Want
to get crafting and lacking in inspiration? Perhaps you’re looking for party
bag gifts or stocking fillers? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a token gift
for someone who has everything? Look no further, our Fair Trade Beading Kits
are the perfect starting point! 

The
small tin contains everything you need to make your very own necklace including
beads, string and clasp.  With ten colours to choose from, you can be sure that
each necklace will be as unique as the person that’s made it.

Produced
in India by TARA Projects, a non-profit organisation.  They help to generate
steady work and income for their craft workers by providing opportunities and
helping to develop skills.

For further information click HERE (http://www.onlyfair.co.uk/acatalog/Beading_Kits.html) to
view the item.

The Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) is pleased to announce it is evolving to maximise its effectiveness in improving the lives of tea workers and assuring its members’ supply chains.

The ETP is an international non-competitive alliance of 20 tea packers who share a vision of a thriving industry that is socially just and environmentally sustainable. The new approach will see the ETP build on its long-standing estate monitoring work by establishing new relationships with certification programmes, governments, NGOs, and other specialists to deliver increased social and environmental improvements.

One significant driver of this increased effectiveness is that the ETP
will no longer monitor any tea estate which has achieved certification
status from Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade or UTZ CERTIFIED. Avoiding
duplication in this way will reduce the audit burden on tea producers
and enable the ETP to concentrate its resources on producers that are
not currently being monitored by certification programmes.

ETP’s
co-operation with certification programmes will help streamline the
certification process for tea estates and increase the speed at which
tea from certified producers enters the market. If an ETP member is
interested in part of their supply chain becoming certified and the tea
estate is interested in certification, the ETP will now work with the
producer and certification body in question to achieve this as
efficiently as possible.

“Co-operation amongst environmental and
social standards systems is essential if they are to fulfil their
potential in scaling up critical environmental and social impacts.
ETP’s collaboration with independent third-party certification systems
and the fact that it brings together such a large proportion of the tea
industry gives it the potential to enable significant change in the tea
sector”. Sasha Courville, Executive Director, ISEAL Alliance.

ETP’s
social and environmental improvement work will be underpinned by its
new global monitoring standard. This is being rolled out across estates
that supply ETP members and are not involved in any certification
programmes.  It covers key elements of all the relevant certification
programmes, which will help ease the transition for any producers who
become interested in certification at a later date.  ETP’s monitoring
remains free to producers.

The ETP plans to increase its work on
the ground with government departments, NGOs, UN bodies, and technical
specialists, on projects designed to help producers make practical and
sustainable improvements, in particular to the lives of their workers.
New capacity building partnerships will continue the ETP’s track record
of bringing about improvements in a wide range of areas, including
market access, living and working conditions  and health and safety.

Leading
the ETP into the next exciting stage of its development is new
Executive Director Sarah Roberts who has a background in development
work and multi-stakeholder partnerships. Sarah is supported by a team
in the UK and a network of Regional Managers based in India, China, Sri
Lanka, Kenya, and Indonesia. These are local people with wide ranging
experience of the tea sector, development skills and enabling
sustainable change.

“The ETP has the potential to make a
difference at scale, rather than just on the margins. With its 12 years
of experience, detailed first-hand knowledge of the tea sector and
continual engagement with producers, the ETP is uniquely placed to
drive sustained change within the tea sector.

I am looking
forward to building on the many practical improvements that the ETP has
already brought about, from resolving tricky labour issues in East
Africa and Sri Lanka to health and safety improvements in Indonesia and
China”. SARAH ROBERTS, Executive Director, ETP.

Today’s news
builds on 12 great years of work by the ETP. It reflects a significant
step forward and extends the relevance of the ETP’s work in line with
the changing demands of its many and varied stakeholders.

Somerset based fair trade furniture and homewares retailer Myakka demonstrates that an ethical approach to business benefits everyone. Despite the recession, the directors have increased the amount of support they are giving, both to Myakka’s suppliers in India and now local communities in Somerset.

“Supporting our suppliers and their local communities is very important to us,” commented Georgie Hopkins, director of Myakka. “When we visited our main furniture suppliers in northern India at the beginning of the year we set a number of community projects in motion.  Providing new desks for the children at SKSN school is the second project to be completed so far and represents a collaboration between Myakka and our main supplier.”

