EcoDirectory had a stand at the EcoXpo in Sydney on the weekend, the expo was a success, a constant stream of visitors explored our website, tasted the MY E organic energy drink, played with our solid-ink printer ink blocks and asked questions about sustainable living information we had on offer.
As Copenhagen summit lurches towards predictable disaster, George Monbiot in The Guardian identifies the crucial division in politics now as no longer left versus right but between those who realise we live in a world of environmental constraints and those who refuse to accept this.
If you're interested in the ethics and sustainability of food production in Sydney, the Sydney Food Fairness Summit taking place today and tomorrow (Thursday 22 and Friday 23 October) aims to draw up proposals for a NSW state food policy " that will address affordable access to healthy food, sustainable food systems and farming, food safety and health".
Continuing the theme, on Saturday there's the Chippendale Food for the Future Fair. The fair marks the opening of the Chippendale Food Co-operative, set up to buy organic, sustainably-produced food from the Sydney Basin.
Bees are disappearing /dying in record numbers. This is serious business and very personal. Guys, no bees = NO COFFEE. Ladies, no bees = NO CHOCOLATE. These are just 2 of the many many fruits, nuts and veggies we will no longer see on our tables if bees continue to decline.
Bees are disappearing. Maybe it's due to toxins in chemical pesticides. Maybe it's stress caused by commercial bee-keeping techniques, maybe it's disease.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures just out show food prices have doubled since 1980. But in real terms food has never been cheaper. However, cheap food comes at a cost, and that cost is the destruction of the soil - and with it, the future.
Here's something I didn't appreciate. Forty per cent of fish caught in the world's oceans are used to make fish feed to feed farmed fish. In fact, more fish by weight is caught in the oceans than is produced by the fish farms they feed. The process is one of feeding low-grade fish to grow more prized species such as salmon. It turns out farming seafood, certainly as it is practised now, is not the solution to the overfishing of the planet's oceans that I'd hoped.
I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing, but Woolworths has been given the green light to buy the eight Macro Wholefoods stores in Sydney and Melbourne. The Macro stores - the "superstores" of the Australian organics industry - will be rebranded as Thomas Dux, to go with the two existing Thomas Dux gourmet food stores that Woolies already owns.
Having noted the recent passing of Arne Ness, the father of Deep Ecology, we ought to also pay our belated respects to Masanobu Fukuoka, inventor of no-dig gardening, who died in August 2008.
