Archive for February, 2009
Weekly Round-up #7
What have we been talking about? What’s been happening in the world?
Eco Lesbo Vego
We discussed:
- Remembering to eat green for the planet – avoid the emo cows!
- Handy dandy ways to reuse your tea bags.
- The availabilty of retro Captain Planet episodes on the web-based Mother Nature network!
I also posted a vegan recipe - Lentil and Sunflower Seed Patties. It’s something new, and while it’s not something I’d want to eat all the time, it’s good for a change. Give it a try!
Environmental News from Australia and Around the World
Apparently the reason climate changes is not being taken seriously is because the media coverage is insufficient, says Dr Neil Gavin, from the School of Politics and Communication Studies at the University of Liverpool. Well, I know I’m not the media, but I’m doing my best! Read on!
The desalination plant at Tugan on the Gold Coast, Queensland, started work yesterday at 33% capacity. They say it will hit 100% within a few weeks. This should help if the drought turns around and gets worse again. The plant produces more than 40 million litres of water per day. I do wonder about the impact it has to the off-shore environment in the area.
A NASA satellite that was intended to monitor global warming plunged into the ocean near Antarctica yesterday, without ever entering orbit. You may remember the mention I made some weeks back of a Japanese satellite which was designed for the same purpose. NASA had spent some $280 million and more than four years aiming to do the same thing… with this as the result. There’s an evil part of me that wants to laugh. That part of me is clearly very evil. I actually think NASA is a good idea, I’m all for space exploration and I think encouraging that is a good thing. I don’t know that $280 million on a satellite is how I’d do that though. Maybe I’d spend that money on trying to develop a form of propulsion for spacecraft that didn’t involve rocket fuel. But hey, I’m no rocket scientist, so what do I know?
The Australian government has brought forward access to eligibility guidelines for the federally funded ceiling insulation scheme I spoke about in an earlier Weekly Round-up. Now home owners can check what kind of funding they can get to get the insulation, before the initiation date. This will hopefully avoid a massive backlog come the start-up date of July 01. The PM hopes this will stimulate the economy, decrease unemployment and positively impact the environment by better managing home cooling and heating.
Toyota thinks including blue highlights on their hybrid cars will make them seem cooler and ‘cutting edge’. This will encourage more people to buy them, because people are over being green. Hmm. I don’t know about anyone else, but I think I’d buy a hybrid car because it’s a hybrid car, not because it’s got bits of blue all over it. To each their own though…
Of course, there’s lots of other news. Did I miss anything particularly important? Leave a comment and let me know.
Friday Feast: Lentil Sunflower Seed Patties
This recipe is from The Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook. Yankee Elv made it for me for the first time last week and the patties were good. The colour reminds me a bit too much of meat, but otherwise, they’re quite nice. I particularly like the crunch of the sunflower seeds. They are a bit dry, so eat them with something – a salad, on a tortilla, or with salsa, guacamole or veges.
Lentil Sunflower Seed Patties
Lentil Sunflower Seed Patties
Ingredients
400g can brown lentils, rinsed and drained
1.5 tabs olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 carrot, finely chopped
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup wholegrain breadcrumbs
1 tab soy sauce
wholemeal plain flour, to dust
Method:
- Process lentils in a food processor until they resemble rough crumbs (or, as Yankee Elv says, one big mushball. You could mash with a fork instead of processing if you want).
- Heat 1/2 tab oil in a frying pan, then add the onion and cook until soft, over medium-heat (about 5 mins).
- Add the garlic and cook for 1 min more.
- Add the carrot and cook for 2 more mins.
- Place the onion mixture and the rest of the ingredients into a large bowl, then mix with your hands to combine.
- Shape into 4 flat patties and refrigerate for at least 2-3 hours (until firm).
- Once you’re ready to cook, dust each patty with flour and heat the remaining oil in a large frying pan, then add the patties and cook for 3-4 mins on each side (until golden brown).
- Remove and drain on large paper towels, then serve.
Recycle: Captain Planet!
I was out having dinner with my good friend Jho tonight (and Yankee Elv and Mr Teeny Bop) so it’s a quick update today. And kinda weird…
I heard that they (the mysterious they) are recycling Captain Planet!
Captain Planet and the Planeteers!
Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. That early 90s cartoon of eco-friendly doom! Goooooo PLANET! (My workmates and I have been using this slogan and the catchy theme song for a long time as a weird form of pep-talk. The office has always been quite GenY/GenX).
