Category Archives: Sustainability

CERES FoodConnect Basics Box

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Update: Almost a year has passed since this post. The program has since been renamed CERES Fair Food and has grown in leaps and bounds. We’re still getting the boxes – alternating between a Small Basics and a Small Fruit & Veg. Throughout the year the produce has remained of an excellent standard. It is great to regularly enjoy fruit that tastes fantastic!

We picked up our first box of fruit and vegies from the CERES FoodConnect program this afternoon from Loophole in Thornbury. The process was very easy and the unboxing yielded the goodies below. We ordered the ‘Basics Box’, which is one of the smaller offerings. The mandarins were very hard to resist, and didn’t survive for very long after this photo. The rest of the produce looks fantastic (the mystery vegetables in the brown bag are, of course, mushrooms). All in all, a great start to the program!

Feature on Bob Brown in The Age

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An interestingly timed feature on Bob Brown by Michael Gordon in The Age: Coming in from the wilderness. Worth a read. Quite a positive piece. It concludes with a focus on current events…

Brown agrees, and insists the Greens will work constructively with whoever wins the election to achieve good results and advance an agenda that includes introducing a carbon tax, better funding for mental health, a national dental scheme and a permanent solution for forest protection. Brown says he has worked with Julia Gillard on industrial relations and youth issues and found her ”matter-of-fact, plain-speaking and does what she says she will do”, but he isn’t expecting too much to change.

”Everybody with a progressive bone in their body raised a glass at the news of our first female prime minister, but that’s where that ends,” he says. ”Politically it doesn’t change the dynamic at all. There’s no way that we’re going to get a green Gillard government any more than a green Rudd government or a green Howard government. That’s why we’re here.”

CERES Food Connect

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Update: For an update on the renamed CERES Fair Food, and our experience of using if for almost a year, check out this post.

CERES has just recently launched CERES FoodConnect, which I’ll let them explain

CERES Food Connect is a Melbourne based organic food delivery service which is setting 
out to create a healthier, happier food system by ensuring our members have access to affordable, fresh and tasty organic fruit and vegetables, all sourced from local growers who are paid a fair price for their produce and practice 
eco-friendly farming.

We deliver a variety of fruit and veg boxes, with the contents changing each week based on the freshest arrivals from our organic growers. Our unique distribution method means that we
 significantly reduce the carbon footprint associated with distributing food and that we are reconnecting our community with where their food comes from. By becoming a CERES Food Connect member, you make a big difference simply by choosing to shop with us!

A fantastic initiative. We’ve signed up for a Fruit and Veg box, so will be able to report first hand on how it goes.

Replace Hazelwood

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The Replace Hazelwood campaign has been on in earnest for some time now. In short, from replacehazelwood.com.au

Hazelwood is Australia’s dirtiest power station. This election year, we’re calling on the Victorian and Federal Governments to commit to Replace Hazelwood with Clean Energy by 2012. Can you help us make it happen?

Check out the official website.

Doorknocking has been underway in a number of suburbs in Melbourne for about a month now. There have also been a range of other actions around the place. More info on upcoming dates at the climate action centre.

  • Sat 3 July – Brunswick with Climate Action Moreland
  • Sunday 4 July – Richmond with Yarra Climate Action Now
  • Sun 10 July – Westgarth (DCAN) 1-4pm Jika Jika Community House cnr Plant and Union Street Northcote with Darebin Climate Action Network
  • Sat 17 July – North Melbourne with Inner Northwest Climate Change Community

The Victorian Greens have recently incorporated action on Hazelwood into their campaign.

Federal Labor MP Kelvin Thompson has also recently voiced support for  taking steps to close the plant.

There is a National Day of Action to Replace Hazelwood on July 17.

Batteryback

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Battery recycling on trial in Melbourne (until 30 April 2010). More info: Batteryback

  • Coles Flemington; 320 – 386 Epsom Rd, Flemington, Vic 3032
  • Michaels Camera & Video; corner Elizabeth & Lonsdale Sts, City, Vic 3000
  • Officeworks South Melbourne; 231 Kingsway, South Melbourne Vic 3205
  • Officeworks Preston; 121 Bell Street, Preston Vic 3072
  • Officeworks Bundoora; 1101-1181 Plenty Rd, Vic 3083
  • Bunnings Northland; corner Chifley Dr & Murray Rd, Preston, Vic 3072
  • Bunnings Maribyrnong; corner Rosamond Rd & White St, Maribyrnong, Vic 3032
  • Bunnings Hawthorn; 230 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn, Vic 3122
  • aToMik Green Cheltenham; Shop 2056, Level 2 Westfield Southland, Vic 3192

South Melbourne Commons, Sustainable Supermarket

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Friends of the Earth Australia have found a site for their pilot sustainable supermarket campaign. To be located at the old South Melbourne Catholic Primary School (next to the church of Fr Bob Maguire). The tentative name is South Melbourne Commons.

