Dr Peter Fisher writes about desalination plant alternatives for Melbourne's water woes in The Age today. The article title "Big solutions for our water needs will use more energy" explains the energy hungry nature of desalination plants and puts forward some innovative alternatives to water production.
The NSW Government has extended rebates for solar hot water systems rain water and tanks until 2011. You can now claim up to $2,800 solar hot water systems and $2,000 for rainwater tanks, through a combination of state and federal rebates.
Check out the NSW Dep't Environment & Climate Change website .
Apple had just released what their claiming to be the most energy efficient desktop PC in the world. The new green Mac Mini uses 45% less energy at idle than it's predecessor using just 13 Watts per hour. Apple are also touting the following green PC stats:
- FR-free
- PVC-free (internal cables)
- Highly recyclable aluminium and polycarbonate enclosure
- Meets ENERGY STAR Version 5.0 requirements
- Rated EPEAT Gold
All these eco friendly improvements have not had an adverse effect on performance. Your new mean green Mac Mini can come with up to 320Gb hard disk, 4Gb RAM and comes with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor giving 5 faster graphics performance.
Given that I'm a recent Mac convert, I'm drouling! For more info, check out the new Green Mac Mini pages at Apple.
AVG Australia has started a campaign to encourage as many website owners as they can to add a Victorian Bushfire Red Cross Appeal donation button to their website.
If you're a webmaster, or can get in the ear of a web site owner, please encourage them to participate in this important campaign.
For more details visit the Red Cross Donation Button page at AVG.
Australian university students with something "eco" on their minds are being asked to step forward with their ideas on sustainable energy solutions for the 2009 Bayer-UNEP Eco-Minds Forum, and be in with a chance to represent Australia at an International Forum in Auckland, New Zealand.
In partnership with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the Bayer Eco-Minds program aims to foster awareness, thirst and passion for the environment amongst students from across the Asia Pacific region. In return, the winning students receive an all expenses paid trip to Auckland for the opportunity to present their ideas and participate in solution-orientated group work, cross-cultural activities and knowledge sharing in a bid to tackle real-life sustainable development issues.
In Australia, the initiative is being supported by leading environmentalist Jon Dee who believes the Eco-Minds Forum is an ideal opportunity for students to put their passion to good use.
"What better way for young Aussie students to get their suggestions for sustainable energy solutions out there," says Dee. "Eco-Minds provides the perfect forum for tomorrow's leaders to exchange ideas with each other in a proactive, pan-Asia effort to make a very real difference to the future of our environment, today."
2009 will see the third bi-annual Eco-Minds Forum take place. At the 2007 Forum in Thailand, university students Rachel Cain from the University of Adelaide, Laura Joseph from the University of Western Sydney and Eric Knight from Sydney University represented Australia when the best minds from across Asia Pacific came together to explore real-life issues and sustainable development ideas for fresh water supply.
Rachel Cain, who has been involved with the Youth Environment Council of South Australia, as both a member and mentor, and has completed voluntary work in Central America, says:
"Eco-Minds has helped to fast track my career by providing me with an unforgettable experience to work alongside students from across the region to try and solve issues of sustainability that affect all of us.
"Each student brought their own knowledge and skill-set which helped fuel the discussion and ideas and allowed each of us to learn so much from each other. It's opened up doors for me and I've created some wonderful friendships." said Ms Cain.
The 2009 Eco-Minds Youth Forum will focus on a topic that is of growing importance to the world - Sustainable Energy Systems: Challenges and Opportunities. As part of the week-long event, participants will look at some of the challenges around energy supply, including climate change, and the practical solutions that can overcome such challenges with a visit to New Zealand's hydro and geothermal supply systems.
For those "eco-minded" students who have ever seen something and thought "I could do it better", this is their chance. The Bayer-UNEP Eco-Minds is open to all university students aged 18-24 years with delegates from Singapore, Thailand, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, India, Indonesia and China attending.
For entry details and application forms, students can log on to
www.eco-minds.bayer.com, or contact the Australian Eco-Minds Co-ordinator on
(02) 4736 0892. Entries close on 28 March 2009.
