement have achieved in 2011, have a look at the following short video.

Get Up 2011 summary video

I love this movement, their campaigns and their drive to re-claim the Australian political process!

Bring on the campaigns and success stories in 2012. Pin It

Advertising gone crazy

I heard the funniest McDonalds advertisement the other day. The ad was for one of their new cold drink products, something along the lines of a fruit smoothie. The bit that I found funny was their catch cry which was "and it has real ingredients".

Wow, not real ingredients! I mean how foolish do corporations think we are? I believe the ad prior to this statement had been talking about the fruitiness of the drink and I guess the idea behind the statement and its placement was to confuse the viewer into thinking that real ingredients were somehow indicating that there is real fruit in the drink.

Certainly gave me a chuckle and have a "what the?" moment. Pin It