Every day we shape our planet's future when we make small life decisions - what we buy, what we eat, how we travel. The future of the planet is in our hands; the future is man-made. And we are all "Futuremakers". If we choose to live sustainably, we can assure a future for all living things. And we can have some fun doing it too!
This site, created by WWF-Australia, is a place where you can share ideas with other Futuremakers so that we can live more sustainably. We hope the tips and stories here will be useful for you. (More about this site)
To browse the ideas on this site by category or difficulty, click on the icons below.
Well, that’s what it calls itself anyways. And this is a screensaver with attitude, and a sense of humour 
The world’s most useful screensaver. For Mac OS X and Windows.
I laugh every time it runs… and it makes you think to boot.
P.S. big props to the team at Leo Burnett for making this happen.
P.P.S. if you’re a digg-er, digg it
We’ve teamed up with Domain.com.au, the online real estate website, to create a quick sustainable home guide in support of Earth Hour.
It highlights some of the things you can do to reduce your energy consumption around your home. Many of the tips appear here as well in more detail, but we think it’s a pretty good introduction - perhaps useful for passing onto friends who are interested in finding out more about reducing their emissions.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports today:
THE world’s leading economist on climate change, Sir Nicholas Stern, has challenged Australia to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 per cent by 2020 - and 90 per cent by 2050.
Check out the full story: Stern words for Australia - slash emissions now. They’ve also posted a video interview with Sir Nicholas.
The Sydney Morning Herald is running a poll today asking Will you turn off your lights on Saturday, March 31, 7.30pm?. If you’re participating in Earth Hour would be great if you could show your support there too.
Hot on the heels of STA’s announcement, Virgin Blue in Australia have announced that they are introducing a carbon offset offering for customers.
We’ve talked about offsetting flights before. In that action we noted that the first step is to reduce flights where possible. But as we all know, sometimes the only way to travel is fly. So in those cases, offsets are a great option.
Although Virgin Blue’s offering is not completely integrated within their booking system (yet) - you have to go to a separate page and enter your booking number - this is great news, and will hopefully speed the awareness and adoption of carbon offset programs in the flying public.
Virgin Blue’s offsets program is also accredited under the Australian Government’s Greenhouse Friendly initiative. This means that the carbon credits purchased by Virgin Blue on behalf of customers are the “real deal”.
Of course, if you don’t (or can’t) fly Virgin Blue, you can still offset your flights through other offset providers such as WWF partner Climate Friendly.
STA have announced an initiative, in partnership with Origin Energy, to offer customers the option of offsetting their flights on STA trips.
A return trip between Brisbane and Sydney would cost $16 to offset.
Although offsets have been available through other companies, like WWF partner Climate Friendly, for some time, this is the first travel company that I know to offer offsets at the time of purchase (though I could be wrong - anyone know of previous schemes?).
Well done STA and Origin Energy!
This news is a little bit old, but, like I said, we’ve been busy
We are very excited that Google Earth now includes an overlay showing WWF projects around the world.
Our international site has more information.
At the moment only one of our Australian projects is listed, but more will come soon. If anyone’s familiar with how to convert longitude and latitude into Google Earth’s decimal-based format, we may be able to use your help, so let us know in the comments…
Just a quick post to thank everyone who has sent in a suggestion over the past few weeks. The ideas and feedback has been really useful.
We hope to have a few new actions up soon, but we’ve been snowed under with the response to the Earth Hour campaign. Over 24,000 people have now committed to Earth Hour, and nearly 900 have also shown their support.
Unfortunately the result has been a little less-frequent posting here… But please don’t let that stop you sending in your ideas! And don’t forget to enter the “60 things you can do in the dark” competition (in the banner) - those 5 Nokia mobile phones are looking for a home 
For any readers in NZ, Nick Young (no relation) sent us a pointer to this Clean Energy Guide. Nick suggests:
If you live in New Zealand you can make the switch to clean energy by using the Clean Energy Guide to choose a new electricity supplier.
The guide is produced by Greenpeace NZ and rates New Zealand’s clean energy providers. I really like the “thermometer” diagram showing the various companies from hot (red, top) to cool (green, bottom).
The site seems to be the equivalent of the Green Electricity Watch (GEW) in Australia. GEW is a regular report produced by a number of environmental organisations, including WWF, that rates GreenPower products available in Australia.
The latest report was released in November 2006. GreenPower options from Origin Energy and TRUenergy were ranked highest.
In the comments to the post on SAAB’s efforts to go green Lisa asks:
Why is tree-based carbon offsets not preferred? Wouldn’t they be more beneficial because they offer more than just carbon offsets such as helping with soil errosion, habitat, etc.
That’s a good question Lisa! I should have put a bit more detail in the post - but as this is something that’s probably of more general interest, I thought I’d post a response here…
Planting trees is a type of carbon capture and storage (sequestration in technical terms). We definitely need to plant more of them for the many benefits they provide!
Our What is offsetting? guide explains the issue this way:
Though in principle [tree-planting for sequestration] is a good idea, some offsets programs have the double-advantage of investing in important new technologies which deliver clean energy, thereby avoiding greenhouse gas emissions at the source - something that tree-planting programs can’t do.
So, in essence, the issue is that planting trees does not reduce the amount of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere in the first place. This is the reason we’re not too keen on tree-based offsets.
The guide goes on to say:
To make the most of your investment, we recommend programs that comply with the CDM Gold Standard for carbon credits. Be sure to ask your offsets provider where your money goes - specifically if the projects they invest in are accredited to this standard. That way you can be sure that the fees you pay are being used to create a real reduction in carbon emissions.
The CDM carbon credits are audited to ensure that the amount of CO2 you are offsetting has been effectively removed from being emitted into the atmosphere. WWF played an active role in establishing the CDM Gold Standard, so it’s probably little surprise we recommend it
I hope that answers your question Lisa.
Ang wrote in with this suggestion:
When your car needs washing, begin with a small bucket of water and wipe off excess dirt with a soft cloth or old towel.
Then, to completely remove the dirt apply a spray‑on waterless car wash (like Selleys Polyglaze Waterless Wash) with a clean soft cloth and you’re done!
You are currently browsing the The future is man made weblog archives for the month March, 2007.
Longer entries are truncated. Click the headline of an entry to read it in its entirety.
