Get Real Kiwis - www.getreal.org.nz

Part of my work last week was creating a project scope around the idea of moving the excellent lobbying work being done from the Wanaka Wastebusters HQ into a national conversation with interested people.

What we are looking for is a mandate to be a bigger actor in the decision making process around the creation of waste and recycling. The work that is already being done would be all that more powerful if we had a documented constituency behind us.

There are many precedents for bringing ideologically close people together through the Internet to support campaigns, the likes of Get Up Australia and more politically partisan the recent Move On campaign in the USA.

I put a lot of thought into the possible manifestations and decided that to maintain any momentum the presence has to be more a conduit than a single issue site, a rolling maul of campaigns around issues which we can offer high level research and action. It could also act as a vehicle for other activists who share our leanings and are looking to connect with a broader voice.

Of course we have to be careful (thanks Phil) of asking questions with out a context and only ones we can actually deliver results on with the right support. What is exciting about Wastebusters is we have the resources and the skills to do this, we are not starting from scratch.

Once the idea crystallized I started mapping it out in a database data structure - I find this can, strangely, be a good logical test of what is a social idea. A bit of tuning, a re-presentation, a fortuitously available CakePHP collaborator and we should be live in a couple of weeks.

Insulation - Round 2

My house is the first house I designed and therefore comes under the 'allowable mistakes' section I guess. I mistake is only a problem if is not assimilated into future practice, and of course remedied.

One of the biggest was not sealing the strawbale wall top adequately, combined with the curved and therefore gappy nature of the surfeit it resulted in way too mch air movement through the rafter cavity. The roof is insulated on the exterior of the waterproof membrane so the dew point can not be inside but with the rafter cavity running some brisk natural air-con the insulation never really got to do its job.

So, the problem sat in my draft addled head for many years. How best to inject insulation with the least amount of work and maximum impact.

I found Paul Kennets house insulation project very inspiring but I didn't really want polystyrene inside the house where it could rain down through the micro gaps in the T&G ceiling. But the method made sense.

My belief is that an unwanted singular thing can be a problem, waste I guess - but a lot of an unwanted thing is normally a resource I started looking for insulation options from the wastestream. It didn't take long to find bedding grade polyester fibre insulation offcuts through the Christchurch waste exchange Terranova. Toby and I needed a shipping container so as it was travelling empty I took a day to fill it with free insulation in Christchurch and ship it down.

So the last few months has been the occasional session of ripping up 30m3 of insulation and blowing it into the roof space with a Ryobi leaf blower on suck (over 200kmh muzzle velocity!). Kinda noisy and mindless work but it already seems warmer.

Activism is Farming - And why the the Maniototo should have wind farms

I just watched a TED talk, yep another amazing human doing great things. This time Willie Smits applying what I would call 4d farming or something - basically just doing the right thing. Thinking and acting in more than his own interest.

What really struck me was how much the failed land in the video looked like the New Zealand farming estate. Mono culture, dry, ugly. Actually Otago is more ugly as it is covered in high straight wire fences.

It is a real shame we do not have Orangutans, otherwise we could get some public support and rehabilitate our land to be productive and fertile too.