Green Library

This is an article about the "Green" library, Cardiff's new Central Library.

The library which opened in March features "a Sedum grass roof which insulates the building in winter and prevents heat gain in the summer and also assists in the removal of CO2 and other pollutants from the air in the city centre and it is patrolled by two fearsome-looking hawks who stop birds from eating the grass seeds."

Walk Score

Although the about information on this site claims it is set up to investigate the walkabalilty of North American site it also allows the user to check out the Walkability of a neighbourhood in many places around the world including Australia. Use it to find out how walker friendly your own neighbourhood is or to locate great places for a walking holiday.

ASU Global Institute of Sustainability

Located in on the US greenest universities, this Institute has set up a tool, Campus Metabolism, to help anyone track energy and resource usage throughout the campus. They are also investing in solar panels and wind turbines to provide clean and sustainable energy.

City Green Buildings

An alphabetical listing, from Absorption Chiller to Worm Bin (”System for on-site management of food scraps and other organic materials. Similar to a compost bin, a worm bin uses worms to digest organic wastes, in a process known as ‘vermicomposting’.”)created by the City of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development. The site also includes resources for those who wish to “build green”

Renewable Energy Atlas of Australia

The Renewable Energy Atlas is designed for everyone interested in renewable energy, including government policy makers, decision makers in the renewable energy industry and educational and community institutions who wish to learn more about renewable energy in the Australian context. The Renewable Energy Atlas is designed to provide enough information to give a high level overview with appropriate contact details for those who wish to pursue their investigations further.

Vertical Farm

Project developed by Dr. Dickson Despommier who advocates using skyscrapers for farming. The site includes news updates, presentations and designs.

Carbon Offset Watch

This is the first independent ranking of Australian offset providers, completed in August 2008. The site is managed by Total Environment Centre and supported by CHOICE and Institute for Sustainable Futures.

How Buildings Learn

This began as a terrific book of the same name by Stewart Brand, who investigated why some buildings grow and change and adapt to the lives of the people who inhabit them, while others simply don't meet their inhabitants' needs. He's adapted these ideas for this 6 part BBC video series. Anybody involved in designing a new building or adapting an existing one would benefit from the book and this series.

The site includes a video clip of selected sections of the video series.

Your Development

Australian website providing practical information on how to create sustainable urban residential developments and contains fact sheets, case studies and links to other useful sites.
This is a national project developed in partnership with CSIRO and the Australian Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage, and the Arts. Content has been written and reviewed by leading researchers and industry experts.
Once a user is signed in they can use the site interactively.

International Standard. ISO 15270

Plastics : Guidelines for the recovery and recycling of plastic wastes.

This International Standard has been developed to assist all plastics industry stakeholders in the development of
• a sustainable global infrastructure for plastics recovery and recycling;
• a sustainable market for recovered plastics materials and their derived manufactured products.
For the reduction of plastics waste and in support of the objectives of sustainable development, top priority should be given on a product life-cycle basis to
• general reduction of material and energy resource use;
• specific optimization of the use of plastics raw materials.

NOTE: Unfortunately you can’t link directly to this; you need to type in the no. of the standard and click All to view document

Running the Numbers

This is an amazing depiction of resource use/waste!! Chris Jordan, an American artist, has produced Running the Numbers which "looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on." Incredible detail!!!

Water footprint

"Water footprint", "virtual water" and "water neutral" - these concepts relate to the volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by individuals, businesses or nations and how humans can reduce, neutralise, compensate or offset their water footprint. This is a really interesting site with links to footprint calculators and a product gallery where an indication of how much water is used to produce specific foodstuffs is provided.

Peak Everything

This article from Treehugger explores eight commodities we are running out of, including rice, metal, dirt and electricity as well as oil, and attempts to explain why.

Treehugger

Have you seen this site before? It's great! "TreeHugger is the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream. [It's] a one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information [including an] up to the minute blog, weekly and daily newsletters, weekly video segments [and a] weekly radio show."

Our Iceberg is Melting

This is the website to accompany the book The Iceberg is Melting (which the library has just made available!). Here you will find a summary of John Kotter’s research on successful change, excerpts from web seminars on change, tips from change leaders and more!

Green Thing

This is an interesting site! Green Thing is a new online community that makes it easy and enjoyable to be a bit greener. Every month you'll get a different Green Thing to do. All you have to do is do it!

Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

The Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO Australia) is a nationwide network of professionals working to reduce our oil vulnerability. ASPO aims to bring the probabilities, risks and opportunities that Peak Oil presents to the attention of decision-makers.

ASPO is part of a network of organisations around the world affiliated with the original Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO). The formation of ASPO-Australia is an initiative of the Sustainable Transport Coalition. ASPO Australia's patron is Hon. Andrew McNamara MP, chair of the Queensland Govt Oil Vulnerability Task Force and Queensland Minister for Climate Change, Sustainability and Innovation.

The website provides links to documents, presentations, news, articles and more!

How Much Is Enough?

Zen Habits is an interesting and thought-provoking blog written by Leo Babauta. In this entry he questions 'how much is enough?'. Browse the categories on the right for further stimulating ideas.

Eden Project

The Eden Project is based near Cornwall, England, and is dedicated to exploring and sharing information about people's relationship with and dependence upon plants for food, clothes, shelter and medicines etc. But it is much more than that. It is also a creative space which shares environmental messages via a blending of art and science. Check out the website for more information!

Australia 2020

The official website for the Australia 2020 Summit which was held on the 19 and 20 April. Read the initial report as well as information about the participants and the 10 Topics which were the focus of the Summit.