Reduce
Video: The Light Bulb Conspiracy
Documentary on planned obsolescence (2010)
[ Hat tip to Green Communities Canada! ]
Video: Disposability Consciousness
Environmental & social justice activist Julia Butterfly Hill shows how our belief that we are separate from the whole has created a disposability consciousness.
10 Tips for a Zero-Waste Household
Yes! Magazine / Bea Johnson / 14 September 2011
A few years ago, my husband and I decided that we wanted a better world for our two boys, now 10 and 11 years old. We embarked on a journey to do our part for the environment: My husband quit his job to join a sustainability start-up; I tackled the home.
I started by adopting reusable water bottles and shopping totes, but slowly took it further by replacing disposables with reusables (toilet paper excluded), shopping in bulk with cloth bags, bringing glass containers to the store for wet items (meat, deli, fish, cheese, oil...), and even testing more extreme ideas, like shampooing with baking soda and vinegar for 6 months. A year's worth of our household solid waste now fits in a quart size jar.
What we discovered along the way is that the benefits of the zero-waste lifestyle go well beyond the obvious environmental impact. It has not only made us healthier (since the healthiest foods do not come packaged), but it has also saved us a great deal of money. Most importantly, we now have more time to do the things that matter most to us, like spending it with our kids.
We find that we have become a closer and happier family in the process. We have found balance without compromising our goals, aesthetics, or sanity. Zero-waste living is on auto-pilot.
Conservation: There Is No Alternative
Post Carbon Institute / Richard Heinberg / 25 July 2011
Energy conservation is our best strategy for pre-adapting to an inevitably energy-constrained future. And it may be our only significant option for averting economic, social, and environmental ruin.
The world will face limits to energy production in decades ahead regardless of the energy pathway chosen by policy makers. Consider the two extreme options—carbon minimum and carbon maximum.
Montreal: International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas
Twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio, the linkage of sustainable development to economic growth requires profound rethinking. It has not offered a convincing solution to one of the most dramatic crises in history: how to avert ecological collapse while enhancing social justice and improving life’s prospects. In advance of Rio plus 20, our Conference seeks to challenge and move beyond the sustainable development agenda. A degrowth perspective will help us visualize and build towards a truly prosperous world.
Healthier Spring Cleaning Workshop
The Brockville Museum invites you to learn how to make your own cleaning products. Not only are these products more ‘green’ they are also healthier for your family.
Stephanie Summers, author and cancer survivor will lead this interactive workshop.
Cost: $10 (includes all supplies and refreshments)
REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Contact Amy Whitehorne, 613.342.4397 or awhitehorne@brockville.com
Collaborative Consumption: Some Examples
Collaborative Consumption describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping reinvented through network technologies on a scale and in ways never possible before.
Product Service Systems
Pay for the benefit of using a product without needing to own the product outright.
Redistribution Markets
Redistribute used or pre-owned goods from where they are not needed to somewhere or someone where they are.
Collaborative Lifestyles
It’s not just physical goods that can be shared, swapped, and bartered. People with similar interests are banding together to share and exchange less tangible assets such as time, space, skills, and money.
