G-n-L Ganesh and Lauren

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Sustainable Streetscapes

Saturday, 28 February 2009

I've had an idea which I'm quite excited about as a result of the Sustainable Cities Roundtable... I've been thinking a lot about community in the new area I've moved to. It's been very difficult to get involved. Due to the high levels of unemployment most of the community activities happen during the working day.

My idea is a 'sustainable streetscapes' project... Basically communities would get together, street by street, and organise a planting day. The entire street would help to plant a beautifully designed, sustainable herb garden and water catchment on the naturestrips. A large native tree, such as a lilly pilly, would be included on each naturestrip to provide shade for the herbs and create an aesthetic green canopy to the street. After the plants were in, the street would get together perhaps once per month to prune the garden. The initial planting day could be followed by a large street party. This would be such a simple way to bring a sense of community back to the suburbs, to enhance streetscapes and property values and most importantly to create a lasting sustainable infrastructure. So much more attractive than dead grass!

I've written to the permablitz people to get some help choosing plants, and also to the council to find out what the process is for approval! I'm sure we could get a little bit of funding for the plants themselves. So I'm quite excited about my mini project for the day!

Labels: naturestrip, streetscape

Sustainable Sharing

Thursday, 26 February 2009

The Sustainable Melbourne Round Table on Sustainable Sharing was on tonight! It's (sadly) the first one I've been to, but certainly not the last... It ran in conjunction with the eco city design competition run by the eco innovation lab and it was absolutely superb. It gives me such hope for the world to find out how committed people are! It's just getting over some of the inertia that's really difficult. It was really lovely to go with the girls from work too and get their opinions on the architectural and hard engineering sides of the ideas presented...

A quick overview because these ideas certainly warrant a plug:

The Clothing Exchange: Dedicated to releasing fashion waste from closets! You pay an entrance fee, bring along 6 items of clothing you value but no longer wear and exchange them for buttons... After all the clothes are hung up everyone runs around and finds items to exchange their buttons for! Remaining clothing is donated to charity. Simple and effective!
The Green Hanger: A simple idea. Replace unrecyclable wire hangers with cardboard hangers made from recaptured waste. In the dry cleaning and retail sectors this idea has already taken off!
Permablitz: Probably the idea that spoke to me the most! Basically a group of people who get together and do a permaculture 'backyard blitz' on people's home gardens. Attend 3 permablitzes and a large group of volunteers will come to your house, plant a vegie garden and design it beautifully as well!
Herdshare: Another simple idea... rather than own a share of a race horse or a greyhound, own a share of a cow and have fresh raw milk for life!
Grow Local: Barter the food you grow in your own backyard... Swap your excess tomatoes or potatoes for something sweet and delicious like cherries! You can attend on the first Saturday of each month at Smith Reserve, Alexander Parade, Fitzroy.
Compost Mates: From what I can gather a compost sharing project... Local community members pick up food scraps from apartments, local businesses and schools and use the rich soil to fertilise a community or home garden... Surprisingly, the compost enriched plants all survived the heat wave without an issue!
Ironbark Sustainability: Probably the most 'switched on' of the presenters (or the least hippie-like. The presenter was an engineer which helped, but basically Ironbark has identified a major issue in public lighting. It's owned by the power companies, but paid for by the councils. Obviously a major incentive for the power companies not to save energy! This group retrofits energy saving devices to existing lighting and lobbies for control by the Councils!
Solar Yarra Program: The City of Yarra was the first council in Australia to organise bulk discount purchases for PV cells for residents. This is the program we're now on with our council! A very discounted rate for PV cells because they organise many community members to buy together. It's great to see councils moving over the hurdle of not being able to recommend specific products and really aiding the community in practical ways!
Banyule Co-Housing Project: This works on addressing the urgent housing needs to enable people to get into sustainable housing and community building lifestyles aiming for effective economic savings in project costs and minimal ongoing "earth and $$$ costs" for the housing created... The commune is back!

A refreshing night of hope!

