That was the weekend that was - Sustainable weekend

What a busy weekend!

I discovered info about the Fort Collins sustainable living fair in a hippy magazine that I accidentally picked up in a cafe. Some of the talks looked pretty interesting. So we hopped on the treadlies and went on up.

Bike valet parking was good and there were a few bikes there too - about 2,000 a day or thereabouts. We grumped cos there was a fee to get in to the fair, but it was only $5 each. They forgot to mention the fee in the article about the fair. (Just like the fair we tried to attend in Seymour earlier this year, but the fee there was something like $20 each! Crikey! The site was 100km/60miles out of town so you had to do some serious work getting there. Do they think hippies are made of money or something?)

We wandered around in circles trying to find the "blue tent" for the first talk we wanted to go to. The info said it had a blue roof. Ummm, nope! Other info said it had a blue flag! Umm nope! How about a blue sign on the front! Yeah! So we listened to a talk about earth berm and living roof houses by Rob Roy. DH desperately wants a living roof on our house at home but they really are incompatible with rainwater collection - you get some but we need all we can get to water the garden in summer. We later had an interesting discussion with the presenter at his tent.

We split up to attend two different talks - me to see one about sustainable landscapes for Northern Colorado (in a nutshell, we can't stop the wave of suburbia sweeping over No Co, so let's get the best deal for the environment that we can). In his usual fashion, DH managed to demonstrate some lateral thinking in someone else's talk about solar thermal that ended up with him having an extended discussion with a couple of chaps. He now has a new friend to play with and they will build a solar thermal greenhouse for a few hundred dollars not $4,000 as offered in the talk. (Want to know a little more about solar thermal air collection and heat storage? Read this PDF. The name of one of the authors may be familiar....)

We looked around some of the stalls, discovered that the food (where it hadn't run out!) was quite reasonably priced - we are used to being gouged at events, like $3 for a bottle of water that costs $1.50 in the shop but this was a pleasant surprise! $1 for cans of drink and $2-3 for a bit of food. Suddenly it was 6pm and time to go home.

Sunday we backed up for more. DH wanted to go to a talk about electric bikes, ie pushbikes with an electric motor on them, and scored a free tshirt! I went to a talk on solar site analysis, which was a lot more interesting than you might think. I thought I had a fair idea of how a solar professional looks at this stuff but I found out some really good info. The presenter was the best I had seen at the fair - he's worked as an solar panel installer and now as a trainer for 5 years. He knew his stuff and he was relaxed. No stuttering, no stumbling. After the talk he showed us the solar pathfinders he had with him.

(doh! Someone is too lazy to go swap that pic the right way round! Note this is not the recommended way to use a solar pathfinder) They estimate the amount of sun your roof/site will get at any time of the year (ok, not at night-time, obviously, nor when it is cloudy - the maximum amount of sun). It was cool! I want one! I want to go round doing solar site analysis.

We had met up with DH's new friend before the talks started and then wandered around with him for most of the rest of the day. DH chatted to quite a number of the exhibitors and we bailed up the guy who did the solar site talk and DH talked to him for some time. He was cool.

This was just plain odd. Someone recently asked me what was the most bizarre product I've seen here. This has to be it.

A pram for dogs. Yessirree, you can stick your lapdog in the pram and wheel it about like a baby. The lady had just let the dog out - obviously she felt other dogs/people were not a worry. Man, you would have to really like to go for walks pushing a pram. Not so sure it will give the dog much exercise though, and I thought that was half the point!

The last talk I went to I found a little disappointing. It was about new opportunities for green professionals. What it really meant was do an MBA with a sustainable development bent to learn how to market yourself and your stuff, find some venture capital/get a job as a corporate sustainability officer and Go To It! Not quite what I expected. But it was great for people who wanted that.

We ended up having dinner at our new friend's place. He has cats and a fab vegie and fruit garden. One of his cats, Luna, is a real sweetie, and kept asking for attention (and icecream when it came out).

What did I get out of the weekend? First of all, if you want to improve your green footprint, don't go spending $20 grand on a PV (photovoltaic, solar electric) system. Instead, go around your house. What things are always on even if they don't need to be? Pretty much everything that has a timer or a clock or a standby mode is chowing down on electricity even when it is not actually working. Completely turn off the stuff that you can turn off. (In the USA, with no powerpoint switches, this means getting a power strip with a switch you can turn off) What lights can be replaced by compact fluoros? Replace as many as possible. Can you double glaze your windows or even use that storm window film on them? Do you have any gaps or air leaks? How about your house? ;-) Get some caulking or expanding foam and close up any air leaks in your house (I don't recommend using caulking or expanding foam on yourself). How about your old fridge, dishwasher or drier? Can you update them to newer, energy efficient models? Put a programmable thermostat on your hot water heater. Use a low flow shower head. Use a fan rather than a heat pump (normal) airconditioner. Use evaporative cooling rather than a heat pump airconditioner. These things can cut your energy bill in half.

Got any money left over? Look at any of the forms of solar thermal (heating for either your house or your hot water system, solar hot water, solar hydronics, etc). Finally if you are still all cashed up and ready to go, put solar panels on your roof and generate some electricity.

One other thing I gained is the impression that the USA is made of money. Lots of venture capital out there for people with Good Ideas (and maybe Not So Good Ideas). Very different from Australia. Stuff all venture capital there - very conservative!

All in all it was a good weekend for meeting people, making connections and finding out that there is plenty of Good Work being done out there and in particular around here in Fort Collins.