"Voices from Europe: Build a Living Economy"

A new Worldwatch report "Voices from Europe: Build a Living Economy" voices expert opinions from across Europe on the failure of the current economic system to protect the environment and provide quality of life to people. The report presents examples of a vision to transform cultures across institutional structures in society.

Vote now for a better future! Rio+20

The Rio+20 Dialogues have now entered the second phase.

The 100 recommendations generated by the 12,000 participants in www.riodialogues.org are now ready for public vote at http://vote.riodialogues.org

Vote now!

How much you know about sustainable consumption?

Test your knowledge on sustainable living by taking the Sustainable Consumer Quiz prepared by MSc candidates from the IIIEE at Lund University Gabriele Schliwa, Germany and Eva Kouraki, Greece.

Participate in a webinar that takes place on Tuesday, June 12 at 11.00 – 12.00 CET
Just enter as guest and type in your name.

Good luck!

Swap-o-matic: bartering vending machine

A ‘Swap-O-Matic’ is a vending machine that allows you to swap and trade items instead of buying them. “New fun way to reduce consumption and waste in our community! The Swap-O-Matic is a vending machine that allows you to give away things you don't need, and get things you like, all for free!"

Read an article about that on CNN website: Swap-O-Matic: A vending machine for bartering with just about anything

"Inside job" movie

A great Charles Ferguson's documentary "Inside job" from 2010 about the reasons behind the financial crash of 2008 revealing unsettling truth about the greed and corruption of financial "specialists", politicians, “third party” evaluators of financial institutions and even economists - academics from prominent universities like Harvard and Berkeley. Several thoughts come to mind when watching the movie. The first one is that you cannot change the malfunctioning system with people who created it. The second thought is about all these ratings of universities based on the number of their publications in leading scientific journals. The question is what is the value of these publications if they are leading the society  into disaster? And the third thought is even more disturbing. We have all been exposed to consequences of the financial crisis, but the culprits behind the great master plan walked away with millions and have even been employed by the new administration to manage the financial system…again. The system is still largely a run away train with no regulation and no supervision, although it is crystal clear what the consequences of this kind of governance are. So what hope does this leave for the sustainability discourse? For taking into consideration the planetary boundaries and setting limits to many environmentally adverse activities? I think none at all as long as the short-sightedness, greed and total unaccountability is ruling the world... 

Planned obsolescence and consumption dilemma

Watch a great Swedish documentary "Glödlamskonspirationen" about the origins of the consumer society and the role of planned obsolescence in it. Featuring John Thackara, Serge Latouche, Michael Braungart and others... Unfortunately partly in Swedish.

“Negative spillover effects”,

It has been often claimed that simple environmental actions can spillover into motivating people to undertake more ambitious environmental behaviours. Professor John Thøgersen argues that this is not the case...