Labels: hope, ideas

Sweet science

Tuesday, 24 February 2009

I visited the synchrotron today... There's something extremely attractive about electrons circulating at the speed of light emitting massive amounts of bremsstrahlung radiation.. Perhaps you had to have studied physics to understand?? At any rate they were undertaking an extremely important process that is very close to my heart... Researchers from cadbury were seeking to understand the chocolate making process at the molecular level to make it smoother... mmmmm..... It almost made me forgive the Gigaelectron volts of energy required to run the synchrotron!

The art of chocolate making is fairly straightforward — in theory. Seeds from the cacao bush are broken up into cocoa powder and cocoa butter. Then they are recombined to make chocolate.The resulting chocolate is essentially a suspension of cocoa powder in fat. The recipe might seem simple but it is frustratingly deceptive: the wrong conditions can produce chocolate that is too hard, doesn’t ‘melt in the mouth’, or develops a white surface bloom in storage.

Food scientists have long known that as cocoa butter cools it can solidify into several different crystalline structures. Most agree there are six crystal structures, prosaically named polymorph I to VI. Polymorph V makes the best chocolate. It has a melting point just below body temperature so it dissolves in the mouth. But polymorph V is difficult to make and converts to
other polymorphs. The key to making polymorph V is tempering — quickly cooling the hot mixture produces low number polymorphs. With slow reheating these turn to polymorph V. So what is the optimum combination of heating, cooling and
stirring needed to deliver smooth, melt-in-the-mouth, polymorph V chocolate?

That’s where synchrotron light comes in. It allows the crystal structures to be monitored as they are forming, while
the cocoa butter is being heated, tempered and stirred. The intensity of synchrotron light makes such in situ
experiments possible. They found, for example, that stirring is critical to the formation of polymorph V. Most importantly, the data showed the optimum conditions for chocolate manufacture. Cadbury lowered tempering temperatures significantly, bringing energy and cost savings, and optimised a complex process, with subsequent benefits to profits.

Scientific... Sustainable... And Super Sweet!!

Labels: chocolate, synchrotron

Bollywood dance classes!

Saturday, 21 February 2009

Yes, I have 2 left feet... and yes, I'm totally un-co - but I went to my first bollywood dance class today...and it was fantastically fun! We learnt the dance from the opening credits of Slum Dog Millionaire - Jai Ho - that depicts a group of people dancing on a train station platform, lead by the hero & heroine. While I'm sure I looked ridiculous I felt like I was having a good time.... My homework for the week is to master the classic bollywood side to side head movement.

I also went to a hilarious debate on a car free melbourne at the Sustainable Living festival - engineers vs hippies... which even involved a strip down to borat style lycra and a 1 man bike accident stimulus package!

I'll leave with some bollywood goodness for you to enjoy... As far as I can ascertain this is a rain dance of sorts!

Have a great week!

Labels: bolllywood, dance

I scream, u scream, we all scream for icecream!

Sunday, 15 February 2009

An ice cream truck does a regular route through our street... On hot weekends or evenings the familiar tingle can be heard from the back yard and the urge to run into the house and find some coins is overwhelming! The truck reminds me of simpler times of carefree summers playing with the neighbourhood children in the street.

While I'm older now (and hopefully wiser!) the truck reminds me of my hopes and dreams for the future... that they are still possible... and that I shouldn't lose sight of those goals... or of myself! I guess I'm inspired today because I just read a novel written by someone I know... Nothing's Impossible! The Alan Rea story... Written by Dan Ednie who I met at the Brightest Young Minds summit last year... He began transcribing the story of his great grandfather's amazing life back when he was 16 and more than 6 years later it's a published work! You really can achieve anything you set out to achieve if you get past your own small day to day issues and dedicate yourself to the cause!

That said I'm off to chase the ice cream truck... You're never too old for ice cream! :-)

Labels: ice cream

Mini-Adventure 2 Recap: Horse Riding

Saturday, 14 February 2009

Extreme relaxation is the only word for today's mini adventure! I hesitate to even call it an adventure because there was no adrenalin rush! Leaving from Springcreek farm, not far from Rosebud, we hired some horses and toured through the Vineyards and Orchards in the area... A slow paced meander through the fruit trees was interspersed with trots and canters in the back streets but overall it was intensely relaxing. We also picked up some more ideas for the garden and were inspired by the strength and resilience of the olives, figs and cherries in an area so obviously affected by the recent heat wave.

