On a Big jet plane

I am a fan of Angus and Julia Stone. #Justsayin.

But I guess as a sustainability campaigner (which is what I note as my occupation on custom forms!), I really ought not to be a fan of big jet planes. But travel is important.

For Norwegian environmentalist, Erik Dammann, travel allowed him to “challenge Western values and lifestyles in order to promote a more responsible attitude to the environment and the third world.”

Dammann returned to Norway with the realisation that the West’s focus on competition for personal gain had more to do with social structure than human nature. He also came back with a deep respect for other cultures and with a sense of responsibility for the way they were being destroyed by the consumption-oriented Western lifestyle and world view. He perceived an immense gap between the stated values of Western society, such as justice, freedom, responsibility and solidarity, and the actual impact of that society on people in other countries and on the Earth.

So for the following month I will be blogging from http://www.travelgreenchic.tumblr.com/, documenting the amazing stuff happening in the UK, Denmark and Germany. I am out to prove being green is simply not all mung beans and no style. Far from it. It's everything we know but just simply tweaked for the better.

*this blog post comes to you from the skys... Emirates A380 OnAir internet... crazy this technology stuff!

In all colors and in all sizes

The festive season tis upon us with jolly times catching up with me this weekend. But I got through it. Maybe it's the excitment I'll be jetting off soon that is helping me push through it. And before you start questioning the "jetting off" aka isn't flying really bad for the environment, I refer you to this post (the start of my travel blog which explains why travel is important).

As I start preparing for my trip, working out what to pack, I realize it's also the perfect opprtunity to do a big clean especially since when I return it'll be 2012, a start of a new year. The big clean involves going through items I no longer wear or use and d0nating them to charity. What always seems to stump me is what to do with bras I no longer wear. Is it rude/offensive to donate used under garments?

Several months ago I remember reading an article about an organization who were collecting bras for third world countries. Thanks to trusty Google I came to find Uplift Bras, an Australian charity that collects and distributes new and secondhand bras to third world countries as well as indigenous communities in the NT.

"It is not just a matter of comfort for these women. There are medical issues as well including back problems and skin diseases particularly for those who are doing hard manual labour."

Check out Uplift Bras and the good work they do.

So in the keeping up with the crazy season and borrowing a quote from Damien Hirst "it's not me but the drink speaking", I asked my girlfriends if they had any unwanted bras they could give me. Given that I am the so-called "hippie" of the bunch, I had to explain they weren't for me... whether they believe me, we'll see come time we exchange chrissy gifts!

Mi Shed Tu Shed

My shed is your shed. And so leads me to add another #collcons business to the list.

Open Shed is a peer-to-peer rental website that allows you to list the things you have around the house, which you might not want to let go of but you also never really have any use for.

There's much benefits to be reaped by not being so precious about your stuff. One namely is that you can make a little cash from renting out your stuff but also you can save yourself a little cash by testing driving items you might want to play with now but maybe not in the future.

Another benefit as well as being in line with the Buy Nothing New Month campaign, a campaign that saw the social media junkie in me come out, is the reduction of waste, thus the reduction of items sent to landfill, thus the reduction of greenhouse gases produced. Wooah and wow, cause it's a win-win-win!

Let's remember, Buy Nothing New Month ain't about anti-shopping, rather it’s pro conscientious consumption, thus it's not ‘Buy Nothing New Never.

In an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald Business pages, ‘Will Any One Buy Anti-Shopping Campaign’, a poll was carried out asking readers what they thought of Buy Nothing New Month. Over 10,000 people voted (this is huge for an online poll) with 82% saying Buy Nothing New Month to be a good idea, only 18% suggesting it would harm the economy.

This simply shows that there's a groundswell of people living thoughtfully when it comes to respecting our finite resources. Businesses such as OpenShed help foster such behavioural change in consumption and asset owernship, making it easier for the everyday Joe Blow to cash in on the potential $3,772 worth of unwanted items they have around the home. On an economic scale, this equates to almost $43 billion in potential trade. So hands up if you think not buying new will hurt the economy??