Here’s  a head’s up on a new, exciting opportunity from the Sierra Club that could just be The Best Internship on Earth. One lucky young person will get to spend this summer travelling around the US to Sierra Club’s outdoor youth programs, including Inner City Outings, Volunteer Vacations, and Building Bridges to the Outdoors.  The intern will video-blog about all of the outdoor adventures that he or she will have (backpacking, rafting, hiking, etc).   As the cherry on top, the selected intern will receive a $2,500 stipend and be outfitted with $2,000 worth of gear from The North Face and Planet Explore!

No previous outdoor or video experience is required. Applicants just have to be between the ages of 18 and 25 and have a real passion for exploring, enjoying, and protecting the outdoors.  The internship is open to U.S. Citizens, permanent residents, legal residents with a valid work permit, or holders of a valid work visa.

More application info here.

During the recent UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen our world leaders failed to agree on a climate deal. But we all know it’s not only up to them and there are plenty of things that we mere mortals can do to make an impact on climate change. As consumers, we need to take responsibilility for our own actions. Here’s one way to do something – do 30!

The ‘I do 30′ campaign encourages people across the world to turn down the temperature on their laundry to reduce co2.

Visit their website to find out more about the campaign and become a member of their Facebook group to join the other 12,000 supporters of the ‘I do 30′ campaign to see what positive impact you can have on our planet.

Radical Nature draws on ideas that have emerged out of Land Art, environmental activism, experimental architecture and utopianism. The exhibition is designed as one fantastical landscape, with each piece introducing into the gallery space a dramatic portion of nature. Work by pioneering figures such as the architectural collective Ant Farm and visionary architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, artists Joseph Beuys, Agnes Denes, Hans Haacke and Robert Smithson are shown alongside pieces by a younger generation of practitioners including Heather and Ivan Morison, R&Sie(n), Philippe Rahm architects and Simon Starling. Radical Nature also features specially commissioned and restaged historical installations, some of which are located in the outdoor spaces around the Barbican while a satellite project by the architectural collective EXYZT is situated off site.

The exhibition is on until the 18th of October and if you’d like to stand a chance of winning a ticket, simply add a comment telling us about something you do in your daily life that reduces your footprint on our planet.

This competition ends on Friday 9th of October. Two winners will be drawn out of a hat and notified by email.

We started the tour at the BP service station on Rosmead Avenue where we were met by Rob Small, a friendly and enthusiastic man who works tirelessly to bring in funds for Abalimi, as well as running regular Tuesday morning tours of the gardens in a bid to win over more supporters to the project. Rob overflows with passion for the Abalimi project and what it is doing for people in Cape Town’s townships. His enthusiasm is infectious and seeps into everything he says.

Fezeka community garden stands at the foot of a huge pylon

Rob lead the way into Gugulethu and Fezeka, where he explained how 40% of the residents of Cape Town’s informal settlements are unemployed, and where there’s poverty, there is also hunger. The core business of Abalimi is to combat poverty by growing food sustainably (and organically) both at home and in community gardens, and to further green the township areas by planting water wise indigenous trees in the schools and streets of the area. Rob explained that when the Abalimi project started 15 years ago, their aim was to help people achieve subsistence from their growing activities. These days they have surpassed that and are aiming at providing a livelihood for those who before had a hard time even feeding themselves.

We were shown around Fezeka Garden and met some of the mama’s who run the place. There are very few men involved in growing community gardens on the Cape Flats, the majority of the farmers are women.

Mama Maggie transporting manure to her crops with a wheelbarrow

We were able to take photographs of the gardens and ask Rob questions about how Abalimi facilitates the creation of these food gardens. He explained that Abalimi “subsidises” the farmers to the tune of R150 per farmer per month (that’s around US $15 a month) by providing training, manure and set-up and maintenance of an irrigation system for each garden. This figure is much, much lower than the subsidies provided by government to commercial farmers. Abalimi also helps the farmers gain access to council land and negotiates on their behalf to obtain access to water, for example.

