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Ecobob Weekly Top 10 (2nd Edition)

Get your weekly eco-fix with the Ecobob Top 10. Every week we bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. This week:
1 Fishing extinction?
2 Beauty of Strawbale
3 Sustainable Business
4 Green Marketing Guidelines
5 Peak Oil in New Zealand
6 Green Removals
7 Green Avenues Magazine
8 Soccer ball power
9 Winning the Oil Endgame
10 Christchurch Tsunami

Read the Top 10...

Eco Innovations

A list of interesting eco inventions and innovations selected from the 'Springwise' newletter such as a low cost 'world bicycle' and a 'eco friendly board game'

More about eco innovations

Share a ride - save on fuel

Here's a concept Ecobob recently came across; Fueled by a community of over 3,000 passionately green kiwis, backpackers and everyday commuters, Jayride allows you to find a ride by carpool, rideshare, vanshare (or anything) to anywhere in NZ...

More about Jayride...

Urban Forests

Forests provide invaluable ecosystem services. These include sequestering carbon, filtering pollution from air, limiting extremes in temperature, reducing stormwater runoff and increasing precipitation, to name a few.

In urban settings these kinds of services are especially important in counteracting the detrimental effects of city living to both health and psychological well-being. Trees can also be of economic benefit to a city by providing shade to the north and west of buildings during hot summers thereby reducing the amount of energy used for cooling, and raising the value of properties.

Read more on Urban Forests...

The Manawatu River Opportunity

I woke up thinking about the Manawatu River. It's in need of our help. A new study has proven that it's currently amongst the most polluted in the world. How astoundingly un-New Zealand. I used to live in Palmerston North, having completed four years of university studies at Massey. I'd bike across that huge bridge and gaze down at the water...

Read more on Manawatu River...

Too much building waste

Construction, maintenance and renovation of buildings account for around 40 per cent of the world's material flows, so it's always sad to see an old building reduced to a pile of rubble...

More about building waste...

Connected communities

Over the past century, unprecedented technological breakthroughs have advanced the development of cities and promoted a move away from agricultural lifestyles. In urban areas, people have become increasingly dissociated from the source of their food and completely dependent on monetary systems as their primary resource.

Read about connected communities

Farming For The Future

This item on YouTube is a BBC documentary on the precient global farming and food crisis, filmed in the UK. Featuring Martin Crawford (Agroforestry Research Trust), Fordhall Farm, Richard Heinberg and others.

Watch the video

Peak Oil - What's in store for NZ?

This page is an open discussion on what is in store for New Zealand with peak oil either happening now or about to happen in the next few years. Please feel free to facts and opinions to this discussions along with any interesting links below.

Join the peak oil discussion

Disastrous consequences?

For more than ten thousand years the earth has been in a relatively stable state - a unique period called the Holocene, which has allowed civilization to evolve into what it is today. This desirable state is now under pressure from what scientists say is largely human driven change. The question is: how far can we go before our actions cause disastrous consequences, or is it already too late?

Read more here...

How Food Shapes Our Cities

Every day, in a city the size of London, 30 million meals are served. But where does all the food come from? Architect Carolyn Steel discusses the daily miracle of feeding a city, and shows how ancient food routes shaped the modern world.

Watch this video now

Seed store to save the world

Genetic diversity is the stuff that evolution is made of. It allows a species to survive by adapting to a constantly changing environment. When a species population size decreases, some of the building blocks of that species are lost, and hence some of its ability to adapt to change is lost. This diversity within crops is the biological foundati...

More about the saving seeds

The Solar House (Video, UK)

Elaine Brook shows you round her eco-house which is fun to live in, cheap to run, and is probably how we'll all be living in a few years time.

Watch the video

'Green roofs' - An eco friendly covering

What if a city could support natural ecosystems? What if it could blend into the rural surrounds, manage some of its own byproducts, clean its own air and even produce its own food? Such a city would use green roofs.

Read the article on green roofs

A Woodland Home

It looks like something out of The Hobbit but this Welsh Woodland Home is an example of an affordable 'hand made' eco-house. It was built by Simon Dale, his father-in-law along with a group of friends. The house took around 1000-1500 person hours and £3000 (US$4950) to build.

Read more about this house

Dirty Rivers - New Zealand NOT 100% pure

New Zealand is promoted overseas as 100% Pure – a clean, green, environmentally conscious kind of place. But with 90 percent of our lowland rivers said to be too polluted to swim in, is our image based on a lie? 60 Minutes reporter Paula Penfold investigates.

Read more about dirty rivers

A bold plan for electric cars

Forget about the hybrid auto -- Shai Agassi says it's electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.

Electric cars: Read more...

Rubbish good for building your house

People have been building dwellings for over 14,000 years, largely using materials accessible in their immediate environments. Whether that be wood, stone, clay, reeds, or ice, the practice has always been to use what's available and abundant. It's only since the advent of modern industry and mass production that we have been using products that are mass produced, and then transported over often vast distances to reach our doorsteps.

Building with rubbish

Keeping NZ in the 'Dark Ages'

Power companies are keeping consumers in the dark with dumb meters. Smart meters are the best way to give consumers control over their electricity consumption and stop power companies dictating to them, according to electricity consumer lobby group REFIT-NZ.

