Eco News

Urban farms sprout on NYC rooftop.

Aucklander Robyn Simcock is renovating her garage. As is, it is slightly sunken into the ground so that the roof is only a metre above the pavement. She has pumice, wild flowers, succulents and New Zealand natives ready for the renovation. She wants the garage to look nice, because it can be seen from the street. However, these plants and rocks are...

If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years.

New Brighton Project is currently working on establishing NZ’s first weekly Eco Market in New Brighton which will be launched on the 31st of October, 10am-2pm. We are still looking for stallholders, workshop presenters and non-profit organisations who would like to be part of this exciting venture. Here some examples of what we are looking ...

Welcome to the 11th edition of the Ecobob Bi-Weekly Top 10 where every two weeks we bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the environmental arena.

The Venus Project presents a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture.

GENEVA - Electric vehicles from Australia, Germany and Switzerland set off yesterday, local time, on the "longest and greenest" round-the-world drive to promote emissions free transport and November's world climate conference. The UN-backed "Zero Race" is organised by Swiss schoolteacher Louis Palmer, who made headlines with ...

Mayoral candidate Len Brown wants to incorporate Waitakere's eco-city into the Super City as part of his plan to build the most liveable city in the world. Among his environmental goals are a 40 per cent reduction in Auckland's carbon emissions by 2020 and introducing green waste collections. Speaking to more than 200 Year 13 students at King...

Welcome to the 10th edition of the Ecobob Bi-Weekly Top 10 where every two weeks we bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the environmental arena.

The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.

Welcome to the 9th edition of the Ecobob Bi-Weekly Top 10 where every two weeks we bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the environmental arena.

SHAC is accepting entries to the Sustainable Habitat Challenge for 2011. SHAC challenges teams to build or retrofit a more sustainable house, building, office, classroom or community hall. Form a tertiary, industry, or community-led team, and work collaboratively, involve young people and communicate widely about your designs. SHAC challenges t...

Auckland 25/05/2010 Re: zeroenergyhouse.co.nz We would like to announce the launch of the zeroenergyhouse.co.nz, an evolving design resource based on the zero energy house that we will be building in the Auckland subrurb of Point Chevalier in 2010-2011. Following the project design and building performance, the website will provide a practica...

Welcome to the 8th edition of the Ecobob Weekly Top 10 where every week we bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the environmental arena. Back Issues: Read ...

Welcome to the 7th edition of the Ecobob Weekly Top 10 where every week we bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the environmental arena.

As part of a Design Leaders video series, architect and cohousing expert Kathryn McCamant talks about a lesson learned from the Danes: Bringing houses together brings people together.

Ten-Ten is an ambitious project to unite every countries around the world behind one simple idea: that by working together we can achieve a 10% cut in carbon emissions, - without waiting for politicians to agree. It has been launched here this month, on the website www.1010global.org/nz The target is 10% reduction of carbon emissions by partici...

Economists, and many of us to some extent, have come to believe that the economy is more real than the physical world. Think about the incredible regard we have for the economy. "It’s healing," we say. "It’s going through a rough patch." We talk about it like it’s our aging mother. Whereas with the Earth, we say, "Oh well, ...

The New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC) and Beacon Pathway are currently working to develop a system for assessing the performance of New Zealand residential homes. The rating system is set to be available from mid-2010, when homeowners will be able to access a free assessment online to obtain a rating of up to four stars. In order to ...

Welcome to the 5th edition of the Ecobob Weekly Top 10 where every week we bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the environmental arena. If you know of any interesting eco-info that we could include in our weekly top 10 please email it t...

Welcome to the firth edition of the Ecobob Weekly Top 10 where every week we bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the eco-world.

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Ecobob Weekly Top 10 where every week we bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the eco-world.

A New Zealand company that has developed an energy “miracle” to solve the world’s climate change problems is seeking investors to commercialise the product. Christchurch-based IndraNet Technologies (IndraNet) is seeking six million dollars from investors to commercialise its revolutionary nGen Systems that will see businesses and individuals rea...

Viedo on Fonterra, industrial dairy and climate change.

Welcome to the third edition of the Ecobob Weekly Top 10 where every week we will bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We will keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the eco-world.

Here is a blunt message to Environment Canterbury Councillors Mark Oldfield, Pat Harrow, Angus McKay, and Bronwen Murray: Resign! In December last year you were found by the Auditor-General to have a conflict of interest regarding decisions over water resource management, since you yourselves, as holders of consents regarding water, have sign...

Welcome to the second edition of the Ecobob Weekly Top 10 where every week we will bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web. We will keep you updated with any interesting news, events or happenings in the eco-world. If you know of any interesting eco-info that we could include in our weekly top 10 please email ...

New Zealand-based Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation announced today that it will be working with Honeywell’s UOP on a United States Department of Energy cooperative agreement project to demonstrate technology to capture carbon dioxide and cultivate algae for use in biofuel and energy production. “It is significant for a New Zealand company to be inv...

Get your weekly eco-fix with the Ecobob top 10. Every week we will bring you snippets of info and links to interesting eco stories on the web.

Electric cars may be on Christchurch streets by 2012, with plans that the city be the first in New Zealand to create a charge-point network. The Christchurch City Council and the Renault-Nissan Alliance have joined forces to introduce zero-emission vehicles to the city, with plans to launch the electric Leaf car in 2012. Nissan says the Lea...

A list of interesting eco inventions and innovations selected from the 'Springwise' newletter.

Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets and the author of Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller built his reputation as one of Canada's top economists based on a number of successful predictions including the housing bust of the early 90s and the rise of oil prices. In his recent book, Mr. Rubin predicts $225 per b...

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 bo...

Christmas time has come around fast! The older I get the quicker it seems to come and I'm only 28. Personally, I do find Christmas shopping a little painful, as the people-pleaser in me is tortured as I HAVE to get the perfect gift... and who can really determine what that is in the hustle and bustle, noise and traffic of a Westfield mall. And in a...

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, vag...

A retrofit of a Housing New Zealand home to improve living experiences of those on low incomes and a thermally detailed straw bale house in Central Otago were Friday judged the winners of the Sustainable Habitat Challenge. For the Challenge, teams were given less than two years to design, fund and create their vision for more sustainable housing. ...

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

Over the past century, unprecedented technological breakthroughs have advanced the development of cities and promoted a move away from agricultural lifestyles. In rural areas, farmers have embraced the economic efficiencies technology provides and the practice of monoculture has thrived. In urban areas, people have become increasingly dissociated f...

Well, we did it! Two years since we announced our audacious plan to run a nationwide competition requiring teams to design, fund and build a sustainable home, we are now getting ready to celebrate the outcomes. The projects brought together builders, architects, iwi, local authorities, students, engineers, and more. Ten teams entered, resulting in...

Rising high through the polluted air of Guangzhou City in southern China is a 71-storey tower block which, according to its designers, will be the most energy-efficient in the world. Among a host of features designed either to make or save energy, the one that caught my eye was the shape of the Pearl River Tower itself. It is built in a cur...