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Most people don’t realize that food waste goes beyond the moral implications, wasting food when one billion people go to bed hungry every night and it is also a major environmental problem. It is so sad that we have the power to feed the hungry with all of the food we waste and yet we just throw it into the garbage. Food production is also the largest single driver of biodiversity loss and creates at least 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to wasting labor and resources, as food decomposes in landfills it produces methane, a greenhouse gas. Food waste is occur in the field, in storage, in transport, and at home. Everyone including farmers, food manufacturers, and consumers are responsible for food waste footprints. Despite what many consumers think, expiry dates are unregulated and do not indicate food safety. One of the best ways to tell if food has gone bad is not by using some fancy technology, but by simply putting our senses to w...

Disposable clothing  at landfill In this world of instant gratification, ‘disposable fashion’ is on the rise. Increasing quantities of discarded clothing being sent to landfill becomes problematic. More and more pieces and garments that are manufactured quickly and cheaply to keep up with catwalk trends. More styles mean more purchases and that leads straight to more waste created. The clothing is not made well enough in the first place to allow repairing it to be and option, and it is sold cheap enough to encourage customers to just buy another in the new pattern or colour of the trend. Once the trend is over, these garments are ended in landfill site globally due to the poor quality.   Unlike world class quality of garments that can handed down to next generations disposable clothing is damaging to our environment and the economy. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 1.5 million tons of textile waste was generated in 2013, of which 12.8 million tons were ...

How do you fancy saving yourself time and money? Doing less laundry? Reclaiming lost space in your over-stuffed closets, all while making an important contribution to the environment? It may sound too good to be true but it’s possible and the key is in these two little words: capsule wardrobe. We all can truly benefit from owning and purchasing less clothes. How many items of clothing do we really need? Most of the time we purchased sale items impulsively, we never get a chance to wear and still have the tags on them. When we sight them in the store window, wow, they looked irresistible yet in reality it’s our comfortable old faithful we always turn to. Our closet may full yet still everyday stare into it feeling uninspired. It is better having a mini capsule wardrobe made up of 30-40 the versatile pieces we actually LOVE to wear. Depending on individual o ccupation, lifestyle and to some degree season will influence. All clothes, shoes and outerwear count including pajama...

Mobile phone recycling is one of the necessary practice to save the planet and also to generate money in the process while keeping up with the technology. Electronic waste became major environmental issues nowadays with technologies growth. Improper disposal of phones fills out the landfills and continue harming the planet and putting lives in danger. Smartphones are here to stay, they’re simply part of our lives, so learning about the importance of proper disposal and recycling of these devices brings us one step closer to the utopia we all dream of living in. They are awesome and connect us in ways we never imagined 30 years ago. However, many of us are blissfully ignorant of the negative ecological impact of these lovely mass they produced. Every youngster anywhere in the world including myself replaces a phone almost every 18 months. Thus, mobile phones hardly have a life-cycle of 2 years and of course most of us wants the latest smart phone. With extensive use of mobile...

Home milk delivery is no longer a thing of the past. Many people don’t realize that there are dairies that participate in delivery programs all over the continent, and now it’s easier than ever to find them. Choose  home delivery of milk in glass bottles  and enjoy daily dose of calcium delivered directly to doorsteps without the hassle or the inconvenience of locating an organic milk supplier in the area. Imagine waking up in the morning, just open door for fresh, high quality milk. Enjoy breakfast knowing that the action is supporting the community and the environment at the same time, and that’s definitely the best way to start our day. When we use glass bottle milk delivery, we are buying milk that comes from local farms. This means our milk will be fresher, better tasting, and higher quality than anything we buy from a grocery store. The glass does not alter the taste of the milk and keeps it colder, making it enjoyable from the first drop...

When we look around us and far fewer people are negotiating unwieldy newspapers opting instead to read their news via a smartphone or tablet. Get off the train and the sea of commuters are much more likely to flow through the barriers with the swipe of a smart-card while electronic check-in at airport becomes popular. Even in offices paperless meetings are conducted in digital rooms that provide tools and online document repositories to simulate face to face meetings through different computer devices. With this in mind, here are some insights on how paperless meetings can help the office and environment, remote access provides green accessibility. Imagine you’re stuck in traffic and you have a meeting in five minutes. The meeting is paper-based and restricted to participants only with no secretaries; therefore you have to be there to participate. If the meeting was paperless, then the administrators could’ve set a digital meeting room and you could’ve joined remotely. Paper...

