The City of Port Phillip and Small Business Victoria invite you to attend the Greening for Growth Forum 2012.
This will be a great opportunity to hear about programs and products that can save power, water and money for your business.

The event will featurerepresentatives from:
- Sustainability Victoria
- Victorian Employer’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry
- Moreland Energy Foundation

Hear from local businesses who have implemented sustainable initiatives: Current Consulting, Pure Organic Grocer and
CitiPower Port Phillip Business Excellence Award winners Kosdown and Daisy Dry Cleaning.

When: Monday 27 February 2012 5.30pm – 7.30pm

Where: Port Melbourne Town Hall Auditorium, 333 Bay Street, Port Melbourne

RSVP: email admin@portphillipbusiness.com.au

For more information please go here

Green Valentine’s bits and bobs from around the internet…
Gorgeous Valentine online Love it!
Some eco-romance tips from Green Renters (you’re quite right Cate- why all the gorillas for cheesey romantic soft toys?)
And Annie Leonard (of Story of Stuff fame) with some things to think about for consumers with a conscience today. Thanks to Green Steps on Facebook for pointing this one out.

Thanks to GetUp! for sharing this scary video of Lord Monckton and the mining industry agreeing to a media strategy of buying up Australia’s media.

Elephants in the outback???

It’s a conversation starter.

Read more in the Age

Analysis for the 2011 calendar year by market researcher SolarBuzz gives an interesting perspective of which way Australia is heading in the solar photovoltaic market compared to its big rivals in Asia: Australian installations are falling, while China and India in particular are going up, but Australia is unique in deploying little or now solar PV at utility or commercial scale.

More complete story have a look at Renew Economy

By Giles Parkinson on 31 January 2012

THE roofs in Melbourne’s city centre are a hotchpotch of grimy cement, cooling units and corrugated iron, with just the odd flash of greenery to soften the concrete aesthetic.

But this palette could change, with new research suggesting that white roofs clad in solar-reflective paint are a cheap way to stop buildings from absorbing heat on hot days, and keep them cooler when the temperature spikes. A joint study by Melbourne University and the City of Melbourne has found that white roofs can make buildings up to 4 degrees cooler inside and allow for 10 per cent more working hours within a comfortable temperature range.

White roofs – also known as cool roofs – have been slowly gaining popularity as an energy-saving measure internationally, but this is the first time that the concept has been trialled in an Australian city.

Last month, the City of Melbourne painted a white roof on its ArtPlay building, a historic railway shed next to the Yarra River, at the cost of $16,000.

The solar-reflective paint has nano particles in it, ceramic beads that act as pockets of air and add insulation to the roof.

Lord mayor Robert Doyle said he would like to see large commercial buildings such as Icehouse and Costco, in Docklands, install a white roof as a retrofit measure, but ruled out financial assistance to building owners or making white roofs mandatory.

”Building owners are not dills, they’re always looking at their costs,” Cr Doyle said.

Although foliage-rich green roofs offer greater temperature reduction, they are more expensive to establish and maintain, Cr Doyle said.

”This is very important, you can just feel it [the heat] when you’re in the city at the end of a long hot week,” he said.

The research found that even on a tall building of 30 storeys, a white roof offered some energy savings and reduced the so-called urban heat island effect, where cities are often 5 degrees hotter than the countryside surrounding them.

”White roofs are a low-cost solution to making buildings more sustainable, particularly our older buildings,” said Melbourne University senior lecturer and lead researcher Dr Dominique Hes.

The white roof push will form part of the city’s beleaguered 1200 Buildings program, which is at the heart of its ambitious bid to become carbon neutral by 2020.

The most recent data shows only 50 buildings have signed up to the program, which aims to dramatically reduce the city’s carbon footprint by retrofitting two-thirds of its ageing office blocks.

At the current rate, it will take about 34 years for the council to recruit the further 1150 commercial buildings needed to meet the goal.

Miki Perkins

The Age

25/1/2012

Two separate reports show that wind farms are better supported by local residents than you’d ever think from reading the papers or watching the news.
Friends of the Earth and Pacific Hydro say that support in communities with wind farms is as high as 83% http://econews.com.au/news-to-sustain-our-world/report-shows-strong-rural-support-for-wind-farms/
CSIRO shows that rural residents often support wind farm development but do not seek media or political attention. Media analysis demostrates that reasons for opposition to wind farms is given more space than reasons to support them: http://econews.com.au/news-to-sustain-our-world/csiro-says-media-misleads-on-wind-farm-support/

2011 was the year everyone suddenly developed an opinion on the environment, because all of a sudden the environment was out to take their air-conditioner, their TV, their right to a comfortable suburban life, and their trip to Borneo to see the environment. The Great Big New Tax (which David Pannell explained is not actually a tax but a fixed-price emissions trading scheme) took the environment from “that thing out there that Sting used to bang on about” to a threat to our very way of life. It was no wonder people wished the whole climate change thing wasn’t happening (in fact, Ben Newell looked at why people have trouble dealing with the concept).

For more information please read The Conversation

The Victorian Government recognises that street lighting is a significant operating cost and source of greenhouse gas emissions for local government and has committed $20 million over four years to the Green Light Plan to support councils and their communities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut costs through the replacement of old, energy intensive street lighting with energy efficient technology.

For more information read here

The draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan came out on November 28, promising to end decades of mismanagement and set our rivers back on the path towards sustainability. But it fails. It’s so heavily compromised that it wont look after the long term health of our rivers, especially in Victoria where they face reduced flows due to climate change. The good news is that the draft is just a draft and you can help change it. Environment Victoria is getting 4,000 people to speak up on the draft Basin Plan – one for every billion litres of water our rivers need. Speak up for the Murray at www.environmentvictoria.org.au/save-the-murray/take-action.