An inspiring story - the Pot-in-Pot cooler, a low-tech invention has improved the lives of people in poor Nigerian farming communities, particularly the womenfolk. But it's not just seen as an invention to benefit the third world's poor - westerners are considering its use as a climate-friendly alternative to conventional methods of food preservation.

Yay! The transportation gods have heeded my prayer for a cheap, clean, and efficient automobile. Here's a video of a concept car that runs on water.

Summer is on its way and keeping cool is important for you and your family. This is especially so if you are carrying some of that family in your uterus.

Based in Castlemaine, Victoria, Blade Electric Vehicles retrofit the Hyundai Getz to run on electric drive for sustainable urban driving. You plug it in to a standard household socket to recharge and it costs - wait for it - about 1.00 per 100km to run!!!

I'M torn, dear readers. My crappy old car is on its last legs. It spews forth a cloud of black soot when we take off, and if I want to walk my talk, I just don't think that offsetting it with Greenfleet cuts the mustard. I fear it is time for an upgrade, but this is the thing - I really, really don't want to get another car that runs on petrol.

Recently we introduced you to Kiva.org, is an amazing website which allows you to provide very small (no interest) loans to the world's poorest people so that they can start their own small businesses. Today we're looking at a group of Ugandan EarthMums who are looking for loan partners to expand their recycled clothing businesses!

Can you believe it? I didn't turn the bloody thing off!! My incinerated stock pot was sitting there, smokin' away for another twenty minutes!!! Now the living room stinks too, and I'll have to plant a tree to suck up all the carbon I put into the atmosphere! Gawd.

"Why smug bourgeois should probably pay more attention to smoking stock-pots instead of long-windedly denouncing consumerism".

Let me tell you, my kitchen don't smell so sweet and spicy now! Hahahahaaha

A sign of the times? Yesterday evening, a woman in her early thirties, accompanied by a small child, was spotted scavenging fruit from a lilly pilly tree growing in a suburban railway station car park. It was obvious that she had chosen the cover of a moonless evening to carry out the operation to assuage her embrassment. Is this a result of the flow on of skyrocketing fuel prices, making fruit unaffordable? What would drive this mother to a such an act of desperation?

IN a sharing mood... I stopped at the United petrol station in Patterson Lakes (of all places! Kath and Kim is filmed in its gauche suburban streets) and I find a bowser with 10% ethanol, at a higher octane level and, this is the kicker, 4 cents cheaper than the other stuff!
Finally oil is becoming more expensive than alternatives. It's a small step, but it felt good.