Tuesday 28 September 2010

New book on 'collaborative consumption'


Reviewed and described here, this ought to be of interest to people interested in sustainability -- even if some of it is a bit heavy with internet jargon. A lot of it is obvious when you think about it - why buy tools that you only plan to use once in a while when you can share them with your neighbours? New media and social networks does make this easier, though if we lived in more community-minded neighbourhoods then a noticeboard and a hanging pencil would probably work as well.

There are lots of initiatives like this starting at the moment, some of which seem to have a presence in Haringey - I've joined a local Streetbank group. Ecomodo seems to do the same thing, and I wish someone would do a comparison of the two. Justfortheloveofit.org proclaims itself the world's fastest-growing alternative economy - again, a bit of a delusion of grandeur, but worth a look.

Ultimately, green 'unconsumerism' is just the flip side of green consumerism - finding ways not to buy stuff is good, but it doesn't lead to an alternative economic system that provides us with livelihoods, pensions, and a properly funded welfare state, as well as the stuff that we want. For that we really would need to re-engineer the economy from top to bottom.

Wednesday 15 September 2010

Lots of juicing


The Urban Harvest press had an outing to St Ann's hospital in the morning, then the Margaret McMillan Nursery School in the afternoon - both have fabulous gardens full of fruit, and we made delicious apple and pear juice.

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Thursday 9 September 2010

Cheers!

The Urban Harvest Apple Press gets its first outing - juicing apples and pears at the forest garden in Crouch End
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Monday 6 September 2010

Skills Share


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