Read the full story

Imagine How High Petrol Prices Will Go

Here is a thought which businesses and car owners should take notice of when considering their plans for the next few years. The global economy is currently undergoing its worst downturn since the Second World War. Yet oil prices are at US70 a barrel and at their low point in February only briefly got to US$35 before shooting back up.

Read more about petrol prices

Welligton Car Pooling Web Site
Welligton Car Pooling Web Site Here, we do all the work for you. All you need to do is register, follow a few quick steps and we’ll find carpooling matches for you. We make it easy for you to say goodbye to those long solo drives to and from work, and hello to more money in your pocket with lower fuel costs each week. And that's just one of the many reasons to carpool.
Read more...


Couple builds an off grid sustainable earth house
Couple builds an off grid sustainable earth house They decided to design and build a home that was eco-friendly and could generate its own electricity. They used rammed earth for the walls, mixed with concrete – it is 450mm thick. 16 solar panels sit on the roof, generating electricity and another eight solar panels heat the hot water. The eco house is very well insulated with double glazed window...
Read more...


Attracting Bees to your Garden
Attracting Bees to your Garden Creating a Bee Friendly Garden Nothing evokes the sense of an organic garden like the hum of honeybees toiling among sun-warmed summer flowers. Honey bees are important for pollination of all our fruits and berries and many of our vegetables crops. They don’t need us but we certainly need them. World wide their numbers are on the decline and exp...
Read more...


Greywater expert backs Council approval
Greywater expert backs Council approval The Kapiti Coast District Council’s decision to approve Plan Change 75 and make the fitting of a greywater system and/or rain tank compulsory in all new dwellings has been applauded by an expert in greywater irrigation. Steven Roberts, Managing Director of Kapiti firm Watersmart, says legislating for the re-use of water from washing machines and...
Read more...


Smart choices indoors will help the great outdoors

Smart choices indoors will help the great outdoors While we can't all afford to build our dream "green" home, we are able to retrofit and apply practical eco-logic, making our homes more eco-friendly, with a smaller environmental footprint. Some houses tend to be easier to retrofit than others, and others are inherently greener and healthier, despite not being "consciously" b...
Read more...


Gardens for Kids
Gardens for Kids In today’s world any way to prise children out from in front of the TV or Xbox can be a real challenge for parents. One way to get kids outside can be to involve them in gardening. By designing the garden with the kids in mind it is possible to develop an exciting adventure playground and fantasy world within your own property boundary. A child’s...
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EcoDay 2010
EcoDay 2010 EcoDay is a free, community event and is Auckland’s premier environmental festival.
Read more...


The New Zealand Sustainable Building Conference – (SB10 NZ)
The New Zealand Sustainable Building Conference – (SB10 NZ) The New Zealand Sustainable Building Conference – (SB10 NZ) will bring together a wide range of industry stake holders to focus on the issue of sustainable building in the New Zealand environment. Following on from the successful SB07 held in Auckland 2007, the conference will bring together local and international speakers to share their knowledge...
Read more...

Eco Houses

Do you own or live in an eco house? You can list your eco house on Ecobob for others to view. You can even sell your eco house.

You can make it easier for people to live in a sustainable way by listing your house as an example.

Browse eco houses | Search eco houses


Latest Forum Posts

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i have used a passive system for years and find it very simple and reliable. i have never had a prob...

Maybe send this guy an email;- hes the master of lime plaster buildings! www.adobesouth.co.nz ...

Hi There, I'm not sure if you realise this is a New Zealand based website? Good on you for posting, ...

Hello again ‘C’, Final comment taken from GHCN: Quality Control, Homogeneity Testing, and Adjus...

Hello again ‘C’, I am not going to repeat all my previous statements, but quote directly from my ...

Apologies ‘C’, I tend to err into being patronising if I believe that the recipient is intentiona...

Bridge North uk

Which country are you in?

Volunteers wanted for help with old 4 bedroom farm house, which needs lime plastering....can any one...

It's an odd product that starts off with eco-friendly materials, and then soaks them in fossil fuels...

Hi everyone, there is a very unusual building being built right now. It is called the EcoARK pavilio...

I went past this house today when I was in town. Looks very interesting. There were about 8 or 9 peo...

Hi Anon, Email me directly & I'll call you. Cheers, steve@timbercrete

Hi Dean, believe it or not they use big sliders, bi-folds, french doors in Europe too for indoor/...

could you please identify if you are a architect / designer and expand on 'the whole concept' you sa...

Hi Pete, What I really mean about lifestyle improvements is being able to use our houses for an indo...

Hi Steve, I am reluctant to reveal myself in the forum here as I had very bad experiences in the ...

Steve, thanks for your explanation of degree days. some Europeans are as different as chalk and chee...

HI Anon, Who are you? What I aim to do is design and model houses according to software developed by...

@ Steve From your point of view the extra costs for timbercrete are not justified either. If you...

Hi Pete Degree Days (heating or cooling) is the basic data used when thermal modeling a building. He...

Steve, sorry I'm probably being dumb, but can you explain again what the figures above are? Pete (no...

Thanks Dean. I went through the exercise of comparing degree days for various cities in NZ & oversea...

Great post Dean, I agree whole heartedly with all your comments. but as one of the Northern European...

Rex I'm not sure if you realise, but you come across as really patronising. I'm just wanting to give...

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