So apparently (I didn’t know this), they were going to make a Captain Planet movie, and the whole internet got super excited, but then it didn’t happen. So the web-based Mother Nature Network (who knew that existed!?) has released a bunch of Captain Planet episodes starting back from the first episode, and you can watch them whenever you want! You can watch that funny little Heart guy with the monkey again! Also, since everyone is so excited, now they’re actually talking about a Captain Planet movie for real.
Now, I must say, cubicle singing at work notwithstanding, I do not usually trawl the internet looking for Captain Planet fansites, but this information turned up in my RSS list and brought back so many memories. This show was the first environmentally focused show I ever remember watching (and it was really more aimed at kids my brother and sister’s age at the time, but that’s what happens when you’re the elder sibling – you watch these things long after your kiddy cartoon time is done and gone). It was good and the theme song was catchy. Heart kid cracked me up. I may have imagined, at the time, that if the Russian chick from the Soviet Union was a real human instead of a cartoon, she might have been cute, although since I didn’t really get the whole same-sex attraction thing back then, I don’t know if those thoughts were quite that well formed. These days, Gaia might be a bit more… adult (who knew that Whoopi Goldberg voiced her??)
Coming back from my tangent… Captain Planet and the Planeteers is pretty awesome. Cartoons like this have sparked off some really good events and groups, like the Captain Planet Foundation.
Anyway, totally going off on a tangent, but yeah – recycling eco-friendly tv cartoons for the win!
Reuse: Tea Bags
I’m Australian and I drink tea. All kinds. My favourite is rooibos and I also quite like green. Sometimes the girls at work will bring in some special blends (the last ones had black, green and rose, and rooibos, green and orange peel). If I’m stressed I drink chamomile. Jasmine and chrysanthemum are good too, and peppermint or lemon if I’ve got a cold. There’s a tea for every occasion. I only drink my tea with water – no sugar, no soy or oat milk.
Nerada's Rooibos with vanilla is my favourite kind of tea
Tea is a hot drink and the weather is getting cooler, so I’ll be drinking more and more of it as the year goes on, but that doesn’t matter really – here in Australia, we drink it year round.
You can get tea that doesn’t involve tea bags – loose leaf and things like that – but typically, I use tea bags. I don’t drink enough to worry about making a pot, and the mesh tea balls aren’t ideal for someone who typically brews tea in a hurry. The tea bags are kind of wasteful though, so I like to reuse them.
At work, my colleague and I make a cup of tea each using the same tea bag. At home, I put my used tea bag into a clean glass and set it aside on the bench to save for use in my next cup of tea, and sometimes the next after that. I don’t leave it too long though, or I think it would get manky. Sometimes Yankee Elv and I, and sometimes Mr Teeny-bop, share tea bags, but mostly we drink different kinds of tea so the glass of tea bags is well used. I guess you could put it in a glass jar with the lid on, but I don’t think it would be good to contain the moisture too much, and especially not for too long.
You can reuse the tea bags in other ways too. Cool, they are soothing on (closed) tired eyes. Apparently a chamomile tea bag is very soothing on freshly pierced skin and scars. And after you’ve finished with your tea bags, you can compost them, or even put them into your worm farm if you have one. They’re only paper and leaves – but be sure to buy local and organic (so I choose Nerada) if you can.
Spotlight: Don’t eat the emo cows
It’s been another long day at work, followed up by some drinks out with the girls (some days weeks months pretty much anytime you just need a few wines). I just don’t have it in me to do a long, well-researched post on some fascinating topic the way I normally would for a Spotlight post.
So here’s a little tidbit, a reminder to eat your greens to eat green. Check out this eating green calculator if you don’t believe me. Try different diets – omni, vege, vegan, others – and see what impact eating meat has on the environment. Then go try one of my Friday Feast recipes. You know you wanna.
On that note, I’m just going to leave you with just this one thought.
Weekly Round-up #6
What have we been talking about? What’s been happening in the world?
Eco Lesbo Vego
We discussed:
- Reducing your workload to allow you to keep up with your low impact life.
- Using your corporate resources to do business sustainably.
- The exciting news that you don’t need to scrub your recyclables clean before putting them in the recycling bin!
I also posted a vegan recipe – Avocado Dip. It’s made of versatile tastiness win!
Environmental News from Australia and Around the World
The Beijing Olympics improved the environment of the city more than anticipated according to a United Nations (UN) assessment released this week. The assessment of the Beijing Olympics outlines whether the environmental targets set down by the Olympic committee and the city were met or exceeeded. In almost every case, Beijing did better than expected, with fewer cars on the roads, more green spaces, less air pollution and a generally more livable city.
