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The Living Smart Community Course is your opportunity to gain practical skills for a more sustainable, happy and healthy lifestyle. Discover things you can do and choices you can make, both big and small, to make a positive impact on your home and neighbourhood.

Some of these Communitiy Courses are even being held at our very own Midland Atelier as part of Perth Solar Cities.

Perth Solar City and the Midland Redevelopment Authority are pleased to commemorate the first iconic solar project to begin as part of the Australian Government’s $94 million Solar Cities program.

The concept is straightforward: Companies pledge environmental patents to the commons, and anyone can use them — free.

As concerns about the impacts of climate change and increasing urbanisation accelerate, one US city is streets ahead in the race for sustainability. Jeffrey R Hammarlund and Connie Ozawa report for Fast Thinking magazine on Portland's rise as the greenest city in the USA.

Green Drinks is an international movement of environmental professionals and 'green' individuals meeting up for informal sessions every two months. Green Drinks is mostly for people working on environmental issues, but anyone can come - people from environment groups, business, government, academia and as individuals.

Green Drinks are also Freeform. There is generally no agenda or theme, Green Drinkers mingle and share insights and provoke and exasperate and inspire and delight each other. There are moments of serendipity and a lot of 'oh, if you are interested in X then I must introduce you to that person over there who knows all about it'... All kinds of people come to Green Drinks and this is what makes for the interesting interactions.

The Perth Green Drinks are run by local designer and lecturer Wilma van Boxtel. The next event is on the 10th November at 6pm at the UWA Club. 

Carrotmob is a new brand of cyberactivism - a network of consumers who buy products in order to reward businesses who are making the most socially responsible decisions. As the name suggests, it uses the carrot (rather than the stick approach). Rather than boycotting environmentally unfriendly businesses, Carrotmob is a network of consumers that reward responsible businesses with their cash!

The concept is for small to medium-sized businesses in an area to bid for a 'mob' of consumers who patronise (en-masse) the store that turns itself into the greenest business. You can check out the YouTube video of the first campaign here (please excuse the trashy music video interlude).