I caught up with Spearhead of the initiative Malcolm Currie yesterday in the new premises of ‘Changing Lifestyles’ in Birmingham’s Lower Loveday Street, to discuss what he hoped to achieve both in the short and long term of the project, and what steps were being made to promote the alternative lifestyle of “clean, sustainable living”.

The premises themselves are a hive of activity as I ventured further from the shop front to the back yard where many sculptures and decorations were being produced for various Birmingham school sustainability competitions the cause was supporting, into the workshops where I met placement students Taslim and Susie who have been working at the initiative to support their degrees in Fashion and E-Business at BCU and Aston respectively. Showing the variety of activity of local expertise in use at Globally Local.

Malcolm stated Globally local is about  ”linking the thinking and the principles about sustainability to the practice. We’re not terribly good at that, so we use the four ‘F’ themes; Food, Fashion, Fuel and Finance as a means of delivering that message, but under each of those we do something practical”

The Changing Lifestyles building will host workshops aimed at building up and strengthening relationships with the local community.

“We seem to have lost a lot of basic craft skills in this country, for instance Terra Planna had to go abroad to get their shoes made because we’d lost a lot of our shoe making skills, so the workshop will help people regain some of those basic skills”

Promoting  basic craft skills as well as susatainability and recycling, through fashion and crafts, examples of which are displayed and for sale in the shop front on the bottom floor. Ranging from trainers made from recycled goods, to cork umbrellas, plates unbelievabley made from recycled cardboard, upholstery made from disgarded Saris and handbags made from old Virgin Atlantic seat covers, well worth checking out.

A veritable museam of resuable – recycleable wonder.

“The Cork range also promotes the Cork/Oak eco system which is under threat as people are buying plastics for use where cork was used previously, so we’re opening up a new channel for Cork, fabric”

The group is working to help small companies with the same vision of a sustainable future co -founding the Midlands Eco-Partnership, which Malcolm describes as;

“a small business network, just off the ground, small companies who are making sustainable products or developing sustainable practices, waste vegetable oil is one example, recycled printing inks, one member is developing packaging to substitute biodegradable polystyrene used in the food industry, it’s at that sort of level we would work with and support these small companies”

“teaching the world how to look after trees, rather than cutting them down, we neglect trees, they’re central to most eco-systems in the world”

When asked what aspirations the Changing Lifestlyes project has withinh the grander scheme of Globally Local “We felt the need to take on the premises as a base, and to showcase and retail products that we like, office space and somewhere to launch our magazine ‘The World of Trees’ developing it into an Eco-magazine online, globally teaching the world how to look after trees, rather than cutting them down, we neglect trees, they’re central to most eco-systems in the world, i think the names quite appropriate” ”

“We want to change the world, my view is that the real changesare from the bottom up, byand large with a few exceptions they are coming from small activities, small scale, small businesses, community groups. Unfortuneatley most big institutions are moribund beauracratic, and frankly belong to a previous age, they don’t function the way we need things to function, you proliferate, have offshoots you don’t simply go bigger and bigger and bigger because you’ll end up doing what everybody else does”

The variety and scope of the globally local enterprise extending way beyond our shores with links into Japan, Portugal and South Africa.

“The Japanese CTXs bring together local government; large and small businesses; university research programmes; community activists; media, with the aim of sharing advances in cleaner and low energy technnologies.

The West Midlands region hosts research and development in a number of new environmentally friendly materials, and new energy systems.

The aim of the meeting is to forge new partnerships to develop these energy systems, and new products, by exchanging technological information and manufacturing know-how”

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Biodiesel fuel is similar to diesel gasoline but is made from a blend of diesel and natural renewable resources like corn maize.

Greenergy, the company providing the fuel to Virgin, uses rapeseed oil, palm oil and soybean oil in its biodiesel blend. Approximately 70% of the crops are grown in the UK and the rest from the US or Asia.

Virgin has pledged to invest 100% of any profits made by its train and plane companies, for the next ten years, into

developing clean fuels.

The problem lies in that anti ethanol campaigners feel that the possible mass switch to biofuels will be swapping one devil for another, taking up harvests much needed to end worldwide starvation.