From Fezeka we moved on to the Harvest of Hope packing shed in Phillipi. Harvest of Hope is the marketing and selling arm of Abalimi. They collect the vegetables from the farmers once a week and take them back to the packing shed to wash and prepare for delivery. The vegetables make up weekly organic vegetable boxes that are distributed via some of Cape Town’s southern suburbs schools. (It is possible to buy a Harvest of Hope veg box even if you don’t have children at one of the selected schools, see below for more details).

I was blown away by the amazing fresh smell as we walked into the packing shed. It was a beautiful experience.

These vegetables are picked in the morning and delivered in the afternoon. You won't find fresher.

Exquisite care is taken to present the vegetables beautifully.

How to get your hands on a Harvest of Hope organic veg box

You’ll either need to have a child in one of the following southern suburb Cape Town schools (Herschel, Micklefield, Springfield, WPPS, Greenfield, Oakhurst, Rondebosch), be a student at UCT, or you can collect from The Green House at the Montebello Design Centre in Newlands.

Either way, contact Harvest of Hope at harvestofhope@abalimi.org.za or call them on 021-371 1653 to place your order.

A medium veg box (for a family of 4) is R95 a week and a small veg box (for 2) is R65 a week at time of publishing this post. I think you’ll agree that this is wonderful value compared to some other veg box schemes available locally, and you’ll be getting your vegetables the very same day that they are picked, with all their vitamins and goodness intact.

Other ways to get involved with this awesome project

Donate: Any amount, big or small, will be welcomed by Abalimi Bezekhaya for the continuation of this project. Information on how to make a donation is found here, on the Abalimi website.

Volunteer: Volunteers are welcomed with open arms at Abalimi. You can help in a community garden, or at the packing shed, or by doing deliveries to schools. You choose how you would like to be involved. If you are interested, I would recommend going on one of Rob’s tours to get an idea of how it all works and to meet some of the farmers before deciding how you would like to volunteer your time.

Take a tour: Rob Small runs tours of the project every Tuesday morning, by appointment. Please contact him for more info at info@abalimi.org.za

There’s something particularly special about the Cape Town Green Map launch that I wanted to share with you. It’s probably the lowest carbon launch of all the Green Maps, and I’m quoting from the launch invitation to illustrate why/how:

The venue is “your laptop, PC or iPhone so there are no travel costs or [additional] carbon footprint. The dres code is “optional – but locally designed garb from hemp/bamboo/organic cotton is encouraged”. There are no speakers – “an untold saving on hot air and CO2 emissions”.

In addition there are “no printed invitations (save on ink/chemicals, paper/trees), no printed media packs (save on ink/chemicals, paper/trees and packaging), no travel to the venue (save on CO2 emissions, time and roadwork frustration), no food or beverages (save on packaging, waste, energy and food miles) and no speakers, official openings, ‘live’ performers (save on CO2 emissions, uncomfortable silences and the effort to look impressed)”.

Isn’t that cool? And in this very wet weather I’m extra-specially glad not to be going anywhere!

Here’s a bit more about Cape Town Green Map for Capetonians who are interested in giving it a test-drive:

Cape Town Green Map is updated by interested green Capetonians, making it a direct, democratic communication of local knowledge and action. You can find community gardens, craft centres, recycling drop-offs, areas of natural beauty, shops and markets that sell green and organic products, restaurants and bars who serve organic food and drinks and more. If you know about somewhere green that’s not on the map, you can suggest it to the mapmakers, or become a mapmaker yourself.

More great green news for Cape Town is that in October A&C Maps, who print “Not the official guide to Cape Town”, the “Pink Map” and the “Food Map” will be bringing out a printed version of the Cape Town Green Map. Look out for it!

A big thanks to Open Green Map, the City of Cape Town, urban sprout and A&C Maps for this great tool.

*Read Treehugger’s great article about why maps are such a good tool for helping us go green.

The history of the mob
Mobs have been collecting to make a point for centuries. It’s a natural phenomenon when a number of people aren’t happy with the status quo and want to send a message to the authorities for them to mass together to show their collective might. Riots have been a part of the course in England for over 500 years, and we’ve seen our own fair share of them here in South Africa, particularly during the apartheid government years when injustice abounded.

