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.

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.

CAPE TOWN – Here’s something really worthwhile to do on Tuesday’s public holiday. I’m going because I like to make a contribution to keeping places that I enjoy in good nick, and because I want to teach my children that being a member of a community is a give and take process.

Photo credit: Millstone Cafe website

We enjoy spending time at the Millstone Cafe and Farmstall at Oude Molen where you can get the best breads, quiches and pizza in town, as well as such delicacies as chocolate beetroot cake. And while you enjoy your cake and sip on a creamy cappucino, the kids get to play in this terrific tree-house .

Photo credit: Millstone Cafe website

Or in this little playhouse.

The place has a very homely feel to it, the staff are warm and friendly and it’s a great place for families or for kids parties. There are even pony rides next door. Millstone Cafe and Farmstall is open from 9-5, Tuesday to Sunday.

Pia of Mother City Living paid Oude Molen Eco Village a visit a few months ago, read about it and see her photographs here.

Reggie of Grains of Sand reports that Oude Molen Eco Village is under threat by developers, which is another good reason to support Tuesday’s clean up and the Oude Molen businesses.

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.

Working to halve the number of people around the world without safe drinking water.

Clean Water = A Path out of Poverty. How the UK is helping people to build better lives.

March 22 is World Water Day, a reminder that clean, safe water enables life. It promotes good health, enables people to work, attend school and lift themselves out of a cycle of poverty. It is a cornerstone of development.

Currently, 900 million people around the world lack access to this basic and essential resource. Thousands of children die every day from preventable illnesses caused by dirty drinking water. Many more people are affected by painful and disfiguring diseases caused by waterborne parasites and bacteria.

The UK government works with other governments and organisations around the world to increase access to clean and safe water for millions of people. We live in a more interconnected and interdependent world than at any other time in history. That means that increased poverty anywhere affects us all. Clean water is the first step on a path out of poverty, enabling people all around the world to build better lives.

To find out more visit www.dfid.gov.uk

There’s no accounting for some people’s tastes, but if you like a bit of kitsch, this waterbutt will make a great conversation starter at your summer barbecue. The butt butt is the deal of the week over at Evengreener where it’s been marked down from £100 (that’s what you pay for designer dahling), to an affordable £29.95, including a free rain diverter kit. This is a limited edition piece of kit, so get it while you can.

The front of the butt butt is flat so that it will stand against a wall, and it takes 215 litres of rainwater, which is another thing to get while you can.

Update! It seems that Evengreener have now sold out/removed the product from their site and so the link provided above doesn’t point to the butt butt anymore. Sorry!

It’s not very often that you’ll hear us campaigning against something like this eco town. But as guest contributor Michael Smith points out, this eco town is not as “eco” as it’s being made out to be, and it risks turning beautiful countryside and farmlands into just another car-filled urban area. For a bit of background on this story, read here.

Ford it is not a brownfield site as claimed. 87% of the land is greenfield farmland and with the cost of food increasing, should we be building on land actively used for agriculture? The more farmland we build on – the more expensive our groceries become!

Our roads, schools, hospitals and water supplies are already under huge strain and 5,000 – 15,000 houses will increase the pressure on local services even further. The more demand we put on supplies and services – the more expensive they become!

The developers believe half of all the new houses will not need cars. If they build a minimum of 5,000 houses, 2,500 could have up to 2 cars. That could be 5,000 cars, which is more pollution and that isn’t ‘eco’ is it?

There will be a massive increase of traffic levels in the local area affecting everyone who use the roads around our villages, including the over burdened A27 and A259. The developers propose a link road through Ford eco-town, which would raise traffic and noise levels further, increasing pollution too. Not very ‘eco’ then?

Nature is my playstation – is it yours? An eco town would remove all the natural wildlife that we are so lucky to have on our doorstep. Its not just animals that would be destroyed – trees will be chopped down, wild flowers and hedgerows will be lost forever! Can the developers build a zero carbon eco-town, without causing any damage to local wildlife or natural eco systems?

Visit the NO Ford Eco Town campaign blog.