We may someday use solar energy to convert CO2 into fuel – and the technology to achieve this is already available. A team from Pennsylvania State University created the device they hope will reduce the effect of emissions on the global climate. The device is currently producing amounts of fuel that are too low to be practically used, but it’s at least a 20% improvement on the next most efficient version, and the team is already working on improvements. I think the idea is awesome – using renewable energy to create a renewable fuel that doesn’t just avoid creating pollution but actively reduces it? That’s my kind of invention.
The strong greenhouse effect over the Arctic is worsened by melting ice caps – something we always knew. New studies show, however, that it’s not just that the ice reflects heat out of the atmosphere better than sea water. Two other factors are also in play:
- More liquid H2O means a larger surface area from which water vapour (a greenhouse gas) can evaporate
- Water stores solar energy more readily than ice does, later releasing that heat into the lower atmosphere.
These three factors combine to make warming in the Arctic more severe than in other regions. I was surprised to note that the reflectivity of ice, while the most commonly cited reason, is not even the driving force behind Arctic warming.
Mobile phone manufacturers worldwide have agreed to a cross-industry standard that will ensure all mobile phone chargers are the same as of 2012. To make things even better, the new chargers will be more than twice as energy efficient as the current chargers. The universal nature of this charger means that you won’t have to chuck your old one next time you buy a new phone. While I’m sure new phones will still come with a new charger, so you’ll still have just as many as you did before, I’m pretty sure most people won’t throw the old one away, but continue to use it. How many of us were annoyed when Nokia updated its charger style for their new phones? Prior to that, everyone I knew with a Nokia had several identical chargers – one at home, one at work, one at Mum’s place… Now imagine that, for not just all Nokias, but all phones of any brand. How cool will that be? If your old charger dies, it will be much easier to pick up a second-hand one from someone who has an extra, too. I see a lot of Wanted posts on Freecycle for phone chargers. Some folks are all negative about why the telco companies haven’t done this before, but I’m choosing to focus on the positive – it’s awesome that a group of companies have banded together to make this possible, supposedly just for the environment and their customers.
The sharp drop in the price of used materials means that kerbside recycling is under threat, even here in Australia. Understandably, that’s got some people up in arms, but currently local councils are bearing the brunt of the cost, and it’s simply not sustainable. Some companies are currently stockpiling until the market improves, but other people are calling for the widening of the market for recyclable materials. Councils are suggesting that manufacturers be forced (through legislation) to sell consumables with less packaging. Gee, I’d have never though of that before! I don’t think kerbside recycling will be phased out without a big outcry from the public – after so many years of it here, we’re just too used to it. I remember how strange I found it to live in small-town Texas and not be able to just drop things into the recycling bin. With the increased awareness on the environment in recent years, people are going to be even less likely to be keen to give it up. Someone is going to have to legislate in a ‘less packaging’ law though, because I don’t see how else to combat the problems. And it stands to reason that the less used material there is, the higher demand will be and thus the higher the price. A ‘less packaging’ law might actually stimulate the industry.
Of course, there’s lots of other news. Did I miss anything particularly important? Leave a comment and let me know.
Friday Feast: Avocado Dip
This dip is yummy. It tastes good cold or warm as a dip in a bowl for chips or quesadillas, as a topping for a Mexican style pasta bake, on toast or as guacamole with any Mexican dish. Sometimes we make it without the veges (just avo, sugar, sweet chili sauce and vinegar) and it makes a great substitute for sour cream (which I’ve given up as another step on the way to veganism).
Seriously dudes, go for it. This is one of the most versatile and tasty foods Yankee Elv and I make.
Avocado Dip
Hot Avocado Salad
Ingredients:
3 medium avocadoes
1 medium tomato
4 not-bacon rashers (optional)
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 red capsicum, finely chopped
1 celery stick, finely chopped (optional)
2 tsps sugar
2 tsps sweet chilli sauce
2 tabs vinegar (I use brown vinegar, but it doesn’t really matter which one you prefer)
Method:
1. Cut avocadoes in half and remove seeds. Scoop out the flesh, put it in a bowl and mash or blend. We use a stick blender – it’s way more effective than mashing.
