Struggling to think of a present for someone who has everything? Here are some lovely ideas that are also green and sustainable. First up, tickets (or a gift voucher) for a theatre, concert or an arts venue. After all, who doesn’t enjoy an evening out? Alternatively, a year’s membership of a favourite organisation. One lovely option for people in Dublin, is to become a friend of the National Gallery of Ireland.  It costs €65 (individual) /€80 (family), and includes a year long programme of talks and other events. How about a plant from your garden? Or the offer of an… Read More »

Fancy meeting some like-minded souls, or networking with other green thinkers and green businesses? If you’re in Dublin next Tuesday evening (November 3rd) then why not come along to the Science Gallery for this month’s Green Drink (6-8pm). Green Drinks is an international movement, providing an informal space where people interested in the environment can meet to exchange ideas and information. The Dublin event has been meeting for a year or so, on the 1st Tuesday of each month. It’s a very friendly gathering, organised by Jarrod from LeafLiving.com, and all are welcome.  Don’t worry about not knowing anyone —… Read More »

Would you like a quick and free way to ‘green’ your electricity? The trick is simply to change when we use electricity. And especially, now that winter evenings are on the way, to avoid the electricity ‘rush hour’ of 5-7 p.m. Let me explain . . . Electricity consumption in Ireland rose so much over recent years — all those new homes, all those new appliances, all those switched-on lives — that demand has almost outstripped supply, and new power plants are planned. (Although Eirgrid’s latest report shows demand down 6% on last year as the recession bites.) Demand is… Read More »

Plarn,  or plastic yarn. One day you’ve never heard of it, next day it’s everywhere. Lately, I’ve become interested in crafty ways of transforming rubbish, and especially plastic rubbish, into useful things and even attractive presents. One of the simplest tricks I’ve discovered is making plarn from  lengths of plastic carrier bags. It is amazingly quick and easy to do, and would be perfect for kids and school projects.   I’ve posted a little ‘how to’ note here with a link to an excellent 2-minute YouTube video tutorial. Once you’ve made your plarn (a matter of minutes only), you can knit,… Read More »

Making plarn, or plastic yarn, couldn’t be simpler. it’s perfect for kids, and would be great for school projects to use up plastic bags. (I’ve written more about it here, and what you can make from it.) The only tool you need is a scissors, plus of course a pile of plastic bags. And it takes just a few minutes. All you need is a scissors. Simply fold the bags and cut into strips. And that’s it! Here is a 2-minute simple YouTube tutorial that shows you how Once you’ve made a sufficient length of plarn, you can knit, crochet… Read More »

What could be nicer than always having a big bowl of fresh, organic probiotic yoghurt ready in the fridge. Making it is easy-peasy and I usually do it while having breakfast. It’s half the price of commercial stuff, and because it has fewer ingredients, it has fewer ‘food miles’ as well.  What could be better. If you’ve made yogurt before, you probably bought some commercial live yogurt to start, and then saved a fwe scoops from each batch to start the next until, after a few goes, it lost its potency and you had to start again with fresh shop-bought… Read More »

We’re talking rubbish, here, folks! In particular, how to make yoghurt plastic tubs disappear with a little ‘pixie dust’ — about which, more in a minute. The small bag  pictured here, weighing just 128 g, is  pretty impressive: it’s all the rubbish that one English family threw out in one week.  Admittedly, it took them time and effort to reduce their rubbish to this small amount  — not least, becoming familiar with all the different types of plastic that can (and can’t) be recycled. The whole weight-reduction story is told in their blog, The Rubbish Diet — well worth reading… Read More »

What’s a green building?  One covered in solar panels and bristling with turbines?  One that proclaims its greenness by looking different?  One that costs 15% more than a ‘conventional’ building? For British architect Howard Liddell, the answer is none of the above. At a one-day symposium on sustainability in TCD recently, Liddell outlined his ideal green building: it looks conventional, costs no more to build, but is so well insulated and airtight that there is almost no need for heating, and certainly no need for what he calls “eco-bling”. The main problem, as he sees it, is that technologies are… Read More »

Each week brings some new technological idea for ‘fixing’ the world’s rising CO2 problem. Such as capturing the gas and storing (sequestering) it underground or on the ocean floor. These ideas often strike me as far fetched, costly, and difficult, and I can’t help thinking it would be simpler, cheaper and quicker to find ways of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. But one ingenious idea caught my eye this week. It comes from Iceland where, let’s face it, they need a little good news these days. CarbFix plans to turn CO2 into stone. Powered by Iceland’s unlimited geothermal energy, they… Read More »

