http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/ The Big Green Idea en info@thebiggreenidea.org Copyright 2010 2010-02-24T19:50:04+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/more-bgi-everyday-green-workshops-announced/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/more-bgi-everyday-green-workshops-announced/#When:19:50:04Z We are pleased to announce new dates for our 'Everyday Green' workshops. Taking place on 20th May & 27th June at 'The Fold', Bransford, near Worcester, these workshops are packed with inspiration, advice and fun....not to mention a few goodies to take home! Places are disappearing fast again, so if you are interested please contact us soon by following the link. Front Page 2010-02-24T19:50:04+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/uk-aware-2010-16th-17th-april-olympia-2-london/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/uk-aware-2010-16th-17th-april-olympia-2-london/#When:16:29:55Z UK AWARE is the UK’s leading green and ethical lifestyle show. Taking place on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th April and expecting over 15,000 visitors, UK AWARE 2010 will offer consumers a ‘one stop shop’ for sustainable living. We have a special offer! Tickets cost £15.00 on the door, but can be bought in advance by our supporters and friends for £6.00 by visiting our special link. Not only will this save you money, each ticket purchased benefits The Big Green Idea too! Front Page 2010-02-20T16:29:55+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/exciting-year-ahead/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/exciting-year-ahead/#When:18:24:26Z We've been so busy planning exciting BGI projects for 2010 that I have found very little time to blog recently. Here's a taste of what we're planning..... Everyday Green Workshops: http://bit.ly/8F1NZK The first of these workshops takes place on Sunday 14th March near Worcester and is fully booked. We will be posting further dates on the website sometime in the next week or so. International Year of Biodiversity: We are now official partners of IYB-UK and are going to focus this year on talking to people about the huge importance of biodiversity. More details to follow.... Green Office Workshops: We are running our first ‘Green Office' workshops in Worcestershire at the end of March. The content is extremely comprehensive, covering everything from energy and water saving advice to using car parks/window boxes to attract bees and how to choose ethically sourced tea and coffee for elevenses. These workshops are aimed at both management and staff. Three Counties Spring Gardening Show: We are in the process of finalising our presence - with the Big Green Bus - in the Organic Gardening section of this fantastic show! This is really exciting for us, because the show attracts around 90,000 people over four days. More details to follow, but here's a link to the Spring Garden website. We are planning a Big Green Bus tour of South West England: this will probably focus mostly on Cornwall, but we hope to pick up some bookings in Devon and maybe Somerset too. We are looking for volunteers, venues, places to park-up overnight and people to feed our crew. We don't have funding yet for this tour so are also looking for donations, sponsorship and paid bookings. Not sure when this will be, but possibly late summer. More later.... More primary school bus events: These events were extremely successful last year so we want to do more in 2010 that we did in 2009. The great thing about primary children is that they help effect changes in their parents! There's lots more happening but I'll write a more comprehensive update for our next newsletter. Also, please check out my twitter posts which are packed with useful information... I hope everyone has a lovely week... General 2010-02-15T18:24:26+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/base/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/base/#When:18:28:47Z Business and a sustainable environment event - 16 & 17 March 2010, Excel, London. Many businesses recognise that changing to a more sustainable operating model is simply a matter of doing good business.The problem is they don’t know how to do it. That is where base – the event where business meets sustainability – comes in. Base will provide practical, solutions-based information using the language of business. Front Page 2010-02-05T18:28:47+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/big-green-bus-update/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/big-green-bus-update/#When:18:30:06Z I'm up early today to take the Big Green Bus over to Thamesdown Transport in Swindon for a kind of ‘Spa Holiday' for buses. We purchased the bus almost exactly two years ago, but if the lovely people at the bus depot thought they had seen the last of it they were very mistaken! I've called Bob Gillespie from Thamesdown Transport on many occasions over the last couple of years. Sometimes it's just been to ask what kind of oil the bus likes best, or to find out where to get a spare battery terminal from.....but I've also had to ask him if he could come out and fix a burst pipe just off the M4 on our way to Bournemouth - and to tow the bus back to Swindon from Bath after the old engine burst into flames. That was just over a year ago and resulted in us getting a lovely reconditioned engine which will hopefully outlast me! It's certainly been an eventful/challenging two years running this bus. As well as the times I called Bob for help, we have also experienced a broken windscreen wiper on our way back from Loughborough University (we had to attach string and manually operate it from inside the bus all the way home), an embarrassing experience with a low bridge that we hadn't spotted on our map - and for the last few bus events of 2009 we had to allow an extra 20 minutes when we arrived at each event to dismantle the gearbox and tweak a nut so we could get reverse gear to work. So....it's time for a complete ‘once over' for the Big Green Bus. By the end of today it will be in Bob's capable hands - and when we collect it this time next month, it will have been serviced, MOT'd, had reverse gear fixed, been fitted with a new alternator, got extra LED lights on the back (to make us more visible from behind) and hopefully Bob will have discovered why the heating doesn't work and fixed it so we no longer need to travel with duvets and hot water bottles! I wish someone would send me on a similar holiday for middle aged ladies!!! The Big Green Bus 2010-02-04T18:30:06+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/bumblebee-conservation-trust-please-help-by-voting/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/bumblebee-conservation-trust-please-help-by-voting/#When:18:18:55Z A message from Brigit: "The Bumblebee Conservation Trust are hoping to win funding for a fantastic project to restore bumblebee habitat along the Pembrokeshire coast. By creating flower-rich areas along a new path, BBCT hope to support populations of the very rare shrill carder bee and other bumblebees, invertebrates and birds. But to get there they need YOUR HELP. It will only take two clicks...Please vote NOW" Read their story