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Showing posts with label green Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green Christmas. Show all posts

11 December 2011

Spending for positive change


For all of us concerned about the earth's precious and limited resources, Christmas time really stretches and strains our conscience.  We think carefully about the purchases we are making, about whether they are necessary and whether they are responsbile.

At Biome Eco Stores, we agonise over finding the balance between encouraging consumption at Christmas and operating a viable business.  For any retail business, and particularly one like ours that operates at the margins, Christmas is vital to our survival throughout the rest of the year.

Our mission at Biome has to be two-pronged - one is to help everyone who visits our stores make a difference to the planet, and secondly, to continue to exist so that we may help people with those choices!

While loading the brilliant new range of Tegu magnetic building blocks onto our website, there was the reminder we needed about what we are doing.  In the below video, the founder of Tegu, Chris Haughey says that parents will always spend money on toys for their children.  Tegu's aim is to help people spend that money where it will have a positive social impact.


As Chris explains, Tegu is a "for profit" engine for positive social change in Honduras. Being able to support businesses like Tegu is what makes us at Biome happy!

Some of us choose to live a minimalist, buy nothing life, and some of us choose to consume with a conscience.  Obviously, Biome is a store for the later - but, we have great respect for the former!
 
For every product we choose to stock, we run through our selection criteria assessing what the product is made from, where it is made, who made it and under what conditions, how long will it last and what will happen to it at the end of its life.

We need stores such as ours with an ethical and eco focus to ask the questions and demand standards that profit focussed retailers overlook.

Thinking about reduce & recycle at Christmas

Planet Ark has produced an excellent list  "The 12 do's of Christmas" (thank you to our facebook friend for letting us know about this!).  All very easily achieveable actions to help you reduce and recycle this Christmas.  Ideas like:
  • Buy good quality decorations that can be reused many times, or make your own from reused materials.
  • Gather all your steel bottle caps and save them in one can, then fold down and send the whole lot off to recycling.
  • When giving new electronics, recycle the old electronics - Planet Ark's RecyclingNearYou.com.au has an excellent resource on where to find places to recycle just about anything.
  • Invest in a battery recharger for your home and give rechargeable batteries with gifts.

Introducing Tegu magnetic wooden blocks


Tegu's product designer talks about the thought process and 'maths' behind Tegu's magnetic wooden building blocks, which have the unique ability to build stronger minds for children.



See the Tegu range available in Australia at Biome.  Visit here for our green christmas ideas.


16 November 2010

Makedo for kids who just love to make-do with stuff around them


A genius Australian invention, Makedo helps children (and adults!) learn about reuse and recycling in a playful way.  Makedo is a set of reusable connectors for making things from the stuff around you. With the Makedo gadgets and found materials like cardboard boxes and plastic containers, the whole family can construct amazing inventions.  The video shows it better than words can explain!



1 min crash course from MAKEDO on Vimeo.


Makedo and its Australian designer, Paul Justin are being talked about all over the design world.  From Core77 design magazine
MakeDo is a new kind of Lego: a kit of parts serving as connectors for creations made from recycled cardboard and other cheap, readily-available materials. The kits wisely build on the concept that if you give kids a fancy new toy, they'll be bored in an hour, but give them a cardboard box and they'll play all day. Kids, and maybe all of us (as proven by the Maker Faire), respond best when given the tools to find the answer rather than the answer itself.


Makedo makes it onto Biome's Top Green Gift Ideas List for 2010.  Visit our Green Christmas section for Christmas decorations and entertaining.

30 November 2009

Christmas train is a coming...

We have been madly preparing for Christmas and hence no posts for a while.  This is our sixth Christmas trading season at Biome and we have not worked out the magic formula for making it a breeze.  A healthy sense of humour, tolerant and compassionate work mates and plenty of sleep are a great start.

Christmas is like a fast and heavy freight train barrelling down the track towards us and if you don't leap on and ride it, you miss it...and it is not on the schedule for another 12 months.   Being able to leap on takes a tremendous amount of preparation and energy!

Of course with our eco hats on, we do think alot about encouraging consumption at Christmas.  Yet, the reality of operating in retail is that we must make Christmas work for us.  We offer our customers alternative choices for gifts and celebrations that have integrity and meaning - products where great care has been taken to consider the environmental and social impacts.

We truly appreciate all the wonderful comments about how beautiful the stores are looking.    Here are some photos of our Green Christmas displays taken by hjimagery.com


12 November 2009

Brisbane to have largest solar powered green Christmas tree

A sneak peek of Biome's City store Christmas window
Good on Brisvegas for laying claim to the world's largest solar powered green Christmas tree!

This year, the Christmas tree returns to the newly refurbished King George Square, where it will come alight on Friday, 27 November from 6:30pm.

The 18 metre green tree is solely powered by the sun.  The solar panel will generate 50 amps per hour, stored in five heavy duty dry cell gel batteries located inside the base of the tree.  The tree previously used 5,000 watts of power each hour.

The green Christmas Tree has a sophisticated solar powered lighting system featuring 16,000 bulbs, 250 red opaque baubles, a multi-coloured twinkling light system and a giant star made up of solar panels for the tree’s top.  

Everyone is invited to attend the free event to light the tree, with entertainment including celebrated Brisbane singer, Katie Noonan, theatre legend, Bille Brown, and Christmas Elves from Flipside Circus.

Catch some public transport to see the tree before 26 December - and while you're there, please pop by the Biome City store just down the road at 215 Adelaide Street to enjoy our beautiful green Christmas display and Australian Christmas decorations.

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