2. If you’re using it, cook the fake bacon until crisp and then chop finely.
3. Addtomato, onion, capsicum, celery and not-bacon (if using) to the bowl of avocado and combine.
4. Combine sugar, sweet chilli sauce and vinegar in a jar; shake well to mix.
5. Pour contents of jar over contents of bowl and mix well.
NOTE: If you increase the amount of ingredients, don’t forget to also increase the amount needed for the spicy sauce (sugar, sweet chilli sauce and vinegar) It’s a ratio of 1tsp:1tsp:1tab. You can also increase or decrease the amounts of the other ingredients depending on how much you want and how vegetable-y you want it.
Recycle: Cleaning your Recyclables
I’m trying to get back into the swing or writing regular posts after an unplanned almost week off. Work is still ugh, but today I escalated some stuff that has been a concern for a while, and it does feel good to get it off my chest and also no longer be potentially accountable for any wrongdoing. That is really good. Today I even had time to empty the work recycling bin. Yay!
Recycle - even the dirty stuff!
On the topic of recycling, I found out last week that you don’t have to have perfectly clean recyclables. This is a good thing, because the people at work cannot rinse the milk bottles out to save themselves. It’s also good for me at home though, because even though I rinse my soy milk cartons, this means I don’t have to spend ages and waste water scraping peanut butter from inside the jar (although Loodle the hungry puppy often helps me with that anyway).
So yeah – rinse, but don’t do so to the point where it really wastes water. The recycling gods are not going to reject your items cos they’re a bit nasty.
(Re)Use: Resources
While not an environmental concern per se, today I was flat out doing some work stemming from my trip last week. I was pretty frustrated and very tired and it got me thinking… I wouldn’t have to be doing this bloody work if someone from Melbourne had attended instead of me! I went on a trip to Perth the week before already and there were people at work who could have gone instead of me! Whinge whinge whinge bitch bitch bitch. Hello everyone, you can call me Groucho Marx, emphasis on the Groucho. I’ll also answer to Oscar.
Did I mention I was/am very tired? My eyes are seriously drooping as I type this even now. I’m not that much of a whinger normally, and I generally actually like work trips as I get to explore the country on the company dollar. I had one day’s notice this time though, so it was a bit much, really. I had to miss my workmate’s going-away party.
Me overlooking the Indian Ocean in Perth on my last work trip
Anyway, I thought about it some more and then I felt a bit crap, because in this instance, the Melbourne staff member who was supposed to attend was unable to due to stuff with the bushfires, which is why it was a bit of an emergency (read very short notice) that I go. But still – pain in the arse, although fair enough.
Throughout all my mental ranting and bitching though, I thought of these key – and environmentally friendly – points that made me feel a little bit better.
- My attendance (Brisbane to Melbourne) was better than flying the most appropriate person over from India. At least the travel was domestic.
- It was better to fly little old me to Melbourne than it would have been to fly 26 other people north to Brisbane. One versus the many.
- There was really no way to run this event via telecommuting or the company would have done it.
So for all my complaining, maybe my company did use their resources wisely, albeit mostly from a financial perspective (cheaper travel). The environmental impact is there nonetheless, but at least it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
I still wish I hadn’t been at work until 6:45pm today. That’s so not cool. Bah environmentally-friendly humbug.
And I was so busy I forgot to empty the work recycling bin. Oops. The director will give me a gentle reminder if I don’t do it first thing tomorrow. The things we do…
Reduce: Workload
Work is busting my chops this week. And the week before. And the week before that. I had an unexpected trip to Melbourne last week and am now dealing with the work stemming from that. It’s crazy.
So the reduce post for today- reduce work. I need to reduce work. We all need to reduce work. Why?
When we’re so busy working for big companies, or little companies, or in small self-owned enterprise or whatever, we don’t have time for ourselves, we don’t have time for our families and we don’t have time for the environment.
This week, in an environmental sense, I have not had time to:
- Check my local Freecycle group for second-hand stuff
- Hunt for a second-hand computer plug since ours broke
- Think of a way to re-use some empty tins rather than recycle them
- Get the mower blades sharpened, which means I can’t mow the lawn, which means when I can mow the lawn it will be too long to mow with the push mower, which means we’ll have to use the whipper snipper, which is electric
- Get enough sleep so I wake up to get the bus to work (so Yankee Elv has been driving me)
- Create my compost bin
- Clean out my plant pots and start some herbs growing
- Tidy up my garden so I can plant some veges
- Write in this blog
- Sort out my time off so we can do some more local travel
- Work out a new system to take my lunch to work that doesn’t involve the use of plastic bags
- Register for Clean Up Australia day at work – which I helped organise!
That pisses me off. I want time for these things. I definitely want more time for my family. Any ideas on how I should manage this?
Recent Comments