Ganesh's horse, aptly named Shorty, was pretty feisty - and always hungry! While my horse, Ellie, was a little stubborn at times and appeared to be playing hard to get with another horse, Copper (who was never far behind). After about 3 hours on horseback we decided to give the horses a break and headed back to Melbourne via a lovely Greek Restaurant amidst all the wineries.

A highly recommended mini adventure!

Labels: horse riding, mini-adventure

Chocoholic

Thursday, 12 February 2009

I'm not sure I would want to live in a world without chocolate. I find it hard to not think about chocolate on a daily basis, let alone face a lifetime without it... especially when I haven't fulfilled my dream of spending the day under a chocolate fountain!

But according to the Nature Conversation Research Council (NCRC) in 20 years chocolate will become like caviar... Very expensive and available to only a select few... The problem comes down to unsustainable farming practices in countries like Ghana where cocoa plants grow (they are limited to a range of only 10 degrees from the equator)... Cocoa is traditionally a rainforest tree that lasts 75-100 years... Because of increased demand rainforest is being cleared to plant cocoa in open fields where it only lasts 30 years. After 30 years the land is so degraded that more rainforest must be cleared to plant more cocoa... A vicious and never ending cycle.

Chocolate, however, remains one of the most delicious, in demand, smartest foods on earth... Fortunately EarthShare has stepped in and is working with Cadbury and the farmers to create a more sustainable future for chocolate... And companies like Cocoa Farm have begun sustainably growing cocoa and producing chocolate in Queensland.

Until then I will try to breed a super cacao tree that grows in Melbourne (my backyard), produces sweet cocoa beans (perhaps graft it with sugar cane?) and is available all year round... A super plant if you will. Hopefully cadbury will purchase it from me for the cost of my liposuction should I succeed!

Labels: chocolate

Ebooks

Tuesday, 10 February 2009

I'm a big fan of the idea of ebooks... Saving all that paper, reducing distribution emissions and having books available instantly... So when I decided to read the book 'Cradle to Cradle' by William McDonough I set out to find it in ebook form... This turned out to be much more complicated than I originally anticipated. While it was available via the Sony ebook distribution system (and other 'US only' sites) it was only available for Windows... Not Mac! An onslaught of emails ensued between myself and the Sony ebook technical support but they refused to admit that they should have a mac copy available... Obviously after my barrage I couldn't purchase from them... so in the end I chose the option of a secondhand copy from ebay rather than to admit defeat of the mac... (as an aside the mac could have handled it but it's the principle of it all!)...

In my travels however, I did find:

All of which are actually legal... In the end I chose Moby Dick (shameful I haven't read it already, I know!), which turned out to be quite good! (And now I finally understand all those references Scully used to make to it in the Xfiles)...

Labels: ebooks

Gaia - the supreme goddess of earth

Saturday, 7 February 2009

The Gaia hypothesis was developed by James Lovelock, and named after a rather badly behaved supreme goddess of the earth... It basically states that the biosphere - all the living things on earth, is connected closely with all the components of earth: the atmosphere - the layer of gasses surrouding the earth, the lithosphere - the rocky outer shell, the hydrosphere - all the water basically, and the cryosphere - all the ice. This relationship maintains the climatic and biogeochemical conditions in a preferred stable state.

According to James Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain. He says that "By 2040, parts of the Sahara desert will have moved into middle Europe. We are talking about Paris - as far north as Berlin. In Britain we will escape because of our oceanic position." Lovelock believes it is too late to repair the damage created by greenhouse gases. "If you take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions, then by 2040 every summer in Europe will be as hot as it was in 2003 - between 110F and 120F. It is not the death of people that is the main problem, it is the fact that the plants can't grow - there will be almost no food grown in Europe. We are about to take an evolutionary step and my hope is that the species will emerge stronger. It would be hubris to think humans as they now are God's chosen race."