Myakka has donated £2,000 towards the cost of materials with their
supplier covering the cost of production, enabling SKSN school to
receive 70 new desks and benches for students who previously studied
sitting on the floor.

As a member of the BAFTS (British
Association for Fair Trade Shops) the focus is on supporting suppliers
and their local communities. Myakka has chosen to go one step further
and join the Somerset Guardian Scheme operated by The Somerset
Community Foundation. This allows the directors to support their local
communities in Somerset, as well as Myakka’s supplier’s and their
communities in India.

The Somerset Community Foundation
supports local children, youth groups and older people, those with
special needs or disabilities, sports groups, art and drama projects;
aiming to build stronger communities for the benefit of everyone in
Somerset. As a Guardian, all monies pledged are invested as part of the
foundation’s endowment fund. The income from the fund is then used to
provide a long term sustainable source of grants to address local
needs. Currently the Somerset Community Foundation is the only
charitable body in Somerset administering the government ‘Grassroots
Grants Scheme’ whereby the government will top up funds by 100%.
Therefore Myakka’s financial support is worth much more to the
Foundation and those it supports in the locality.

Simon
Whitehead, director of Myakka commented. “We are proving that operating
a business ethically is more profitable for everyone, even in this time
of recession. It’s important to us that we support our local community
as well as those of our suppliers. The Somerset Community Foundation
offers the most accessible method for us to support small-scale, local
projects.”

Myakka specialises in solid wood furniture and
tailors the designs of each piece for the British market.  The
furniture is made in northern India by skilled craftsman using the
latest German computer controlled machinery ensuring the quality is
second to none. With a sophisticated ecommerce website, a Warehouse
Outlet in Wincanton, Somerset and a comprehensive mail order catalogue,
Myakka has a large database of loyal customers across the UK.

This summer Myakka is celebrating a decade of business with a huge 10th Birthday Summer Sale.

For more information about one of Somerset’s leading ethical businesses visit the Myakka news blog at www.furniture-home.myakka.co.uk or the online shop at www.myakka.co.uk. Select this link for further details on The Somerset Community Foundation: www.somersetcf.org.uk.

Having munched their way through the blackcurrants growing in their own tiny back garden, Mr and Mrs Everybody decided to go foraging at a local Pick-your-Own.  As usual, Mrs Everybody likes to relate our behaviour to our evolution.

For the last 2.5 million years human ancestors have collected plant foods, including seeds, flowers, leaves, roots, bark, algae, as well as animals and insects. Hunter-gatherers tend to feast on foods as they become ripe in the season, as well as to a limited extent collect food for preservation for the lean winter months. Since our ancestors began to use fire some 1.7 million years ago, low tech preservation techniques such as drying and smoking were undoubtedly practised. Food could also be sun dried or frozen where the climate allows, and these preservation techniques can also occur naturally as well. Berries and nuts have always remained an important winter food because they are easy to preserve and they are classed among the super foods.

For us urban dwellers, who must for the most part content ourselves
with foraging in shops, 90% of the fresh berries we buy are imported,
although they easily grow in the UK through the summer and autumn.
While the berries in supermarkets may look remarkably fresh after their
several thousand mile air journey, they may have been treated with
radiation, gasses and other undeclared mystery ingredients and
packaging such as MAP – modified atmosphere packaging, to retain the
appearance of freshness.

Once a fruit is picked it continues to
respire as it still lives. The idea is that the tasty and wholesome
fruit containing the living seed is eaten by a hungry animal. The
little seeds pass through the intestinal tract more or less intact. The
fruit eater effectively transports the seed in their body away from the
parent plant, and eventually the still living seed may have a chance to
grow into a new plant elsewhere. In this respect, fruit eaters and
fruiting plants have evolved a symbiotic relationship. The fruits
provide nutrition and the fruit eater helps the plant to spread through
the habitat.

Seeds will not germinate easily nor grow well from
irradiated foods, because many of the enzymes and vitamins are
destroyed. Although irradiated food looks fresh, it has the
impoverished nutritional value of cooked food. By eating irradiated
foods we are breaking our deal with nature and robbing ourselves of
nutrition.

