Our free groups for summer music festivals like Oxegen, Electric Picnic, Live at the Marquee, Sea Sessions, Indiependence, Castlepalooza, Life, Body & Soul Solstice, and many others make it easy for you to find drivers or passengers going your way. If you’re having a party and want a group of your own, let us know, and in the meantime here’s to meeting new tripmates - pump up the volume, dance dance!
Teenage boys in different parts of the world have solved two of the most difficult problems facing the environment and both projects are low-tech and affordable.
Richard O’Shea from Blarney won this year’s BT young scientist top award for his invention of a smokeless biomass-fired cooking stove. Richard had visited Africa and seen first-hand how many people cook indoors on wood-burning stoves: 2 billion people across the world rely on burning biomass materials like wood, dung and plants to cook their food. Every year thousands of people in the developing world who cook indoors in poorly ventilated homes die from smoke inhalation.
Richard then spent months designing a highly efficient, smokeless stove that can be built using found materials such as tin cans. His goal is to work with charities such as Trocaire and Concern to share his invention with those who need it and can build their own.
Meanwhile, across the water in Canada, 16-year-old Daniel Burd won the Canadian Science Fair with his research on microorganisms that can rapidly biodegrade plastic. Daniel recognized that plastic, one of the most indestructible of manufactured materials, does in fact eventually decompose. It takes 1,000 years but decompose it does, which means that decomposing microorganisms do exist.
Daniel immersed ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth and then isolated the most productive organisms. The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it, selecting out the most effective strains and interbreeding them. After several weeks of tweaking and optimizing temperatures, Burd achieved a 43 percent degradation of plastic in six weeks, an amazing result.
With 500 billion plastic bags manufactured annually and an expanding Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, Burd’s breakthrough is timely and now needs to be embraced by governments and industry alike.
Waste not want not - in these times of green awareness and financial concern, it’s more important than ever that we don’t waste precious resources. Yet in the USA, the average American dumps about 14% of the food they purchase every year. In the UK, a typical family throws away £50 worth of food – every month! If this sounds familiar, here are a few simple steps you can take to reduce, and hopefully eliminate, food waste in your household.
1. After steaming (or boiling) your veggies, keep the water, let it cool and then use it to water plants. The added nutrients from the vegetables are natural plant fertilizers – and water is a precious resource too! When rinsing fruit and veg also consider collecting this water as it might be usable in the garden as well.
2. Too many tomatoes? You can dry them in the oven, which also concentrates the flavour and makes them sweet and delicious. Just cut them in half or dice them and put them in the oven at about 150 degrees for 2-3 hours until all the moisture is gone. Ideally, you can combine this oven use with other cooking so that you’re also saving on fuel costs. Then jar them up and use any excuse to eat them! You can watch a video demo (with thanks to greenopolis.com)
3. Did you know you can freeze eggs? Just take them from their shells and use an ice tray to separate them. You can see more here.
4. Morning-after baked potatoes can be delicious, too – heat a little warm milk and butter, then slice the potatoes lengthwise and scoop out most of the inside and add it to the milk. Add sour cream, parmesan cheese, garlic salt or anything else that takes your fancy, mash or beat the mixture to whip them up, spoon the mix back into the skins, then put in a greased baking dish, maybe sprinkle a little grated cheese over them, or chives or bacon bits, then bake.
5. Pre-cycle: don’t take packaging into your home. In many places in Europe, overpackaging can be left at the store, which makes a lot of manufacturers rethink the way they package things. Precycling beats recycling hands down. Look at glass bottles, which go from green bins to recycling facilities where they get crushed and ground down and remade into bottles. Why not go back to having a deposit on bottles, so that they’re returned to the bottling plants to be cleaned and then refilled. Surely bottles should only be remelted into glass when they’re broken?
6. A great site for eco-foodies is Love Food Hate Waste. Every year in the UK £12 billion worth of good food is thrown away: Love Food Hate Waste is a campaign from WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) and has lots of tasty recipes and top tips to help us all make the most of the food we buy.
7. Finally, any organic matter whatsoever (even dog poo!) can be transformed into lovely plant-loving mulch through the magical process of composting. There are many places to learn about this ancient art, here’s just one.
TripMia, back in the saddle! It’s been an age since I’ve dog-blogged. The humans just seemed to take over but here I am again about to bang on about Obama and how “green” is “green”… but first of all check out the photo… does it look like me with a bad perm? Well, it’s not. It’s someone who looks very like me. Her name is Early (?!) and she’s American. My humans, Liz and Breda, met her in Connecticut at Tobey Pond where Early likes to pond-surf. It’s not exactly riveting stunt-stuff, unlike my car-surfing, but then again I’m gracious enough to know that not all dogs are like me - brave.
Firstly, I’ll tell you how my humans got to befriend Early and how my doggy-nose was out of joint as a result. Liz and Breda headed to America leaving me behind with our neighbours, who I love, but being left is just that, being left. I’m very green myself and didn’t want to be adding any air-miles to my karmic debt BUT I now figure, if the plane is going anyway, the plane is going, right? So me on the plane with my humans isn’t going to make any difference. I’m not even taking up a seat! So, firstly I had to deal with that, then I had to cope with being replaced by Early who they loved spending time with (she’s working on her surfing skills but, between ourselves, I just can’t see her on the waves in Lahinch, can you?) I will admit that Early is cute, just like me, and so once I got over my initial dog-envy, she and I became e-mail buddies.
