Click here to view the embedded video.

The End of the Line is a documentary that I am very keen to see. About 6 months ago I started stumbling on lots of info about our oceans and how things are changing very quickly and for the worse and how because we have been an ‘earth’ based people neglecting the fact that our planet is covered in something like 70% water, even many scientists had not been taking it seriously enough. And when they did start looking at the situation it was worse than they were expecting. When any eco-system changes there are flow on effects and if one of our largest eco-systems is changing it makes sense to me that we sit up and take notice/action.

So what can we do?

1. Get educated so you can make informed choices. While you wait for the documentary you could watch this talk on TED by Sylvia Earle about her wish to protect our oceans. There was also a great Dr Carl show with a special guest sometime this year on the topic, but I can’t find it now.

2. Get a Sustainable Seafood Guide from the Australian Marine Conservation Society website. We also received some pocket guides with our guide and now carry these with us and make our seafood choices based on it. Turns out whiting is pretty nice to eat.

So I urge you to have a little look at the issue. Sure looking might mean you have to give up eating certain fish but if you don’t look now those fish are running out anyway. Maybe your children’s children would like the same fish as you. Your choices will determine if they ever get the chance to taste said fish.

endoftheline.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

This looks like an interesting campaign for climate change. I will reveal more details later but I do have an idea on a way that Urban Grind can participate.

350.org

Last night we saw Blue Love which is on at the Roundhouse Theatre and presented by the Laboite Theatre Company. I have not had such a good laugh in such a long time. This is well worth seeing. Lots of fun. And like the tip given to us (no good to us cause we don’t drink) don’t be shy when they are handing out the beer.

Last weekend we went to see The Buddy Holly Story and while it is not usually the kind of thing that we would find ourselves at, we loved it. It was a great fun show. And a really interesting story considering that the guy’s career was only 18 months long before he died. If you get a chance to do so get along and see it. The guy that plays Buddy is really good. Oh and when they ask you to participate please do. I had to yell a bit too loud to make up for our quiet crowd.

Just watched a very interesting talk by Douglas Rushkoff about money and how our lives have become incorporated and how he suggests that the internet is going to free us from this. I started saying over 12 months ago that rents were becoming relative not to market forces, but to bank finance and the rate at which bubble priced loans were having to be paid at. He also makes a similar point well worth understanding. I have been trying to learn more about money this week and Rushkoff’s ideas contribute nicely. I will be watching this talk more than once to grasp the key concepts better.

Douglas Rushkoff » My Web 2.0 Talk

Thanks to Emma-Kate from Food Connect for the link to this talk.

It has a 200km Range. Is 100% electric. You can plug it in at home. Zero Vehicle Emissions and it’s made in Armidale, NSW. It looks as good as any other small car though it doesn’t exactly have a small car price, but for those with the means and the desire to lower their impact on the planet and in turn be one of the early adopters that helps bring this cost down for those with less means then purchasing and Australian Made car has to be a good thing. Lots of info on the website, so check it out. evMe Website. If these guys can do it, surely Holden or Ford could do it too, but with their infrastructure they could do it for cheaper and maybe save their own sorry bottoms. Have they not heard of innovation?

Thanks to the Convenient Solutions blog for the heads up.

Just a heads up to check out our latest exhibition next time you are in. It is a group exhibition from Zoe Hughes, Rhiannon McLay, Anthony May and Ruffo. Very cool stuff. On show till the 2nd of May.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I found this on a day when I really needed it.

We have a wonderful son Oscar that just turned 3 and this year he got mostly wooden toys from the Plan Toys toy company. Plan toys are made from renewable timbers and use non-toxic glues and paints. The quality and detail makes the adults want to play too. Each box comes with a little catalogue and I kid you not, the adults were fighting over it as they announced their wish-lists. There might be other toy shops that stock these but we have been getting ours from Crackerjack For Good Toys Balmoral, Shop 3/208- 216 Riding Rd 07 3399 4444.

We are keen to remove plastic toys from our lives and have been exploring things like Plan Toys. Oscar also has a fair bit of LEGO, but my research is have trouble concluding whether LEGO is toxic or not. If anyone can help me work this out that would be great. Thanks.

Wow. The plastic bottles in our oceans issue really is so much worse than I thought it could be. I imagined bottles floating around that could simply be retrieved and cleaned up. Not so. Empty bottles sink, bottle tops float, wildlife feeds the plastic to their young, fish ingest the breaking down particles and the problem is considered to already be so bad that it may never be able to be cleaned up. Now usually I try to err on the side of positive news but I had to ask myself, ‘Am I contributing to this? Is Australia?’ At first I didn’t think so, but Urban Grind sells plastic bottles. We do sell one bottle made from BioPlastics that will compost, but that is only one of many otherwise plastic bottles that won’t break down anytime soon.

At Christmas we were in Byron Bay for the day. And I swear to you that I have never seen a plastic bottle left on the beach (I may not get to the beach enough though) but on the beach at Byron it was littered with bottles. Surely this is caused by tourists but after learning what I know now about the issue it is simply not cool for it to be happening. So bottles on the beach will make it to the ocean, and as they say, ‘All drains lead to the ocean’ so littering in any sense in not acceptable.

In the short TED video above you can get a well presented overview of the situation. So what am I going to do about it? Well, first things first, I need to personally stop buying plastic. I also plan to remove plastic bottles from our shops drinks fridge by first contacting the drink companies and asking them to watch the video and let me know their position, and inform them that I am considering removing them from my fridge should they decide not to explore glass, bioplastics, or some other way of taking responsibility for the problem. I will also be contact Byron Shire Council with the same video, etc.

Please note that Urban Grind for over 7 years has always placed 100% of our plastic waste in the recycling bin. Which means that in milk bottles alone we have placed into recycling about 25,000 2lt bottles of milk. So think of it this way. Urban Grind is a little coffee shop and can produce that much milk bottle waste. I have worked in places that did not recycle their milk bottles and I still hear it from new staff about their old places of work never recycling a single bottle. Please check with your local coffee shop and find out if they recycle, and if not encourage them to do so. We all need to be considering how we are contributing to the global problem, that actually doesn’t effect us so much because most of the plastic floats away from Australia – how convenient (that’s a pun).