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Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

Geography Teaching Resources To Get You Inspired

August 29th, 2008 by Kerrie

It was a geography teacher who changed my life and first got me thinking about the environment.

I was reminded of this when I came across a great resource for geography teachers this week at The Centre for Ecoliteracy website.

It has a really interesting collection of offerings for teachers like you who want to get out there and make a difference.

You can subscribe to a free Newletter for teachers who want to get their schools more active in sustainability education.

You will also find the site has an impressive set of inspirational Articles available for download in PDF format.

These articles include such gems as Findings from the Evaluation Study of The Edible Schoolyard. Here’s a quote from that study:

In describing The Edible Schoolyard program, chef and restaurateur Alice Waters says

“Our program places food at the centre and has students helping to feed each other. These children learn mutual respect from sharing meals, they learn self-respect from learning how to prepare meals and they learn respect for the planet from learning how to grow food in an ecologically sound way.”

A Guide for Creating School Gardens as Outdoor Classrooms called Getting Started is also available free for teachers for teachers inside the U.S. (You might want to email them directly for postage information outside the U.S.)

For those of you more interested in the big picture you might want to check out Big Ideas: Linking Food, Health, and the Environment, which is available for $16.95(US) through Acorn Naturalists.

I hope you find this website as inspiring as I did. Please remember you can have a lasting impact on the way people think about environment – just the way my geography teacher influenced me.

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Posted by Kerrie Posted in Environment, Schools | 2 Comments »

What is sustainability?

March 17th, 2008 by admin

This question comes up from time to time in the public consciousness, and I don’t feel there has ever been a great answer. neither do I think I will succeed where so many others have failed … but let’s have a crack at it anyway.

To live a life that is sustainable it seems that it is most important to change our thought process
to include new ideas.

It is great to think about our “carbon foot print” but instead of trading on carbon perhaps thinking of new ways to manufacture and not creating these harmful gases in the first place is more sustainable.
Not too long ago while debating some points of sustainability with a colleague I put forward the idea that philanthropy is indeed a sustainable action, as we all should know giving without thought of receiving pays vast and far reaching dividends not only to the giver and receiver but to society.

The fact that poverty exists and basic needs go unfulfilled is wasteful of our power & inherent human ability to change our circumstances, and therefore unsustainable.

Thinking of the lost opportunity of all the minds, undeveloped natural skills and talents that results from the lack of bear necessities should be seen as the height of unsustainable actions .

So maybe we can all give a thought to the extensions of our actions and think about what it really means to be sustainable … and maybe we may get closer to laying down our personal dogmas.

To my mind this is also a sustainable action.

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Posted by admin Tags: a new look, Sustainability, the world, think, think again
Posted in Environment | No Comments »

China & Clean Energy

December 12th, 2007 by admin

If you have been watching… you may have noticed that the economic map we all work from is starting to shift.

There was a time when all eyes looked towards the west for leadership, let’s face it … it still does, but maybe in the not too near future ideas and actions may come from different sources.

The fact that many places other than “the west” have had to deal with the consequences of wasteful lifestyles may lead to unique solutions that some industrialized nations cannot or are unwilling to devise and so these solutions may come from places not known for their dedication to sustainability.

China is beginning to create sustainable sources of power (wind, Hydro etc) If we make it possible for the countries that are still developing to avoid some of the mistakes we have made then there may be a way to get out of the environmental mess we are all in.

Believe it … co operation is sustainable!

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Posted by admin Posted in Environment | No Comments »

A way to avoid the insanity of a snail-mailout!

November 27th, 2007 by admin

Ok this is it!
Crunch time…
This is AusPen’s busiest time

As most of you would know in past years AusPen has made a point of using a obsolete form of direct marketing … the mail out. this involves compiling a client list, constructing layout, artwork, printing & using a whole lot of paper!

Now… we as an eco-sustainable company and further on as respectful world citizens can no longer take this approach to inspire you our valued customers and new customers to try our product. It is unsustainable!
So I’ve mulled it over and over and came up with… The first AusPen E-Mail out (really … it didn’t take much thought)
But it has taken some convincing of the powers above me, but now it’s on.
So now I must ask you all to help me save the paper we would have used by regarding our email with all due consideration. It will contain a valuable offer & an opportunity to save a heap of Paper.
Help us make this business even more sustainable.

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Posted by admin Tags: offer, savings, Use less. save paper
Posted in Environment | No Comments »

What is the big deal about the environment?

October 15th, 2007 by admin

There are things that we may never fix …

Like the way it always rains after you wash your car, or how when you’re in the shower and the phone rings it always stops right when you get to it dripping wet.

Those are a couple of ridiculous "truisms" and you know what… there are lots them around the issues concerning the environment … like individual actions mean nothing or that all of the world’s carefully separated paper and such are just dumped together in a world wide recycling conspiracy.

I suppose that if you wanted to you could believe almost anything but here’s something that is true…

If you use less… you create less waste. It sounds simple but when you think about how long we have been living the way we do it might just take a whole lot of work to turn it around… lucky for us we live in an enlightened time where we work hard to solve a problem as a team and we don’t close the shop till the job is done, so really… what is the big deal about the environment?

Really… Use Less… Make less waste!

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Posted by admin Posted in Environment | 3 Comments »