Early and I chat regularly about the things that interest us; car-surfing, pond-surfing and car-pooling for humans. Like me, Early is proud to say that she never travels alone in a car. We also discuss the state of the world and what we can do about it, as mere dogs, and two things we can’t fathom about America is this: why don’t the USA have a plastic bag tax and why don’t Americans hang their clothes out to dry?! What is it in their culture that makes them act like hanging clean clothes out to dry in the fresh air is equivalent to hanging out your dirty laundry in public? Why do Americans take huge loads of washing, soaking wet, from enormous washing machines and put them in super-duper dryers? Can you imagine the carbon emissions that would be cut down if all American households were encouraged to dry their washing naturally, finishing them off in the dryer if they need to? And why would a country that size and that developed not have a plastic bag tax to encourage people to recycle their plastic bags, or just use their own shopping bags? My own humans couldn’t locate somewhere in the area that they were in that would take dry-cell batteries for recycling and had to take them home to Ireland. Couldn’t Obama listen to the dogs and start with those little things instead of just making promises to the world about America lowering carbon emissions?
Through my doggy web-network I just know in my bones that I will somehow get to connect with Bo Obama (black and white Portuguese Water Dog) in the White House to see if he can have a word in Mr. President’s ear. It’s all very well to be drinking beers on the lawn and all of that (Early filled me in on that scenario!) but sometimes something just needs to happen!
Obama, all I can say is “Yes you can-ine!”
It’s a dog’s life - sometimes being a website mascot is really demanding! I’ve been on three photo-shoots now, and not once did someone style my hair or offer me any mascara. Still, what can you expect from humans? I forgive them - the main thing is that I’ll do anything to promote carpooling - besides the joy of car-surfing, I really hate smog and traffic. My humans also seem to like sharing costs - and if they’re saving money they might be able to afford the odd treat for me, which is important! Have a read of the article and see what you think - is my hair okay?
Oxegen 2009, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen Tripmi.ie as their exclusive carpooling partner – and are even offering free parking tickets to cars with 4 or more people! So if you’re thinking of joining the party at Europe’s number 1 music festival, surf over to the Oxegen Group and jump in the pool. Simply find a carpool within the group, and if there’s not one that suits you be sure to Create a Trip (whether you’re a driver or a passenger) - your trip will be saved in the system for everyone else to see. You can save money, save time and save the planet….and you never know who you might meet!
Hello humans! Now you can now follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, Linkedin and LiveJournal for news on green living, new technology, tasty food, social change and everything of interest to car-surfing terriers…that should be enough social media for one dog, don’t you think?
Our first media event 
happened today! The Irish Times article was published, but I wasn’t particularly thrilled about my hair in this photo - you’d think they might have pushed it out of my eyes just for the snap - and my collar is hanging loose a bit which isn’t really the look I’m going for. In fact, no-one asked me about my day, which is a lot more interesting than some human sitting at a computer: first I get to terrify the postman, then there might be a stroll up to the park or the post office, maybe the odd cat to chase along the way, and who knows, if I’m lucky someone clumsy will have dropped a chip or two outside the Spar! In the evenings, if the humans are having chicken I always get a little taste, and in between I’m very good at sleeping. They’ve accused me of snoring recently, but I don’t believe that. All in all, it’s hard work but I love my job as protector, minder, and object of affection. It’s pretty cool. Especially when there’s chicken. And broccoli. Some humans are surprised, but I really love broccoli. Well, I do love all things green! Why isn’t that in the Times, I ask you?
I’ve just joined the Tripmi team and due to my proven dedication to car-pooling and car-surfing I’ve been honoured with the role of resident blogger. I prefer the term dog-blogger as I’m an 8 year old Havanese terrier (I’ll be 9 on April 26th) who moved from Ripley, Derbyshire to South Circular Road, Dublin 8, when I was only 12 weeks old. I’ll invite guest bloggers from time to time but in the meantime check in with me regularly for the latest on car-pooling, car-sharing, lift-sharing and other things green.
Tripmi.ie is a brand new site dedicated to getting Irish people carpooling. We’re in our beta release at the moment so we’re still ironing out the kinks and fixing some issues, but the core system is up and running so sign up and get carpooling!
Since we’re new we need to know what you think, so if you notice anything odd, or have any feedback at all we’d love to hear it. We’ve put a feedback tool in the bottom right of every page in the site so if you want to drop us a note feel free.
Our site will match you up with other carpoolers based on your starting point and schedule, but you’ll need to work out the details between yourselves, so we have a message system built in to the site – simply “Request a Seat” (if you are a passenger) or “Offer a Seat” if you are a driver to people in your matches. You can discuss the details before you confirm the arrangement, without having to share personal information until you are good and ready.
At the moment, because we are a young site, there might not be that many matches for your journeys, but this will change as the site grows! As more people join the site and start carpooling it will be easier to pick the best carpooling partners (we like to call them TripMates!) if everyone takes a bit of time to update their profile. Your Public Profile is shared throughout the site (without revealing your full name or email) so let people know what you’re into, and hopefully you’ll find a match with similar tastes! Last.fm users get a special treat – you can put in your Last.fm username and we’ll compare your tastes with other users!
There are so many benefits to carpooling: cutting your travel costs in half (or more), easing traffic congestion and reducing pollution; our motto is “save money, save time, save the planet!”
Finally, safety is our number one priority, so we do require that if you’re a driver that you’re fully taxed and insured, drive safely and treat your TripMates kindly. To passengers we say, if you’re ever uncomfortable, don’t get in the car. Otherwise, enjoy the ride!
Thanks for stopping by, and happy carpooling!
The Tripmi Team