General 2010-01-27T18:18:55+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/newsletter/february-march-2010/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/newsletter/february-march-2010/#When:11:22:48Z 2010-01-24T11:22:48+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/everyday-green-workshop/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/everyday-green-workshop/#When:18:15:42Z Places on our ‘Everyday Green' workshop have been filling up fast. There are now only two places remaining, so if you are interested please get in touch ASAP by emailing us at office@thebiggreenidea.org   Events 2010-01-21T18:15:42+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/feed-the-birds/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/feed-the-birds/#When:11:12:51Z With this freezing weather set to continue for the next week or so, it's absolutely vital that we all do whatever we can to help wildlife. The RSPB has put out an urgent call for us to help birds - and here's some advice from the RSPCA. Here are a few more tips.... Brush snow off trees and shrubs with berries. Clear snow away from areas where you usually see birds looking for worms and insects. Fix an apple through the top of a stick in the ground. Wrens and robins love cheese: put it in a blender with peanuts, seeds and suet to make a high energy mix - place in nooks and crannies. Break the ice in birdbaths or put out containers with a few twigs in them to help stop water freezing over. Anything you can do is better than nothing! General 2010-01-10T11:12:51+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/the-big-green-bus-at-primary-schools/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/news/article/the-big-green-bus-at-primary-schools/#When:18:34:58Z Over the past year the Big Green Bus has visited a number of primary schools - and hundreds of children (and their teachers!) have enjoyed taking part in the educational workshops we run on board the bus. Read about a typical primary school visit and what it involves in this article. More → Front Page 2010-01-06T18:34:58+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/international-year-of-biodiversity/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/international-year-of-biodiversity/#When:18:07:19Z The UN have declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. No one can possibly have failed to pick up on the fact that bee numbers are declining at an alarming rate. But it's not just bees; many species of flora and fauna are facing imminent extinction - and we all need to act now, today, to try to halt the rate at which the earth's biodiversity is decreasing. We have caused the problems so it's up to us to try to put things right before they spiral out of control. I pledge to do everything I can to support the International Year of Biodiversity at home and in my work with The Big Green Idea. I have started by planting more insect attracting plants in my garden - and by the end of the year I hope to have a more wildlife friendly garden than ever before. Providing habitat and foraging for wildlife is such an easy thing to do and doesn't need to cost you a penny; all you need to provide habitat for a whole eco-system is a pile of old wood! You can make a tiny pond with an old ice-cream container; drill some 10mm holes in a wooden post to provide nesting for solitary bees or sow borage, lavender and thyme to attract a whole host of beneficial insects. If you have a larger garden then now is the right time to plant fruit trees... lots of them... and if you have a plot of land or a smallholding you could lay hedges and create wildflower meadows and grassland. The sky's the limit!! If every one of us pledges to do just one small thing for biodiversity during 2010, together we will make a difference. Biodiversity is life - pass it on   General 2010-01-06T18:07:19+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/hobbit-house/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/hobbit-house/#When:08:50:26Z If the universe were to grant me one wish I would ask to live in this little house till the end of time ...   General 2010-01-03T08:50:26+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/peak-oil-to-transition/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/peak-oil-to-transition/#When:13:30:52Z I have just received a sneak preview of the lovely Anita Sancha's new animated short film ‘Past Peak Oil Travelling towards Transition' so I thought I'd share it with anyone who reads my blog. (I wonder if anyone does actually read my blog. Hmmm.......) Anyway, for those of you who are reading this, may I suggest you make a nice cup of tea and sit down with a piece of Christmas cake (or a mince pie) and have a look at Anita's lovely, quirky, little films. General 2009-12-29T13:30:52+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/biodiversity-and-the-dodo/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/biodiversity-and-the-dodo/#When:19:52:56Z During 2009 I've become increasingly absorbed by the alarming increase in the earth's loss of biodiversity, particularly the decline in the bee population. I still can't quite believe that the dodo is truly extinct and I truly don't understand why the warnings in Rachel Carson's ‘Silent Spring' were not heeded when her book was published in 1962. It seems so extraordinary that we don't pay attention to warning signs even when they are all around us, for everyone to see. The BGI has been working on ways to help raise awareness of these problems by making ‘bees' one of the main issues we focus on when we visit schools. I have also been doing talks and workshops about the problems facing bees and the ways we can all help them. Whilst it has been heartwarming to see how many people share my concern, it has been equally alarming to see how little information is actually being absorbed about the scale and urgency of the problem. I keep getting reactions like 'I think I've read something about bees dying...is it a real problem then?' or 'How come no-one's telling us what we can do to help?' Very worrying. It is very encouraging, therefore, to know that the UN have declared 2010 The International Year of Biodiversity. Hopefully, this initiative will be embraced and taken up by governments, oganisations, businesses and individuals all over the world. It's too late for dodos but maybe we could all step up our efforts to help save bees and other animals and plants from a similar fate. Watch BBC4's ‘The Dodo's Guide to Surviving Extinction' here. General 2009-12-28T19:52:56+00:00 http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/2009-solstice-poem/ http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/blog/2009-solstice-poem/#When:12:04:34Z Dawn. The shortest day is here at last - and heralds the turning of the wheel. No trumpets; just frost. And chill. Droplets of condensation running down the panes of glass to rest upon the sill. Dusk. Stoke up the Clearview – prepare some roots for a nourishing meal. Hot water bottle, warm duvet. And the thrill of watching the winter sun set beyond the horizon as the night becomes still. Dreams. Of new beginnings and the possibility of double glazed windows. General 2009-12-21T12:04:34+00:00