Plants should be eaten while they are still truly
fresh and alive and while they are in season, or naturally preserved.
With so much information placed on food packaging, it is still
surprising that fresh produce is not labelled with something useful -
such as the date it was harvested and with the post harvest treatment
processes. This would allow the consumer to make sensible choices about
the real freshness and authenticity of that food.

When you
pick-your-own, you know that the fruit is ripe, fresh and untreated,
although I have not been able to locate an organic pick-your-own around
here. By picking your own berries you can save about 75% on the cost of
the supermarket prices, gathering enough fruit to enjoy straight away
and some to store for later use. While berries are for most of us
considered a luxury, in the past they were recognised as an essential
food.

We have already frozen about 5kg of red currants,
blackcurrant and tayberries, giving a 100g serving for 50 days. This
will provide a real boon across the darkest winter months, when
fortunately the oranges will also be in season. It was easy to freeze
and bag 5 kilos of fruit on the same day as we picked them.

Fitting
in with our evolution, berries should be part of our minimum 5-a-day.
As fresh berries are available in the UK from June to October, we will
need to store a lot more for the winter – raspberries, tayberries,
blackberries and field strawberries will be available through August
and we will definitely fulfil our foraging needs again next month.
Unfortunately my freezer is pretty full already and I don’t own a chest
freezer, so we won’t be able to store all the fresh fruit we would
like. As I write, millions of berries are dangling on trees waiting to
be picked and eaten.

Going to do pick-you-own for the first
time? First find a local pick-your-own. This website is a good starting
point. Go on click it! http://www.pickyourownfarms.org.uk/

    *  Telephone the pick-your-own site beforehand to check what is in season, opening hours, regulations etc.
    * Take your family, especially children and friends – in the past foraging was a collective activity.
    * Wear sensible shoes because the ground is uneven and either old clothes, or dark clothes to prevent staining.
   
* At some pick-your-owns you can take your own containers, if not you
will need to buy some empty punnets at the site. The containers should
not be too deep or the delicate fruits will be squashed.
    * While
it is normally regarded as acceptable to taste one or two fruits while
picking, please don’t feast in the fields. Pay for everything you pick
first.
    * Be prepared to process your fruit once you arrive home.
Either eat the fruit straight away, or freeze it, sun dry it, or use it
in recipes while the fruit is at its optimum freshness.
    * Take
some volcanically formed alum crystal with you. If you get bitten by an
insect or scratched by thorns, wet the affected area with saliva and
rub the crystal around and over the area for a minute or so to kill
microbes and help the area to return to normal sooner. Click here to
buy 3 alum crystals.
    * Make plans to return later in the year as new produce becomes available.
    * Be prepared for changes in the weather.
    * Your tips for novice gatherers?

Application deadline 30 September

From the 9-16 December 2009, a Christian Aid team of 50 cyclists will take to the road and ride 140 miles from London to Copenhagen to highlight the start of the UN climate change summit and raise vital funds for Christian Aid projects in the developing world.

With three days cycling between 25 and 65 miles a day, the bike ride is open to all levels of cycling fitness. The group will leave London on the morning of 9 December, cycling through the English countryside to Harwich and, after the ferry ride, through the Danish islands to Copenhagen. Participants will cycle for no more than six hours a day and there will be two free days in the Danish capital before the group returns to the UK.

In Copenhagen, the cyclists will have the chance to make their ‘green’
presence count by joining thousands of climate change campaigners from
all over the world at a mass rally calling for a fair and effective
deal to combat climate change and to help the millions in the poorest
countries already suffering the effects of climate change.

“Cyclists have always been at the forefront of the green movement.
This an amazing opportunity to make a real difference by making your
voice heard at the crucial climate change talks in Copenhagen and at
the same time raising money to help some the world’s poorest people,”
said Alison Gregory of Christian Aid.

The cost of the trip is
£875 per person which you can either pay yourself or raise in
sponsorship as part of a commitment to raise £1,900 for Christian Aid.
There is also an initial £99 registration fee. The price includes all
accommodation, the ferry, transport back from Copenhagen and most meals.

Participants will get full support from Christian Aid’s
dedicated events team with lots of training, preparation and
fundraising advice and a free Christian Aid T-shirt.

For a
brochure, the full itinerary, route profile, registration form and
fundraising tips log on to www.christianaid.org.uk/events call 020 7523
2248 or email events@christian-aid.org.