Eco friendly fashion known as sustainable fashion or ethical fashion are often used interchangeably should first and foremost be about reducing fashion consumption. Reducing our own footprint starts by being mindful of consumption and waste. This ultimately means buying less and purchasing only what we need. When a garment is damaged, many think nothing more of chucking it out and replacing it with something new. However many items can be repaired easily for example sew back a new button when it’s missing. We can mend a seam that is coming apart and darn a sock or sweater. As Australia is the second most wasteful society with  650 kg of waste per person  sent to landfill each year, we need to start changing the mindset of throwing fashion items away which can be repair, recycle and repurpose. Instead of throwing items that we no longer need in the trash, we can recycle those. There are two ways to do this, we can either donate items to a charity or opportunity shop as the...

We all know that sometimes buying the wrapping paper can cost as much as the actual gifts. We can save money and also contribute towards sustainability by wrapping Eco-friendly. There are so many cheap ways to package gifts for our loved ones. The easiest way to save and be green is to simply reuse old wrapping paper and gift bags. We can adopt the habit of storing used wrapping paper, bags and ribbons. This can be easily done by not savagely rip open the present to keep the paper in good condition for reusing. Use fabric totes for grocery shopping and reuse the brown paper bags from the grocery store. We can give it a classic look by adding some natural twine, hemp, or natural pine-cones, shells or twigs of berries from the backyard. We can give it a fun and creative look by decorating it with some art work like hand prints or stenciled flower. Reusing newspaper as wrapping paper can be seen as cheap, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Th...

Necessities and well-made special things that bring us happiness are great, but needless stuff are wasteful to produce, package and ship and once we start drowning in our stuff we either suffer from the stress of it or we end up send it packing to the landfill, where it may endure for many lifetimes. And while swapping and sharing and donating may postpone stuff's trip to landfill site, it still weighs heavy on the planet. Our obsession with owning needless things becomes nightmare to our planet. It’s time for us to start practicing minimalism and enjoy the beauty of simple living. We can take a stand and maximize the principles of minimalism to counter attack with less to discover how little we actually need to be happier, more content, and less stressed in life and also contribute towards sustainability by consuming less. Minimalism is just keeping things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from it to improve in almost all aspects of our life. The...

People needs to eat less meat to help the planet. We all know the link between factory farming and greenhouse gas emissions, about the cruelty inherent in industrial agriculture, about the wasted resources and the damaged ecosystems that result when meat is produced on a vast scale. There is growing social pressure to go vegetarian for environmental reasons. Some people take the plunge, cutting meat out of their diets completely, but there are many who cannot make such a drastic change. Feeling guilty for lacking the determination, desire, or means to eliminate meat altogether It's time for us to consider something other than all or nothing approach to meat-eating. Where you either eat meat or you don’t, and there’s no middle ground in which to explore other ways of thinking about food. This vegetarian or non-vegetarian way of discussing dietary choices makes the situation worse because it discourages people from taking smaller steps that could still benefit the planet. Any ...

Wouldn’t be good if we have a waste free holiday season or a Christmas morning that isn’t knee deep in crumpled wrapping paper? Furoshiki is the eco-friendly wrapping cloth originating from Japanese culture where it promotes caring for the environment and reducing waste. Using techniques similar to origami, it can be used for gift wrapping, grocery shopping or simply as decor. Choose from a wide variety of sizes and designs to complement your lifestyle. Furoshiki is reusable and multipurpose. Each year billions of plastic bags end up as litter worldwide and reusable bags such as furoshiki can help reduce the impact to our environment. How to  Furoshiki instruction diagram Some Furoshiki are made out of a fibre manufactured from recycled PET bottles and they are so versatile that you can wrap almost anything in it regardless of size or shape with a little ingenuity by simply folding it in a right way. We can buy inexpensive fabric on sale keeps the cost below that ...

Recycling doesn’t have to be a challenging chore. In fact, we can turned it into a game and make it more fun and enjoyable. We can try tracking how much we can reduce from our garbage each week. By recycling and composting as much as we can of our household waste, limit household waste to one plastic bag per week disposal. Try starting a friendly competition with your neighbor and turn recycling into a game. Put yourself against your neighbors to see who can throw out the least amount of trash and try out new DIY upcycling projects. There are lots of everyday household items we can recycle to minimize waste such as books, shredded paper, disposable plates and cups. They can be recycle and reuse in our household. Donate, trade and sell any books  that you no longer read and recycle books that have been destroyed. Give outdated books a new life by selling them on eBay and Etsy which usually turns out gold to savvy book collectors, you’ll get extra cash in return. Compost shr...

