Food miles.

When you drive your car home from down the road with some asparagus, ginger or other fruit and veg it may be th end of quite a long journey for those items. A lot of machinery may have brought you to those vegetables. Tractors, trucks, aeroplanes, more trucks then your little car driving it home for tea. Many foods travel halfway round the planet to get to us, including those things that we consider 'fresh'.
Supermarkets now have to label the country of origin on their fresh produce shelves. This gives us the chance to choose whether we want to buy food that has used a ridiculous amount of fossil fuels before they were delivered to our local store, such as asparagus from Argentina or garlic from China and Mexico.
By electing to buy locally grown fruit and vegetables you will be reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from transport vehicles and supporting your local economy. The food will be heaps fresher too as it will have generally only been picked a day or so earliler.
Next time you go shopping have a look at where things are from; you could be suprised.

Environmentally smart driving tips.

Smarter driving tips.

Pump up to cut down
Under inflated tyres create more resistance when your car is moving, which means your engine has to work harder, so more fuel is used and more CO2 emissions are produced. Simply check and adjust your tyre pressures regularly and also before long journeys. This will also help to increase the life of your tyres. Under inflated tyres increase CO2 but over inflated tyres can be unsafe so check your car manual for the correct tyre pressure. Remember, a car with a heavier load may need different air pressure in the tyres.

Less clutter in your car means less CO2
Clutter in your boot is extra weight your engine has to lug around. By removing it, you could reduce your engine's workload. This will burn less fuel and cut your CO2 emissions so unload any items you won't need for your journey before you set out.

Driving at an appropriate speed reduces CO2
Speed limits are the maximum lawful speeds which may be driven in ideal circumstances. Drivers should never exceed the speed limit. Staying at or within the speed limit increases driver safety. It also reduces CO2 emissions and saves money on your petrol costs. At 70mph you could be using up to 9% more fuel than at 60mph and up to 15% more fuel than at 50mph.

Less stopping and starting means less CO2
Every time you stop then start again in a traffic queue, the engine uses more fuel and therefore produces more CO2. Keep an eye on the traffic ahead and slow down early by gently lifting your foot off the accelerator while keeping the car in gear. In this way, the traffic may have started moving again by the time you approach the vehicle in front, so you can then change gear and be on your way.

Over revving accelerates emissions
Modern car engines are designed to be efficient from the moment they are switched on, so revving up like a Formula 1 car in pole position only wastes fuel and increases engine wear.

Using your gears wisely by changing up a gear a little earlier can also reduce revs. If you drive a diesel car try changing up a gear when the rev counter reaches 2000rpm. For a petrol car change up at 2500rpm.

Idling is wasting fuel
When the engine is idling you're wasting fuel and adding to CO2 emissions. If you're likely to be at a standstill for more than 3 minutes, simply switch off the engine.

Shamelessly swiped from : http://www.dft.gov.uk/ActOnCO2/?q=tips_and_advice

These Come From Trees.

A guy in the US has created these nifty stickers for putting onto paper towel dispensers to raise folks' awareness about how much paper they are using to wipe their hands.
I bought a bunch and will be gladly sticking them about the place.
Great simple idea.
Check out the blog here.
http://thesecomefromtrees.blogspot.com/

My first visit to the FERN site.

In it's previous incarnation, the rectangle of land at the corner of Montreal and High Streets, Fremantle was an organically based garden centre. We sold manures, plants, open-pollinated seeds and seedlings, along with a few other odds and sods.
It closed down suddenly and dramatically a few years ago; the locals were aghast.
Deep in debt, there was a sale of anything on site.
That scene, of people tearing the place apart, digging plants up, basically ransacking the place made me cry at the time, seeing all these strangers (I didn't recognise one of the 'seagulls' as prior customers) tearing the place apart.
It had been such a beautiful concept for a shop and place to live my ideals of sharing my knowledge of permaculture and organics.

FERN have been doing lots of good work there. Still I hadn't been to check out what they did with the place..
Last night, I finally visited. It was sparse, no pots anywhere, the ponds and their reeds were all gone, most of the fruit trees were gone, but I could see the hard work that has gone into the place.
We went out the back to the shadehouse area. That's where I felt the most sadness. I'd grown lots of things in there. Some things grew themselves-like the 3 metre tall powton that came up from a root cutting that escaped from its pot.
Some of the good folk from Rocky Bay had been employed potting up plants for sale on site. We had grown some useful plants out there.
Now it stands completely empty. I'd like to get in there and grow lots of plants; all the things I don't have room for at home!

There was a talk about Ecological Engineering, including the use of algal photobioreactors, which can be part of a cycle that cleans water used by industry.
It was a very exciting and inspiring talk, and if I can get my head around the maths and chemistry at uni, I'd be interested in checking it out further.
I knew it would have t be something pretty special to get me back to that site, and the talk was excellent.
So was the vegan nosh-up afterwards!