GarbageWhile You Were Sleeping have organised another documentary screening at the Labia. This documentary looks at the issue of waste and is called Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home.

It's a simple and endearing documentary with a powerful and scary message. The producer, Andrew Nisker, decides to get his friend's family to keep all their garbage for 3 months. The purpose is to try and get a better idea of exactly how much garbage a family of 5 produces. At the same time he does some investigation into what happens to the garbage when it gets taken away. He visits landfill sites and recycling operations, as well as interviewing relevant experts.

You haven’t met before?
No, seriously, you haven’t?

Well, then… meet the Cape Town Green Map.
What’s that? You have no idea what it is? Well then, it seems a proper introduction is in order. May I formally introduce to you Africa’s first, very exciting, helpful, online, interactive Green Map.

A map, I hear you say? Well, as with all maps, it does provide direction – but with a difference.

No other map has attempted to chart and detail the city of Cape Town from a green angle before. This particular one is unique in that way. The map can be used to make greener lifestyle choices, and help people to make more informed decisions on how to live sustainably. It is also different because it is on-going, evolving and is constantly being updated.

I have to confess to sending various irate messages to Tetra Pak over the last year about their apparent lack of recycling facilities in Cape Town, or the country for that matter.

The perception out there, despite their very obvious drive to recycle overseas, is that one can't recycle tetra pak, and there are a fair amount of them if you consider things like fruit juice, some olive oil, long-life milk and custard all come in these containers – they heap up over time!

Despite receiving absolutely no reply to any of my emails, it seems Tetra Pak have been recycling, and some time ago we heard that there were a couple of drop-off sites in Cape Town.

The good news is that there are 18 different drop-offs around Cape Town, 22 points in Johannesburg and 1 in

There's a new kid on the block. A new green publication called the 'green times'.

The paper joins the Western Cape's already bountiful collection of green publications - more than ably led by the likes of Biophile, Shared Earth, Red your green magazine, and Simply Green – giving new meaning to the tip of the country as the 'fairest cape'!

The green times, edited by Elma Pollard, who has practiced earth-inspired living herself for a long time as an environmental journalist, trainer, educator and coach, markets itself as responsible journalism that will offer new choices based on careful consideration for all of life on Earth, make greening a natural, easy and fun process, provide inspiring role models and supply ongoing information, details, numbers, names and locations for every aspect of sustainable living, amongst other how to's. Whew! That's a lot to look forward to.

And the distribution of the newspaper is carbon free (the paper is

Last year's spring green faire was really great - authentic green stallholders in an outdoor setting with perfect weather, good food, lots to see and talk about plus activities for the kids. We were hoping this would become a regular event and now it's back, just in time for the end of summer.

Looks from the programme that there is even more lined up including demo's on grey water systems, solar and wind power, eco-building, growing your own food and my personal favourite - compost toilets (using a compost loo for two weeks is definitely not an experience you forget!).

Water saving shower heads, making biodiesel from cooking oil, eco-awareness raising cinema, puppet edutainment for kids and music courtesy of Jamie Jupiter are some of the things you can look forward to. Here for more details.

The Green Faire will be held outside the Hout Bay Community Cultural Centre, (the old Bowling Club) adjacent to Hout Bay common and market on Baviaanskloof and Main Rds. Adults R20, kids under 10 free, Gates open from 9am to 6pm. This ‘Faire’ is a fundraising and awareness raising event, held in the spirit of community.

More info here

Thea Holm, environmental educator, lives in a low-impact, environmentally friendly way on the banks of Hartbeespoort dam, just outside Johannesburg.

“We must get the word out that we are now on limited time to prepare the damage caused by our everyday life styles, and it is not the responsibility of governments and industries, it is you and me, our actions placed the industries and chose the government of the day in the first place; each one of us must make this now our responsibility.”

My story started 34 years ago, although I became part of this family only 13 years ago and actively started living an alternative life style six years ago.

My father in law, Dieter Holm, built a house on a mountain overlooking the Hartbeespoort Dam and consciously made the decision not to get an electricity connection from Eskom, but to look at alternative ways to generate electricity for his home...

Water was also a crisis because the only place where an underground watercourse could be found, was a few hundred meters from the house, very deep with a very weak flow. The next step was then to build reservoirs on the corners of the house to harvest the rain water, which is still the only water supply to date.

Making poo work for you. Kayaletu Makasi lives on a pretty little smallholding on the road to Chintsa. He has 17 cows, three pigs and a gaggle of chickens. He feeds their manure (about 20 litres a week) into a small digester and in return he gets an unlimited supply of free fuel, highly nutritious food for the pigs and chickens, and a treasure trove of organic fertiliser for his soil.
[dispatch]

Far higher feed-in tariffs needed. The feed-in tariff currently proposed by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) for wind energy is 66 c/kWh, decreasing to 58 c/kWh in 2014. These tariffs are currently the subject of public hearings. To make wind energy truly viable in South Africa, the industry requires a feed-in tariff - in essence, a subsidy - of around 90c to a rand per kilowatt hour… [engineeringnews]

Iloilo City in the Philippines gets a road exclusively for bicycle riders. This is to promote bicycle as an environment-friendly mode of transportation that could...

I didn’t know this, but apparently thousands of flip flops, discarded by their former owners, wash up on the African shoreline – an environmental disaster for the marine ecosystem, as well as an eyesore on the beaches, many of which are sites of natural beauty. Hatching turtles find their already precarious journey into the sea littered with flip flops that prevent their reaching their destination.

An organisation called UniqEco chose to see the flotsam as a resource for the coastal communities of Kenya, and is working with the locals to collect and recycle discarded waste on the beaches. From this, they make an incredible range of unique accessories and jewellery. The jewellery alone is worth taking a look at – some beautiful stuff (but available online for dollars, I’m afraid). Take a closer look via [greatgreengoods]

Flood Trevor Manuel with green tips. Use the national budget as a way to reduce carbon emissions and climate change.

urban sprout has teamed up with Project 90 by 2030 , Activist! , forgood and 350.org in a campaign called ‘Cut Carbon Tips for Trevor’.

The aim of the campaign is to urge the government to show vision and leadership by presenting a budget on 11th February 2009 that reflects an urgent response to the evidence presented by climate change.

The ‘Cut Carbon Tips for Trevor’ campaign invites you to get involved by sending your green tips to Trevor, using the Tips for Trevor page on the treasury website Trevor is said to read every one of these personally. He takes them seriously, and has been known to get individuals to present their tip to Cabinet personally, when he thinks it appropriate!

eco fireworks?After an extended and much needed break the sprouts are now back at the sprout-cave. Well kinda. We're still doing a bit of belated spring cleaning, rearranging, gearing up and and generally getting ready to go forth and conquer in 2009. Hope you had a good break too and that you're all revved up for a great year!

2008 is history and it disappeared in a blink. These are the 10 most popular reads on urban sprout last year, just in case you missed them.

SA's electric car, Joule - Official pics. Our own electric car is unveiled at the Paris Motor show. This was in my opinion one of the coolest things to happen last year. Let's all hold thumbs Optimal Energy gets the investment required to start mass production. I'd love to have one of these baby's parked in my garage circa 2011.

Darling wind farm powers up. Seems like eons ago we first blogged about the Darling Wind Farm, but it only took around two years to get them up and running. Eskom could (and should) learn a thing or two about wind-powered energy from these guys.