Here is a great offer from Life² – for the next 2 weeks only we are giving away free downloads of our guide booklet ‘The problem with consumerism’ at http://www.lifesquared.org.uk/.  These booklets normally cost £5 each, so this is a great opportunity to get a bargain and see what we do at Life². 

To download the book, just go through the usual checkout process of
purchasing it in our shop – and you will not be billed for it or asked
to give any financial details. Here are some other things coming up at
Life²… 

Other news

Also, just a reminder that we will be running some informal open
evenings for our ‘just think…’ course in various towns over the next
few weeks.  Just come along to any of the venues below if you’d like to
find out more – no need to book in advance.

- The Cricketers pub (first floor), 15 Black Lion St, Brighton at 8pm on Weds 12th August 2009

- The Lewes Arms (first floor), Lewes at 8pm on Thurs 13th August 2009

- Kings Arms pub (function room) on Holywell Street in Oxford at 8pm on Wednesday 19^th August at 8pm

Just think… is an 8 week self-taught course giving you the chance
to stand back from your life and find ways of making it better -
including living in line with your values and living the life you want.
Visit this link for details.

Julian Baggini talk in London on 24th Sept 09

Well-known philosopher and broadcaster Julian Baggini will be giving
a Life² public talk in London on 24th September on ‘The meaning of
life’. Click on this link for more details and to make a booking.

Courses in Brighton in August, September and October

We have a number of courses starting in Brighton in the next couple
of months, including ‘Modern life – as good as it gets?’, ‘How to be
happy’, ‘The Beta course’ and a taught version of ‘Just think…’. 
Visit our website to find out more and book a place – http://www.lifesquared.org.uk/.

And that’s about it for now! There are plenty of other courses,
talks and publications on our website, and we aim to put something new
onto the site every weekday, so do keep visiting us at http://www.lifesquared.org.uk/.  Please pass this email to anyone else who you think might be interested in what we do!

All the best,

Richard Docwra

Director

http://www.lifesquared.org.uk/

info@lifesquared.org.uk

Twitter: Rdocwra

That’s right Eco Print are proud to be ‘crap’ printers! We can now print all of your business stationary on Rhino Poo paper and card. Sourced from UK Safari Parks these papers are 100% recycled, so they’re good for the environment and lucky for us the Rhinos can’t stop providing the core ingredient! If you are looking for a great way for your printed materials to stand out, create a talking point, or just want people to sniff your stationery* then this is the paper for you! If you’d like a sample of our ‘crap printing’ give us a call.

Our Eco Policy is  Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and this should not mean compromising on quality, or for that matter costing the earth! Eco Print handles all jobs, digital and litho, specializing in short and medium size print runs. We even have an experienced graphic designer on board if extra creative help is needed.

Like our printing process, every member of the Eco Print team is free from artificial colours and preservatives and happy to offer friendly helpful advice. We are an approachable, locally based company, big enough to cope but small enough to care.

For more information on us and our range of papers and cards, check out our stunning website http://www.ecoprintUK.com or call us on 01722 340350

* Rest assured Rhino Poo paper and card is odourless

This is a delightful book.  Emma Cooper has produced a really informative and entertaining book that is a valuable addition to any gardener’s collection of reference material.

Emma’s own ‘alternative kitchen garden’ is in the back of a modest house in urban Oxfordshire.  Since moving in and converting it from a neglected wasteland in 2001 she and her partner have both left lucrative, high pressure jobs to downshift and concentrate on food and growing.  The book conveys Emma’s infectious enthusiasm for the whole business of cultivating your own fruit and veg.  And it’s an eclectic mix of information about mainstream crops likes spuds and carrots with useful info on things like composting and making use of your local Freecycle group. A tip I picked up on is that Dandelions give off the same gas (ethylene) as bananas and so can be used in the same way to help ripen other fruit.

It does not pretend to be a comprehensive listing of every aspect of home growing but it certainly covers enough ground to make it very useful. All the information is written in an easily accesssible style that will help both novice and experienced gardeners alike.

The Alternative Kitchen Garden is published by EJ Members Permanent Publications and retails at £14.95.

This was originally written in
response to a post made by Sharon Astyk in her blog on the 30^th
July -
http://sharonastyk.com/2009/07/30/will-the-internet-still-be-here-in-tough-times/

I’ve re-worked it a bit to make it
a stand alone article – please come and comment if you have any thoughts on
the matter…

Will be be able to log on to the
internet after oil has peaked?

