Sand Art by Jim Denevan

Can’t believe that this is the last friday of July. The daffodils are already pushing their green tips through the hard, frosted ground. Big frost here today. The days are getting noticebly longer with more light in the mornings and evenings. Soon we will be able to spend more time outside breathing in the fresh Canterbury air (and planting the vegetables to reduce our packaging waste!).

Had a lovely drive to Rangiora yesterday to visit Enterprise North Canterbury and then took an inland road to Amberley to visit Hurunui District Council. Today we are off to Ashburton District Council and then we will have met nearly everyone who looks after solid waste for the individual districts. Kaikoura, MacKenzie and Selwyn to go. It is great to get out of the office and remind ourselves of all of the businesses, individuals and other organisations doing good green work (or who might need financial assistance from SIFT) in the region.

Here are this week’s great finds that you might find interesting:

• Live in or near Nelson – or feel like a trip to the sunniest spot in New Zealand? Visit the 2010 EcoFest Nelson.
• Illegal dumping of waste seems to be on the rise but needs to be stopped – how hard is it to dispose of the waste you produce? This guy obviously found it hard but was fined for doing it.
• This is why we need to start living more sustainable with less impact – this is our home. It is apart of this.
• No Impact Man’s great tips on creating change in your organisation. Want more – check out our blog post about this here.
• Why Doing One Thing does make a difference.
• The Empire State Building is going green here.
• Plastiki made it!
• Cool waste bin labels – we upgraded ours.
• Worldometers - there are some scary numbers here (especially the number of species extinct this year).
• Watch this great video on how e-waste is broken down into reusable parts – here.

Have a great waste free weekend.

Source: Twig & Thistle Sárah Goldschadt Garden Flags Reusing egg cartons

SIFT has had a big week this week. I attended the Philanthropy NZ Regional Funders Forum on Tuesday and learnt about how to create a learning organisation from Fiona Ellis, who is the ex-Director of the Northern Rock Foundation in the UK, and what it means to be a social lender from Laura Benedict, a social lending practioner from the US. Laura is in New Zealand at the moment to write a paper on social lending in New Zealand as part of the Ian Axford (New Zealand) Public Policy Fellowship and is the head of the commercial lending department of Self Help, the US’s largest non-profit community development financial institution. Lots of great and useful information from both speakers that I am still digesting.

And yesterday we had our yearly SIFT Strategic Planning Afternoon. We reviewed why we are here, what we want SIFT to be and do, the values, vision, mission and critical outcomes for the next year. One of those is to continue to grow SIFT as a learning organisation specifically to find waste minimisation/avoidance solutions.

We are ready for a New Year full of new projects and new ways of operating.

But for today here are the favourite links from around the world and locally:

• Tips from the Christchurch City Council on what to do if your organic wheelie bin freezes!
• The bigger picture – CO2 parts per million in the atmosphere is still rising – more action required.
• Spring idea – use old muffin pans here as mini planter boxes.
• UK recycling week to increase awareness of recycling. Keep NZ Beautiful week is September 17th to 24th. More info here.
• KR Connect talks trash – German artist HA Schult made a beach-side hotel out of rubbish from the beaches & Nike’s use of plastic bottles to make football jerseys.
• The new generation of GE lighting – Flexible Light Sheets.
• Easy way to plant native trees – the Life Box from Paul Stamets.
• Museo Ettore Guatelli’s collection of tools – lovely photos on Flickr.
• Invercargill and the Southland region is coming to terms with the best way to deal with all of its wastes here.
• Cleaning up polluted waterways here.

Have a great waste free weekend.