All fruits and vegetables are held to incredibly high aesthetic standards when it comes to stocking supermarket shelves nowadays. It doesn't matter if they're organic or conventional, nutritious or vitamin deficient, flavorful or bland-if they don't meet the criteria established by the supermarkets themselves, they can't be sold to consumers. And if they can't be sold, they won't be eaten and will end up as waste. It's a tough world out there for fruits and vegetables. Chances are high that they're packed into a tight greenhouse and getting regularly doused with chemicals. Even if they're organic, even if they're grown in fertile, volcanic soil, even if they make it to maturity unscathed, well, they still might not be good enough to make it to the big time to the gleaming shelves of a well-lit supermarket. It's not that they aren't tasty. No, this is all about how good they look. If they're not too big, they're too small. If...

Coffee cups are estimated to be the second-largest contributor to litter waste after plastic bottles. It is estimated Australians use 1 billion disposable coffee cups each year. Disposable coffee cups, which look like they are made of paper, have been found to contain plastics that do not break down and are damaging to the environment. Truly recyclable cups are being made, but this option comes at a price and not all cafe owners are willing to wear that cost in reality. Whether a plastic-coated paper cup is recyclable varies from area to area, with some local councils accepting coffee cups as part of their recycling process, while others exclude them and dump them in landfill. By the time the materials of these cups break down, they are m to be suitable for using in compost. However composting is not widely available in Australia, so cups are put in household or community compost. Most compo-stable coffee cups still end up in landfill. Biodegradable involves using an additive in t...

The idea of building for permanence, yet incorporating flexibility to accommodate future change and minimizing energy footprint throughout its physical life, is surely the ultimate holistic objective for the architecture profession (Murray, 2011).Sustainable building should reflect adaptability and flexibility for social, economic and environmental impacts. Sustainable buildings should designed to provide long-term benefits to the society they serve, and transcend the utilitarian and the fashionable in favor of performance. Implying that sustainable building design must have considered issues of flexibility to offer in the ever changing world which we live in and must stand the test of time. A zero carbon building with a short life span and no consideration of alternative uses after its original function becomes arguably only a minor contribution towards sustainability of our cities. Cost is usually an important driver in building industry, and a high construction price may...

The energy future for our cities and to address global issues such as climate change. We need improvements in the efficiency of buildings especially their use of energy to reduce carbon emissions and improving local economic development, air quality, and public health. Due to rapid growth in global population, our cities need to accommodate for more people. Along with that population density, levels of resource consumption also increase. Efficient energy and water use in new and existing buildings in cities must therefore be a priority. Wasted resources represent an economic and environmental lost that is likely to prove unsustainable. We need to focuses on how to improve resource efficiency in buildings; the structures that provide shelter to families and businesses, and which range from single family and multifamily housing to retail, office, and institutional structures. Building efficiency generally relates to how productively resources like energy and water are used to provid...

Many factors lead to shortages or lack of green spaces in cities especially in historical urban areas such as Rome and Venice. These cities are characterized by narrow and winding streets, compact urban fabrics, and lack of conventional green spaces. Therefore, we need to consider the application of innovative strategies in order to bring greenery to the densest parts of our cities to achieve sustainable urban rehabilitation. Green walls of buildings can be the opportunity to make cities greener and to improve public enjoyment of the urban environment, without using free space at street level which is scarce in the compact cities. The walls are the elements of communication between interior and exterior, according to which the building ceases to have a neutral position in the city and begins to take an active role. The green walls are vertical surfaces which have plants growing on them or integrated within the surfaces. Green roofs is not new for people but contemporary green wall s...

Can cities generate own energy with existing built environment? How about building integrated with photovoltaic panels to generate energy? For me, it seems not logical to build huge solar energy plants in the middle of nowhere to produce the same amount of energy within and on top of buildings where we live in. Another economic benefits for solar panels for houses in this economy is that a PV array would increase the value of property. Many of the large scale solar farms that are proposed are sited in wilderness that is extremely fragile as this is the same mentality about energy production as that of coal and petroleum. As the dialogue of sustainability disregards the ecology of natural lands for the good of society but in reality it is dysfunctional. I feel the same way about advocates for nuclear power based solely on the fact that these facilities don't emit carbon during energy production and some people call it clean. However every step in the process is highly da...

Landscape in urban environment is critical component of ecological sustainability for cities. Ecological sustainability of city relies on the landscape elements and their continuity and it is an important approach towards ecological sensibility. Landscape urbanism attempts to shift notions of object-based urban design to seek innovation within the interactions of existing urban systems, identifies opportunities in infrastructure, and sees landscape as much an organizing force towards ecological sustainability of the city. So, rather than seeing the design disciplines as separate, both ecological and landscape urbanism realize a more powerful synthetic approach for better urban environment. Ecological urbanism is an approach that favors dynamic integration between natural and urban systems. Landscape urbanism should not be for aesthetic recognition alone but also defines ecological urbanism as participant to measurable improvements in the effect that our cities have on the larger...