Beware… you are about the enter
the mind of an optimistic pragmatist! It would be easy to project
that with oil and material prices rising that the internet will
disappear or become so expensive to access that it is only available
to those who can afford it. Yes, planned obsolescence is both a
racket and a reality – yes, server farms are consuming vast amounts
of electricity every day, and yes Rupert Murdoch is planning to
charge us to read the news soon because he’s finally realising that
interruption advertising doesn’t pay. But, consider this – the
internet is basically a hyper advanced version of two cups connected
together by a bit of string, and on this we have quite a few options
left to keep it going (just so long as we can still get to the bits
of string and can keep make sure the cups don’t break beyond
repair!).

There is a very common misconception that we must
rely on centralised web services like Yahoo!, Twitter and Facebook
(and all the other web platforms) to share our data. I was talking
with a “non-techie-but-pretty-aware” friend the other day and
they said “the internet all comes from America, doesn’t it?”
and I suddenly realised how common this perception is. The idea that
there is a font of all knowledge somewhere – probably in
Yellowstone Park, a geyser that all cables lead to.   It really
isn’t like that though. The Internet is a network of lots of
internets (note the capital “I”) – and servers, in particular,
are just computers too.  The PC you are reading this on can be a
server – it can send and receive information and it can store
information for others to access if you let them.  When five
computers are connected together in a “network” we have
made an internet or mini-web.  When we plug that “network”
in to another “network” we have made the web bigger. 
We are still “internetting” even if we do not dial in to a
server over the pond.

I read somewhere – and have no idea if
it is true or not – that the internet was created by a guy who
plugged his laptop in to the mains in a college somewhere and
realised by some fluke that his computer was, via the mains (yes,
internet can flow through the electric rings in your house) to a
vending machine in the corridor.  He could see the CPU in the
vending machine, affect it and make it spit out a bar of chocolate
when people walked by it.  Thus – one computer was connected to
another and the internet was born.

Whilst the hardware that
has got smarter and smarter, smaller and smaller, and faster and
faster so too has the software that makes use of the hardware.  
Software kind of strives in the opposite direction to hardware -
always seeking to need less and less of the available hardware
capability.  The lighter and simpler the software the better in
many respects.  Well… that’s the theory anyway.  Cause
the other place we are operating under an illusion (like the one that
says we need centralised hardware) is in Windows.

Microsoft
was born out of Unix like code – Unix being an opensource project
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source-
and Gates capitalised it and protected the IP.  So, it had to be
developed in house, protected and hidden from anyone who wanted to
develop the code themselves.  Building in all this protection
and tomfoolery makes the programs very heavy – conveniently justifies
the need to buy a new computer with the next multiple of 10Gb hard
drive. Planned obsolence at work without any failing hardware!
There are many loads of other operating systems that are far far
lighter weight and come with no trademark restrictions born of the
Open Source movement and based on the original Unix ideas – Linux
being a major development that has achieved great things – indeed,
there is even a superb opensource version of Microsoft office (Word,
Excel etc) called OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/
- if you don’t already use it I recommend it).  This movement is
diametrically opposed to the Gates/Microsoft model of protecting the
code and IP…  rather freeing up everything to whoever is
interested and allowing the community itself to develop software. 
For Gates the need to protect the software and collude with the
manufacturers of the hardware has resulted in a intellectually false
demand bubble for consumer access to both hardware and software. 
Its a bit like average Joe needing a car and buying a Lotus Elise
cause that’s what he is told he needs when a second hand Golf would
do just fine. Well… thinking about it, maybe exactly the same
thing has happened in the car market.  People really don’t need
4×4’s to drive down the Kings Road… but that’s a different
topic.

