Sustainability - environmental, economic, social

I only really started reading This Low Carbon Life in February this year, and started contributing in May. The posts I'd like to reflect on during our "Retroblog" week are therefore all during the later, summery months of our blog's year.

There couldn't be anything more summery than John Heaser's "Watery Bits" photo blog, which included beautiful photographs, and was a lovely reminder of what nature is doing all around us all of the time and how awesome it is!

As an architectural engineering graduate, I couldn't help but be interested and inspired during the green building theme week on the blog. It was a particular paragraph during Chris's post which really struck me, about how the behavioural change is just as important as the technical installation when it comes to energy efficiency in buildings.

One contributor whose posts never fails to touch my heart, though, is helenofnorwich. Her summery post "Sun, sea, sand and..." was one such post, and got me thinking about where I should go to meet people and socialise where there are people who take environmental and economic issues seriously. All too often, social events for people of my age (26) are characterised by loud music, wasteful consumption of branded alcohol and shallow conversation (if indeed there is any at all!). Not really my thing! Any suggestions welcome!

Photo: summer crop by pond by John Heaser

Sun, Sea, Sand and . . . .
helenofnorwich
4 August 2011

Sustainability of course, what else would you be thinking?

But if you were thinking about something else then how would you have an environmentally friendly romantic relationship? More and more of my friends are meeting people through Internet dating. You can find your absolute perfect match. No need to be three dates in before you find out they don’t recycle or read the wrong newspaper. But it seems that when you find your perfect match they invariably live in another part of the country.

So how would you find a partner in your own postcode area? We were discussing this in the Magdalen street Celebration meeting (yes we had drifted off the point slightly).

So I have come up with a few places I think you could try. Please feel free to add send us more ideas:

The bicycle shop ( full of green types and great locally produced food)
Transition meetings and events have lots of lovely people and you could probably go to several meetings a week until you found someone that took your fancy.
Norfolk Quakers (I slipped this one in as they are very environmentally friendly individually and as an organization).

I recently took some flowers on a date that I picked from a graveyard (they were not from a grave, that would be wrong) and I took some cider from the Norfolk Square Breweryshop in Magdalen Street. Of course if you were going out with a non-environmentally type they would just think you were either weird or a bit of a cheapskate. These things are only partly true.