It's great to see businesses tackle environmental issues in new and innovative ways. Ripple Products manages to combine form and function with their array of water saving products.
Ripple specialising in products that align themselves with educational and environmental messages. The range of products available from Ripple Products includes various styles of Digital Shower Timers, Sand Timers, Water-saving Buckets and Enviro-tips.
Recent accolades include winning the 2007 Telstra Business Awards - Victorian Australian Government Micro Business Award and the 2007 Telstra Business Women's Awards - Victorian Australian Government Innovation Award. Australian Anthill Magazine also recognized Ripple Products by being placed in their 2007 Top 50 'Cool Company Awards' also winning their Flying Solo Award for success in business.
Check out the Ripple Products website for more info.
In this day and age of environmental awareness I find it difficult to swallow the Vicrtorian governments conviction that large scale desalination plants are the best solution to our water crisis. Converting salt water to fresh water by means of a desalination plant plant is a highly inefficient way of creating fresh water.
High energy use and consequent high greenhouse gas emissions are the major issue with desalination that need to be addressed. A plant similar to Perth's, even with energy recovery capability, will consume about 24 megawatts of electricity to produce about 45 gigalitres of water per year. This represents about 185,000 megawatt hours of energy per year. - Desalination Report
According to an Environment Victoria report, rainwater tanks are five times more energy efficient than desalination plants, and if fitted to all suitable houses in Melbourne could save up to 84 billion liters of water a year.
Professor Pat Troy's book titles "Troubled Waters", writes that mandatory rainwater tanks, greywater recycling and drycomposting toilets in all new homes would cut potable water use in those homes by 70%.
Personally I agree with making water tanks mandatory in all new homes in Melbourne and Victoria and hope that the Victorian governement decides to put these measures in place before buidling a desalination plant.
We recently launched Australia's fist Rain Water Tanks Directory website. The Water Tanks Directory currently list water tank suppliers in most major Australian capital cities including Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. If you're looking to install a rain water tank in your home, check out the water tank directory for your nearest rain water tank supplier.
It's good to see an Australian wesbsite hosting services catching on to green website hosting. Digital pacific is offering green website hosting in Australia (aff).
Everything that Digital Pacific uses in the operations of our business, including servers, routers and air conditioners are eco powered so not only are you hosting your website on state of the art hardware you are also showing your commitment to a more sustainable world.
The purchase of Digital Pacific hosting services will be equivalent to planting several acres of trees or removing several cars from the road. We have calculated our carbon footprint (emissions) which represent the impact of everything that Digital Pacific uses in the operations of our business, including the hosting servers, routers and air conditioners. In order to neutralise these emissions we have purchased carbon credits to offset emissions.
Digital Pacific's has two data centers, one here in Australia, the other in the states. All orders are automatically hosted at the Australian data center unless otherwise requested. Hosting plans start from just $4.90 per month.
If you're interested in greening your website (aff), checkout Digital Pacific.
Every year, each Australian throws away 145 kg of food. As a nation, that is over $5 billion worth of food items. For every 5 bags of groceries a person buys a week, 1 of those goes straight in the rubbish bin. That's almost 20% of the food Australians purchase. In Victoria and South Australia, 40% of what people throw out is food. In Sydney, the statistics are even more alarming - 50% of bin contents are food waste.
It is for this reason that Notebook: magazine has teamed up with Planet Ark founder, Jon Dee, to launch the Stop Food Waste! campaign in its September issue. The purpose of this campaign is to raise awareness and serve up the practicalities of dealing with an issue that has global and personal, financial implications.
"Food waste in this country is an environmental and financial disaster," says Notebook: magazine Editor Caroline Roessler. "In an economic climate of rising fuel costs and interest rates, not to mention disastrous food shortages in the Third World and the enormous environmental implications, throwing away good food seems like utter madness."
Please check out the STOP FOOD WASTE website to learn more about this issue and post your ideas on how Australians can minimize the amount of food that is wasted.