So, for the things that we really need computers for -
emails and sharing text (I know pics are fun too, but entertain me) -
there really isn’t a need for all the hype. Computers that were
being built as long ago as 10 years, if installed with the right
software (of course that’s another thing – you struggle to get old
versions of Windows to run on old machines – “just buy a new one
- its a lot easier”… never mind the environmental costs of
that new one!), can do all the things we want them to do.  And
there are MILLIONS of these old machines kicking about – check out
www.jamies.org.uk
- go there… see the mountain of dead computers…

So if we
use the right software and we can use all the trillions of bits of
hardware that we have already made – that means we don’t have to
produce more chips and PC’s (sounds more like the car market as I go
along) – and software being made freely and openly available by the
opensource community.  Indeed, it is on these machines with
hyperlight operating systems that computers are being sent to places
like Africa to get them online… 

That starts to
address the cups in my analogy.  Hacking back to my earlier
point about my computer connecting to another computer and making a
web is where we can find the next piece of the puzzle.  Do you
remember Naptster?  The illegal music sharing site? 
Well… out of the black market emerges a white night.  File
sharing.  Or, as the process is now commonly known, BitTorrent. 
Without accessing a single centralised server, individual PC’s can
share data with one another – in some cases massive files – by
storing little bits on lots of different machines – and then allowing
software to organise the recollection of those files assuming the
people with the information on their machines gives the individual
access.  This is using the internet as the platform – as opposed
to what is happening at the moment where the platforms are bits of
software held centrally and individuals access the internet and use
them as instead of the net itself.  Its because there are many
PC’s – and a lot of them are on – but with successful micro
generation, the internet could be a massive web of micro networks
that exists because they are all on – not because there is some
central source keeping the music playing.  I am reminded of my
good friend Rob Weston’s theory of Organismics… it is the point
when the sum of the parts transcends and becomes a whole, and thus
doing so becomes greater than it was before.  More info about
BitTorrent here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol
- (note – as of Feb 09 BitTorrent accounted for between 27-55% of all
internet traffic!!!!!!!!!!!)

Really I have to get on with some
work now… and I know I have not accounted for the string yet. 
But, in short, we will have to have some form of energy to power all
that.  Its not like there aren’t cables running in to my house
that I can trace all the way back to your house and so on and so on. 
Thanks, BT (and the original electricity firms).

By way of
conclusion – I can’t see the internet getting stubbed out.  It
will just change shape.  It will be more like the tables at the
back of the FT – lots of less pretty pictures (equating a pretty
picture on the internet to a CO2 cost suddenly feels quite weird) and
lots more tables and more careful decisions about what you do and
don’t bother to access – the flippant web user will be forced to be
far more discerning, choosing carefully what they bother to access. 
We will have lost nothing but the massive amount of pointless
activity that takes place on the web…  some might say a
blessing in disguise.

Additional Reading – supplied kindly by Jamie Simpson of
Ecological Hosting Ltd (www.ecologicalhosting.com)

Microsoft founding history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#1975.E2.80.931984:_Founding

Internet history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History

Start of the Internet as we know it:

http://www.w3.org/History.html

Interestingly linked to Apple via the
NeXT cube, which was used by Tim Berners-Lee as the first web server
at CERN.  NeXT was a company started by Steve Jobs after Apple
ousted him and ultimately the company that Apple bought out that
brought Jobs back to Apple.  The NeXTStep operating system
(which was brilliant – I used it years ago) eventually became Mac OS
X.

The Internet is a collection of
internets (notice the capital I on The Internet – much ignored by
many journalists).  The protocol mainly (but not exclusively)
used on the Internet is TCP/IP, which was developed by DARPA – the
American defence research agency:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

This is where the misconception that
the Internet is American comes from.  The World Wide Web, which
is most peoples experience of an application on the Internet, (WWW is
not the Internet!) – was developed in Europe at CERN by Tim
Berners-Lee – an English engineer no less:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

Back to your use of cheap commodity
hardware:

If you want to see what massively scalable use of commodity hardware can do, look at the Google operating platform.
 They use cheap PC hardware, loads of it and it’s like the Borg.
 You pull one out, replace it and everything keeps running as
it’s scaled across the planet and each peace of information is held
in multiple places simultaneously.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRwPSFpLX8I

See
also Google File System and BigTable - links here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform#Software

Google are doing loads in terms of
trying to become more sustainable and using more renewable energy in
their data centres.  It’s possible that if the Internet implodes
with some upcoming energy crisis, on a global scale, Google may be
one of the few of sufficient size who have made enough investment
into alternative power to keep something running.

And finally – here’s something I’ve
been banging on about for ages – using data centre heat to heat
homes:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/06/ibm-supercomputer/