Plug-in hybrid car...

I don’t normally get excited by prototype cars, and this one would be too big for me and Dave (SUV size), but I’m really intrigued after reading about it: Turn On, Plug In, Drop Out by Joseph Romm. It’s a plug-in hybrid car. It has a fast-charge battery that can be charged from your home’s electricity, no petrol needed. The disadvantage of the fast charge time is that it discharges quickly too...

Quick admin note...

My apologies - for the last couple of weeks, comments have been getting stuck in the moderation queue when they should have been posted right away. And at the same time, Wordpress decided to stop mailing me when anything requires moderation! I think it’s ok now, but if your comments don’t appear on the posts, please contact me via email and I’ll look into it.

How to start a vegetable garden...

After showing off our vegie garden in the blog the other week, and making all of our visitors come out to take a look at it, I’ve had a few people ask me why we started growing our own vegetables, and if it was very hard to do. Dave and I had been talking about it for years, but when we read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, she made it sound so good that we decided to just get stuck into...

No more plastic bags?...

Environment Minister Peter Garrett announced last week that the federal government wants to phase out plastic bags by the end of this year, either through a ban or a levy (putting a price on them). I’m not sure if this just includes supermarket bags, or ones from all shops. Aussies used 3.92 billion plastic bags in 2005, down from 6 billion in 2002 - this drop has been caused by the promotion of re-useable bags...

Chill my ride...

A while ago I posted about Browne’s “Chill My Ride” competition where you could win a Hummer. A few people who read my post contacted Browne’s parent company Fonterra to complain about this. Eloise Dortch (read my interview with her here) received a reply to her letter from Paul Murphy, their Marketing Manager for Fresh Dairy. Eloise and Paul have agreed to let me show you some of what they wrote. When...

From scraps to compost to vegetable garden...

We started our compost bin a little less than a year ago, to reduce the waste we were adding to landfill - now we’re getting fresh vegies from our garden! This is what it looked like to start with. We mostly put in kitchen scraps, garden clippings, and newspapers. When it was finished cooking, it looked like this: We added the compost to the soil before planting a few tomato and basil plants, plus some beetroot. In...

Greeniology by Tanya Ha...

Greeniology: How to Live Well, Be Green and Make a Difference is a “comprehensive, practical and fun guide” to greening your life. It’s written by Tanya Ha, a sustainability expert who gave advice to the families on SBS’s Eco-House Challenge and also writes an advice column in G Magazine. It’s certainly a comprehensive book: first there’s an introductory section on the major environmental...

Re-useable bags: Envirosax...

I’ve made a good start on my green resolutions for 2008: friends gave me a reuseable bag from Envirosax (thanks, Greg and Chris!) and I’ve already started using it. The Envirosax bag can be rolled up into a small bundle, which makes it perfect for carrying in my handbag. It only took me a few minutes to figure out how to roll it up after unfolding it, and smarter people will figure it out on their first try...

New Year’s Resolutions 2008...

I make New Year’s Resolutions each year, and I even keep them more often than I forget them This year I’m making green resolutions for the first time. I thought about practical changes I could make that would have an impact on the environment, be measurable (so I can tell if I’ve succeeded or not), and achievable given my time and budget. So here they are: Switch to reusable bags I already own green...