It’s certainly worthy of debate,” said Branson.

“If you take sugar-based biofuels sugar is not an essential food. Actually right now sugar is at an all time low in terms of price and there’s a glut.

“There’s an awfully long way to go before it starts damaging food prices. Corn-based ethanol in America certainly has pushed up corn prices somewhat but I don’t think it’s eating into the food supply.

“At the moment I don’t believe that it’s a major danger. The important thing is that you’re pioneering clean fuels which will be replaced by cellulose fuels [derived from] grass, waste and willow trees and possibly synthetic products as well.

“Getting this industry going is important to the environment.”

I spoke to George Tesseris, anti ethanol campaigner running stopethanol.blogspot.com who feels the use and impacy of biofuels in this instance is not fully thought out “I think Branson is misguided. The best way to protect environment? Stabilize the earth’s population through economic development of poor countries” and directed me towards research done by Mark Jacobson of Stanford Civ Eng.

Biofuels remain a controversial issue, no longer the savious many had predicted although if rulesd are created and maintained to ensure sensible harvesting, use and production they may well be a second chance to get global energy legislation right and provide healthy sustainable production methods for efficient energy use.

Birmingham has 450 state schools, of which now over 125 are now taking part in the initiative started last year by “burying a time capsule containing things we didn’t want to see in the future to be opened in 2026 – the year that
BCC has pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 60%” said Birmingham City Councillor Lorraine Cookson.

Over 100,000 school pupils in the UK are taking part in World environment day.

1.Natural World, 26 Great Western Arcade

2.Greenscene, 7 Gibb Terrace, The Custard Factory

3.Leverton’s, 218 Mary Vale Road

4.Traidcraft, Carrs Lane Church Centre

5.Friends of the Earth Shop, Allison Street

6.Pronto Covenience Store, Birmingham University Guild of Students

7.World Peace Café/Shop, 46 Poplar Road

8.Nima Delicatessen, 103 Alcester Road

9.Natural World, 596 Bearwood Road

10.Shared Earth, New Street

Find them all and get directions with my google map listings here.  

Happy shopping people.

This year Earth Hour is aiming for 1billion participants and YOU can participate simply by the flick of a switch. Register your vote for Earth Hour.

The Event starting in Sydney in 2007 when 2.2million homes and businesses switched off. This year over 1,189 Cities and Towns are signed up to take part hopefully making this the most successful Earth Hour to date.

The big switch off will be captured by satellite photo as the darkness swathes over the planet time zone by time zone. Epic monuments will be shrouded in darkness as The Cube and Birds Nest stadiums in Beijing, China have earlier on this very day. Check back for a report on Earth hour and hopefully some stunning images of the Event, and remember to make your mark and cast your vote for our planet!

The enviro-ratti assembled in New York  and ensured with their rapturous reception, that the gadget registered highest on an audience clap-o-meter, scooping the £3000 prize money and donating it straight to Philnthropic organisation Engineers without Borders.
The simple device which can amazingly be built at home, encourages energy conservation by measuring and displaying a households energy usage on social networking site Twitter, fitting neatly into the theme of the competition, ‘visualising personal energy consumption’.

The Greener Gadgets design competition is judged by environmental design stalwarts, Inhabitat blog editor in chief Jill Fehrenbacher, inventor Saul Griffith and Jeff Kapec owner of Tanaka-Kapec design group and moderated by Industrial designs guru, and competition host, Core77’s Allan Chochinov.

Frühauf, resident of Doblitz, a nearby town who has been successfully using a similar scheme for over a year is credited with the idea saving the town 4000 euros ($5300) per year, according to the Berliner Morgenpost.

A patent is pending on the concept, which will allow the idea to be marketed under the banner of ‘Dial4Light’.  There will be a charge residents for use of the system, with €3.50 being the figure quoted by the company for 60minutes of light. If a compromise between marketeering and public service can be reached this could be a viable solution for all concerned parties.

With the worldwide global economy looking as shaky as the global climate, energy boffins should be keeping an eye out for simple, effective ideas like this in order to save natural resources, as well as our economy.