Like many people, I’m a wee bit sceptical about the forthcoming ban on the old incandescent lightbulb, and the switch to CFLs. Call me old fashioned, but CFLs contain toxic mercury (albeit in small amounts, but here are the EPA guidelines on handling a broken CFL), and it seems to me we would simply be swopping one problem for another.  CFLs are also more complex to manufacture, and therefore start with a bigger eco-footprint than a conventional bulb. Plus, improved LEDs (already in use for traffic lights and bicycle lamps) will soon be ready for domestic use, and could be… Read More »

A motorised fork, the digital electronic skipping rope, and the Nintendo Wii-Fit are among the winners of this year’s Landfill Prize. You may remember this award for “the cleverest rubbish”, from an earlier post of mine. Founded by writer John Naish, author of Enough, it highlights products we really don’t need, most of them with superfluous electronics and batteries.  Like that electronic skipping rope, for instance. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a great believer in technology, but in the right place at the right time. These prize winners, however, include products that truly deserve their place on the scrap… Read More »

Imagine a new power plant at the mouth of the Shannon, generating clean electricity . . . not from the waves or the tides, nor from the flow of water, but driven by the salt in the surrounding sea. And as a bonus, the system doesn’t disturb the estuary’s environment or get in the way of shipping traffic. How might this be done? By osmosis! A pilot power plant will be opened shortly near Oslo, and the electricity will be generated by harnessing the osmotic difference between fresh and salty water. According to a recent survey of this innovative technology… Read More »

This inert looking material (photo, left) could soon lead to improved rechargeable batteries. Ones that are lighter than existing ones, 100 times faster to charge and giving dramatically faster acceleration in electric cars. The new substance, created by scientists at MIT, is a re-engineered form of the material already used in lithium-ion batteries, and so it could make it to the market quite soon. Current re-chargeable Li-ion batteries are sluggish to charge and discharge (the latter explains why electric cars don’t have great acceleration). Materials scientists at MIT, led by Prof Gerbrand Ceder, have studied the structure of Li-ion batteries… Read More »

Diesel or petrol? Bioethanol or used chip oil? How about wind-generated electricity? And if so, how many wind turbines would it take to power all the cars and trucks in the USA? In the early days of motoring there was no network of petrol stations, and drivers had to carry extra fuel with them.  Yet slowly, as more cars took to the roads, demand increased and a network developed. Today, the lack of similar networks for alternative fuels — hydrogen, say, or charging stations and battery exchanges for electric cars — is often cited as an obstacle for switching from… Read More »

 Modern life has become so complicated that it is often hard to know what is the right, green thing to do. For instance, which is better for the environment: tomatoes grown in Spain and transported to Ireland, or tomatoes grown here in heated greenhouses? To tackle this complexity, researchers and companies are putting considerable effort into ‘carbon counting’ , to give us answers in the form of simple numbers.  Answers we can then use to reduce our carbon footprint. For the last two years, I’ve been researching and compiling a new practical guide to green living, and if I learned… Read More »

What do you think should win the Landfill Prize? What product most deserves to be binned? Plug-in air fresheners? Pre-filled, disposable wine glasses? Electronic nail files?? Or how about a battery-powered electronic skipping rope? The batteries in the handles mean this gizmo will count your skips for you. Hope Santa didn’t bring you one for Christmas! Writer John Naish thinks it’s time to cry Enough! And to coincide with his new book — Enough: breaking free from the world of more – he’s created the new Landfill Prize, and he’s inviting you to nominate the product that most deserves to… Read More »

It’s clean, green, and got a mean design. It’s the world’s first biodegradable PC — and it’s Irish. Dublin company, MicroPro Computers, has been building long-life, low-energy, upgradeable, updatable, recyclable computers for many years. Now, they have designed and produced a biodegradable machine, built with wood panels manufactured from waste lumber and pulp products. They’ve even implanted the seeds of native tree species into the wood panels, so that if the machines are ever landfilled (though surely no one would do that?), they could regenerate as saplings. The new iameco (‘I am eco’) PC, uses one-third less energy than a… Read More »

Right. Lets put on our recycled thinking caps, and see if we can’t come up with some inventive, maybe even money-generating ideas for the growing waste-paper mountain. First the background, in case you haven’t been following the story: the ‘recession’ means people are buying less (which could be a good thing). Means less demand for manufactured goods and packaging. Means less demand for waste paper to make into cardboard (especially in China, which took most of our waste paper until now). Means all that waste paper we are recycling is now being stockpiled in Ireland, at considerable cost (surely a… Read More »

Plasma TVs are power-hungry monsters (and if the minister was serious about cutting our energy use, he’d ban them, along with the old lightbulbs). But if you felt virtuous when you opted to buy a flat screen LCD instead, think again. Link to this post!

The sudden arrival of winter this week coincided with a campaign in Britain to introduce more snakes. B&Q joined in — selling them for £1. For those who grew up with the luxury of central heating, these ‘snakes’ used to be essential pieces of winter kit: stuffed against the bottom of a door to keep out the cold air, in the days when we heated only the room we were in. Link to this post!