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May 2012

Award for most sickening press release of the year

The Guardian, Ecover and National Grid – yuck. Lucy Siegle – yuck yuck. This sort of thing makes any sincere environmentalist want to go and cut down a tree:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The winners of the 2012 Observer Ethical Awards, in association with Ecover, were announced at a ceremony last night in London hosted by the Observer’s ethical living correspondent and TV presenter, Lucy Siegle, alongside the awards celebrity judges and sponsors.

The Observer Ethical Awards are now in their seventh year of celebrating the projects, businesses, ideas, campaigns and activists making sustainable change a reality.

The list of winners include:

Sport
Dartford Football Club
Dartford Football Club, an ethical stadium with water recycling, bike racks, grass roof and solar panels. The judges felt it was a great project that engaged with a hard to reach community.

Ecover Ethical Kids
Fact Fashion
Fact Fashion draws attention to issues, like the conservation of scarce resources to changing behaviours, by producing fashion items that display the powerful numbers associated with these problems. The judges felt it was different from any other awards entry they had seen before.

Local Hero sponsored by The Body Shop
Dr S Oliver Natelson
Dr S Oliver Natelson is a community campaigner that has worked for over 30 years supporting the local wood and nature reserve in Barnet. The judges felt that he is the definition of a hero, incredibly inspiring and informative.

Grassroots Projects sponsored by Timberland
Climate Change Schools Project
The Climate Change Schools Project (CCSP), based in Durham, is a not-for-profit-project that puts climate change at the heart of the national curriculum.

Business initiative sponsored by Jupiter Asset Management
Ecotricity
Ecotricity is a green energy company and supplier and generator of eco electricity and gas and the judges felt that what it is doing will change the energy world.

Blog sponsored by environmentguardian.co.uk
DfID – Hannah Ryder
A blog from a UK civil servant showing how economics, poverty and action to avoid climate change and to protect the environment in developing countries relates to real life. The judges felt that Hannah’s blog was well written, talked about important topics and was an effective way of sharing information.

Arts and Culture sponsored by Festival Republic
When China met Africa
A film highlighting the new problems associated with the Chinese expansion in Africa. The judges felt that the power of the film is that is does not make any judgments – it raises a lot of issues and questions but leaves it to viewer to make their own decisions.

Big Idea sponsored by National Grid
SafetyNet
The SafetyNet is a new trawling system that cuts down on the catch and subsequent discarding of juvenile and endangered fish. The judges felt that although this project was still in the very early stage it was one of the most important ideas the world is going to see.

Fashion & …

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Community

Hare Krishna UK Eco Farm

A group of Hare Krishna monks in Scotland are pioneering a new sustainable community.

The project, called the Krishna Eco Farm, is based at an eight-acre farm in Lesmahagow, South Lanarkshire, and includes wind turbines, air source heat pumps, solar thermal panels and a biomass boiler.

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Solar Kindle

Keep reading on the move, when hiking, or a long sea journey.

This winner of a Consumer Electronics Show innovation award for 2012 is a first of its kind — a solar-powered e-reader cover. It’s not cheap but for Kindle devotees who want to be able to read late in the night while they’re on a camping trip or otherwise away from a charger, the SolarKindle promises to deliver three months of reading time under normal sunlight conditions without drawing on the Kindle’s battery.

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Food

Vancouver preppers get their own store

For Vancouver residents who want to eliminate the global industrial food complex from their diet, help is on the way. Rick Havlak’s Homesteader’s Emporium, is a new store set to open in June servicing aspiring beekeepers, permaculture growers, home brewers, cheesemakers, disaster survivalists, backyard egg farmers, and front porch food growers will find equipment, ingredients and tools as well as practical advice.
The 1,700-square-foot store-front will offer a range including beehives and honey extractors, chicken coops, cider presses, food dehydrators, vertical small-space growing systems and home cheesemaking supplies for what Havlak believes is a burgeoning market of organic food purists, sustainable lifestylers and post-apocalyptic preppers.

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People

NBC to air off-grid drama series

Prolific writer-producer JJ Abrams is behind the new series Revolution – a post-apocalyptic off-grid drama to air on NBC in a late-evening Monday slot – See series summary below.
The multiple award-winning writer directed and wrote the two-part pilot for Lost and remained active producer for the first half of the season. That same year he made his feature directorial debut in 2006 with Mission: Impossible III, starring Tom Cruise.

If trailer does not appear above click here to see.

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Mobile

Samsung solar computers imminent

A decision by Samsung to sell solar powered laptops in Bangladesh at low prices could be the first of  a new generation.  For mobile users and those living without utility power in the West, the 3G products could give long-term Internet access on the remotest mountaintop.

In a display of cultural ineptitude, the Seoul based company with an annual turnover of more than $220 billion says it will launch the new product next month, right at the start of the Bangladesh monsoon season which  would make solar powered portables unusable.

Samsung had announced plans last year for a solar powered laptop to be launched (improbably) in Russia. But this product has yet to appear. The new development seems more realistic as part of a strategy to target the young professional market among the 160 million Bangla population.

“We will launch solar notebooks in June for young professionals,” said Choon Soo Moon, managing director of Samsung Electronics (Bangladesh operations), in an interview with Dhaka’s Daily Star.

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Free solar in Wales

Looking for free solar power and live in North Wales?

Farms and rural businesses without mains electricity in Conwy, a costal community at the tip of Snowdonia National Park North Wales, are being invited to take apply for free solar power installation in a trial funded by the local government. 

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Food

Williams-Sonoma move into urban homestead market

Urban homesteading, growing or raising a portion of your own food, has become so fashionable that upscale cookware company Williams-Sonoma introduced the Agrarian collection, a line of tools and supplies for activities ranging from beekeeping to cheese making, delivered to 75 countries.

Photos of gardening beds thick with leafy greens, heirloom chickens strutting around picturesque coops and shiitake mushrooms growing on a log make the homesteading life look beautiful and delicious, while also playing down the hard-work aspect of these chores-turned-hobbies. Copper gardening tools are so shiny and pretty they seem more like rustic decorations for a farm-to-table restaurant than tools for working in the dirt.

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Energy

Commodities forecast – food, oil, farmland prices to slump

Commodities Trader Peter Brandt sees lower oil prices; bubble in grains, farmland

Brandt is a technical trader, poring over charts and patterns to spot potential breakouts and breakdowns. Nowadays he’s bearish on corn and other grains, along with farmland, oil and natural gas.

“When you look at those markets, I think we’re at prices that are unsustainable.” said Brandt, who also writes a popular Internet blog about trading commodities and stocks. Read Peter Brandt’s blog.

Gold is one of the few commodities Brandt is staying long on. He also said the U.S. stock market is attractively valued, and warns of a “huge bubble” forming in Treasurys and other fixed-income investments once U.S. interest rates rise.

1. Natural gas is a bust

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Energy

Smart Meter backlash

Bloomberg News reports a fast-growing consumer movement in opposition to smart meters.   Smart meters, so called because they allow real-time usage monitoring, originally were pitched by the industry as a boon to consumers for increasing control over consumption.

The gadgets that bring the so-called smart grid into your home are being foisted on consumers for the convenience of the Utility companies. With the new wi-fi meters sending user data back to base, Utilities no longer need to employ meter readers, but still want to charge end-users for the installation, as well as picking up substantial government grants.

Now a growing consumer backlash is slowing U.S. utilities’ network upgrade. Bloomberg puts a figure of $29 billion on the project but the true costs is far higher. One consultancy put the total at $1.5 TRILLION.

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