The mob reinvented
Fast forward to 2003, and mobs take on a whole new meaning with the advent of flash mobs in Manhattan, New York City. Bill Wasik, senior editor of Harper’s Magazine, organised the very first flash mob in May 2003. What started out as a social experiment to highlight the cultural atmosphere of conformity and of wanting to be an insider or part of “the next big thing” may have in fact ended up giving conformists the appearance of non-conformity.

Mobs with a cause
The first flash mobs were pretty apolitical, unlike historical mobs, more a sort of performance art. Participants have come together all over the world in the last few years to have pillow fights, dance with their headphones on in a public place (mobile clubbing), or walk like zombies in shopping centres. All just a bit of fun. But some flash mobs have emerged to demonstrate political opinions and as tools of direct action, like Critical Mass and Reclaim the Streets.

Want to take part in a flash mob?
Join the CAPE TOWN FLASH – MOB 2.1 on Facebook to find out what’s being planned in the Mother City.
Or if you’re in the London area, subscribe to the London Flash Mob email group.
Or start your own flash mob.

The latest mob phenomenon: Carrot Mobbing
A new mob sensation is spreading across the world. It started in Los Angeles earlier this year and has since spread to London. The idea behind Carrot Mobbing is to organise consumers to make purchases that give financial rewards to businesses who agree to make socially beneficial choices. The idea is directed consumption, not extra consumption. For example, the first UK Carrot Mob was an evening at a pub in Shoreditch, where the bar management had agreed to spend 20% of the evenings takings on energy efficiency upgrades. The Carrot Mob were all people who were going to go to the pub after work anyway, this way their spending power was used positively to get one pub to become more energy efficient. The next UK Carrot Mob is planned for a mini-market in greater London on the 6th of November.

www.Carrotmob.org
www.CarrotMobUK.org

To give you a taste of Carrot Mobbing, here’s the YouTube video from the first LA Carrot Mob.

If you’re a Twitter-bug, be sure to let the rest of the Twittersphere know what you’re up to and how you’re contributing to Earth Day.   Use the #earthtweet hashtag to share what you’re doing for the planet.

Contributing will help build the Earth Day buzz, and apparently there are prizes too!

Here are some ideas of actions that you could take on Earth Day that would make a difference:

Grow some of your own food

Upgrade your PC instead of buying a new one

Go green without spending any money at all

Take the stairs

Give handmade gifts you’ve made yourself

Hang your knickers on the line

Make some HUGE changes

Buy recycled

Learn about what lemons can do

Be an undercover composter

If you need more ideas for going green, and are going to stretch Earth Day into Earth Month, and even Earth Year,  sign up to get EcoStreet in your feed reader or by email.   Or follow me on Twitter (@tracystokes), where I tweet about green (and other) stuff.

Read the online FT2020 here.

[via undercurrents]

Wannabe celeb Dan Power has released the world’s first ever ‘anti-eco’ single ‘Energy Wasting Day’

Dan Power attempts to knock Lady Gaga and Oasis out of the Top 10 and become the UK’s number one in time for April 1 2009.

In his debut music video, Dan Power (a self-confessed carbon junkie and Jeremy Clarkson fan) is seen cavorting with a group of girls pole dancing around patio heaters, riding a gas guzzling motorbike and advocating all kinds of ways to needlessly waste energy.

Check out www.energywastingday.com to download the track, buy collectible T-shirts, and become friends via his Facebook, MySpace and Twitter pages.

Well, perhaps not right now. Let’s just hold off until the snow has melted.

CleanTogether is a really cool site that Nikki brought to my attention last week. It encourages you to go out and enjoy nature, but clean up a little extra (i.e. not just your stuff) before you leave. Weigh what you’ve cleared up and publish your story and rubbish data at CleanTogether to encourage others to do the same. Member of the CleanTogether site (free to join) have already collected 405lbs of rubbish. You can help make it more.

CleanTogether also have a Facebook group that you can join.

If you’re a runner, how about checking out the Eco Runner blog for how you can do your bit on your daily run.

Photo credit: infomatique