Published March 29, 2009 by

Waste not want not

Spent the evening at Ranges (Our new Church) after eating together watching and discussing, The Story of Stuff. I’ve seen and probably blogged about this before, but it’s a great reminder. Currently at uni I am – with a group- preparing and presenting a business plan for turning food scraps (We’re aimed at restaurants) into organic fertilizer. It’s an interesting project with some appalling statistics. Food waste is huge – from the 1 in 5 bags of shopping that is unused and chucked to the 145kg that’s wasted per person per year. Various countries (or at least a few states/areas/regions) around the world are responding to food waste in creating fertilizer of compost but Aus is trailing. South Australia are running several pilot programs but on the whole we suck. There are things personally that I could do but don’t. We don’t compost… don’t really have much of a garden to put it on. We do throw out a lot of food as our lifestyle is so unstructured and we’re out multiple times a week unexpectedly.

I think next time I buy my fruit and veg I might just have to visit the locally grown organics shop a few suburbs away instead and have cause to plan out meals and weeks a bit more instead. It’s suspicously close to some of the balance stuff I’ve been thinking about.

Christianity Life

Published March 28, 2009 by

We’re all standing on seasaws

balanceIt is Earth hour, the lights are off – I’m not sure if it’s cheating by still having the computer running.

I’m enjoying the dark. I don’t slow down very well in the evenings at the moment. Suddenly it’s late and time to sleep and start it all over again in the morning. I was thinking about this the other night, how I used to make better use of my evenings. It was space for thought, reading, writing and a point of recovery from the day just gone. Lights off almost allows for the standby. The better one would possibly be the internet – the phenomenally interesting, eye draining machine that it is. But I like it. Maybe I like it too much?

It’s really difficult to get that balance in life happening – a kind of routine. I’m clearly way out of whack on many things at the moment – a visit to my house presents some kind of physical evidence of that. It’s not all bad and I’ve got time to work it out in this lovely long life ahead, must say though, that the Mary Poppins magic would be easier.

My work at Ergo is very near to the close. I have been handing over my stuff to be finished by the end of March. I am conscious that it could be a good idea to sit down and work out what to do with time that will be on offer. Primary reasons initially were to “open up shop” on the freelancing front – which I will do although I am not sure to what extent, and to devote some more time to uni. I think that perhaps some of the time needs to be spent in working a few things out – even just fitting the whole slowing down thing into my life. I could map it (life) out to the hour like I did in my final year at school but I don’t think I really want to live like that either.

Here’s to balance.

How do you do it?

image source

Life

Published March 28, 2009 by

It is quite annoying…

That there is a model/porn star (as far as I can tell from the short Google descriptions) with the name Rebecca Matheson – my name. Fare-ye-well any branding of my own name in the whole sense of the word and kind of frustrating in terms of online presence. Bec Matheson, it must be.

Just don’t go looking it up.

Blogging

Published March 27, 2009 by

Fairtrade t-shirt Take 2

This is the other version (also not quite there b/c at the moment it’s kinda sitting on his neck) with the city more on the guy’s back.

Which is better? This one, or this one here?

fairtrade2

Design Social Justice Uni

Published March 21, 2009 by

Tripod Lamps and DIY Solar

w2949I’ve noticed a few tripod lamps around lately of varying degrees of attractiveness. Not sure what I think. Anyway, you can DIY. Although you’d want to spend minimum $ on a tripod or use one that is bung but still upright.

Also I thought this solar heating thing would appeal to my Dad – who now has 15,000 Litres of water in an inflatable bladder (Yes, that is what I said) under his deck and has just installed an evaporative cooler. Fortunately for my mum and sisters, we don’t have copper pennies in Australia, if we did, they would never forgive me – their days of crowding in front of the gas wall heater could be over.

Design Sustainable