The site will feature, a cafe, food cooperative, grocery store & deli with a weekly Saturday Eco Market operation starting later in the year. Weekly workshops and community activities will be a common occurrence.

They’re looking for volunteers to help out with preparing the site.

Gardening Working Bee with BBQ & Beer – Sunday January 31st 10am – 3pm

Bring your shovel, fork and gloves as we get down and dirty in the garden. We’ll be weeding, mowing, slashing, cutting and removing some plants to make way for a host of future food production gardens. We’ll also need a slasher and lawn mower.

Demolition Day with BBQ & Beer – Sunday February 7th 10am – 3pm

Under guidance from experienced trades people, we’ll be cutting out internal walls, washing, filling gaps, painting, sweeping and getting the site ready for use. Everyone is welcome, but we would especially like people with trades skills and tools to contact us so we can be prepared.

Recycling CDs and DVDs

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Doesn’t seem as easy as I had hoped to find somewhere in Melbourne to recycle a stack of CDs and DVDs that I have no use for. Gram Destruction in Tullamarine look like the best option in Melbourne (and Victoria for that matter).

We recycle the discs, the cases, the cover and inserts, and any other booklets that may come with the disc. There is no need to separate discs from cases, or covers and inserts. All we ask you to do is to put them in boxes, shrink wrap and palatize them. We do the rest of the work for you. We will pay for the freight and also pay you a small fee (scrap value) for the discs.

You can bring your discs, etc. to our factory, or send them to us via post or courier.
Our factory address is:
Gram Destruction
Factory 4/46 Allied Drive
Tullamarine Vic 3043

Now, if only I could find a place to get rid of that stack of old floppy disks! [Update: They take them too!!]

Post Copenhagen Wrap

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There is so much around the interwebs in response to the end of the Copenhagen Summit (COP15) that it is a bit overwhelming to blog about. Those things of interest that I can still recall/find follow…

Yarra Climate Action Now Copenhagen Analysis

Crikey – Copenhagen coming to a close: the end’s a scary place to start

Mostly it’s too hard to find the words to describe how I feel about climate change. This is even more so here in Copenhagen. Yesterday at a talk by George Monbiot he pointed out that climate change is too benign to describe what’s happening to the world … it’s like describing an invasion as “unexpected visitors”. To be young and alive today is to witness our earth breaking and see our “leaders” demonstrate a spectacular failure of leadership. As Alex Steffen wrote, “to be young and aware today is to see your elders as cannibals with golf clubs”.

CPD – The Road from Copenhagen | Thinking Points

Larvatus Prodeo – After Copenhagen

Climate Action Centre – A Climate Con – Analysis of the “Copenhagen Accord”

John Quiggin – Glass Half Full Department

Crikey – Copenhagen’s nasty negotiations (Clive Hamilton)

One of the lessons we Australians learned was that the American supremacism that underpinned the foreign policy approach of the neo-cons was not a Bush thing. Nor was it a Republican thing. It is an American thing, and the Democrats are just as likely to treat the rest of the world as a bunch of pissants as their GOP rivals. Stern proved this as Copenhagen. With the election of Barack Obama, no new era dawned in America.

But if all of this is too bleak, there was one spark of light. At a business fair in Copenhagen last week, Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary, gave a Powerpoint presentation, one he had obviously given many times before.

He talked solely about technological possibilities, detailing the opportunities now opening up and the torrents of federal money being poured into the new energy industries. At the most senior levels, especially in the department of energy, the techno-geeks have taken over from the friends of the fossil fuel industry, and it is plain that, whatever happens to climate legislation in the US Congress or international treaties at Copenhagen, Obama appointees are going to use whatever levers they can to bring about a technological transformation in the eight years they have at the helm.

Crikey – Copenhagen: one, big, brutal reality check (Matthew Knott)

Copenhagen has offered the world a brutal reality check on the difficult road ahead in stopping runaway climate change. Perhaps, more than hope, that’s what we really needed anyway.