What I think Melburnians experienced today, for the first time since climate change entered the mass media, was a realisation of the potential consequences and that something might actually be happening that will affect them. The hottest day on record, EVER, after 34 days without rain and 2 weeks of hot weather was a shock. Crops failed all over Victoria... Bush fires reigned... enormous 20km long fire fronts developed... Flames licked Melbourne's fringes as well as the rural areas and pressed through power station easements, causing power outages all over the state to more than 100 000 people... Homes were lost... Roads closed... Trains and buses ground to a halt... The cool change finally arrived, but it hasn't helped... Fires still rage throughout the state... Gaia's revenge...

Labels: gaia

The long dark tea time of the soul...

Thursday, 5 February 2009

Sorry I haven't written in a very long time... I'm a bit down about the job and leaving something I invested so much of myself and my ideas in... I know you have to do what's right to be happy with yourself... Like not having hot bubble baths when there are water restrictions and impending climate change! Or not turning on the air conditioner in peak times so they don't build new power stations... but this feels really heart breaking. I really loved my job and I'm sure I'll never find another like it.... I guess doing what's right and supporting your colleagues is better for mental health... I just wish I didn't feel so bad...

Labels: resigning

A timely waste audit

Tuesday, 3 February 2009

This morning I awoke to the sound of the garbage truck rattling down our street collecting garbage... It struck me immediately that this was the third week in a row that I'd forgotten to put the bins out... The first week wasn't really my fault, I didn't know which day the truck was coming! The second week I just completely forgot, and because of Australia day I was out of synch with the week... Excuses excuses. I didn't jump out of bed, grab the bins and chase the truck down the street as we used to do at mum's though... I didn't need to. In the 3 weeks we've been here we still haven't filled up any of our bins. The green waste is reused as compost, the recycling bin is enormous and we just don't consume that much 'stuff' and we're getting very good at reusing our waste so even the small green rubbish bin is not even half full. Of course I do have a cupboard full of empty jars, bottles and boxes but I maintain those will come in handy one day!

Of course we will need to put the bins out eventually... so I decided to conduct a waste audit to find out if we could actually remove the need to have waste collected altogether... then perhaps we could stop paying the council for a service we didn't use too - bonus!

Basically our waste consisted of:

Some tea bags that missed the compost bin (whoops!)
Dishwashing powder packets (my fault completely - I bought the environmentally friendly, non chemical powder but forgot to check whether the packets were individually wrapped or not)... having never had a dishwasher before we're still assessing whether or not it's better that we do the dishes or the dishwasher does... I think it's more conservative with water than I am... When I wash the dishes half the water ends up on me!
Non recyclable food packets... a few icy pole wrappers from when we were too hot to go back home and get the homemade variety! A popcorn bag from when my brother came over to watch movies... Plastic wrapping without the recycling symbol on it... And the little foil wrappers from the cadbury brunch bars... And a plastic bag from a bag of home brand sultanas...

As usual it all comes down to appropriate choice in the supermarket... We have to stop buying things in packets if at all possible (much harder in heidelberg west where 'organics' don't seem to have taken off)... Focus on markets... and read all labels before purchase... Until we become more disciplined with this we'll have to continue footing the bill for waste collection!

Labels: audit, waste

The humourous approach...

Sunday, 1 February 2009

Foppotee - a simple minded person. eg. I am a foppotee for believing that there were lots of jobs out there! (There aren't)... Fortunately I learnt (and possibly saved!) a new word from savethwords.org so perhaps there is a future for me in linguistics!

The old fashioned readers digests have struck again! I found a great article about using humour to solve problems...

1. Solution for apologising to the boss for chronic tardiness (arriving at 9:35am): "How do you do? I'm . I'm applying for a job I understand became available just 35 mins ago. Does the early bird get the worm?"...

2. Solution for apologising over the phone: "Person to person call for I.A.pologise"... (best delivered by the operator)

3. Solution for dropping a turkey on the floor in front of a room full of guests: "Don't worry , just pick him up, take him back to the kitchen and bring in the other one".

4. Solution for crossing a picket line: "How very nice of you all to turn out to see me! Thank-you! Shall we all go in?"

In new years resolution related news I have just finished reading 'The Social Entrepreneur'... Fantastic book... Very inspiring. I envisage following the Bromley by Bows model in Heidelberg West but that's a story for another day...

Labels: humour, social entrepreneur