Podcast: Food Inc; The Film And A Discussion

Food, Inc. is a film about what is happening to our food chain.  Every month, we watch a film, have some food, and discuss what we saw at the Serenity Cafe. The food we had was vegetarian curry made with organic ingredients donated by the Ragged community so we could have a community meal.  The film was about the increasingly unhealthy way our food is produced such that the methods are damaging the environment, abusing workers, and having cruel disregard for the animals.
Made by the Emmy award winning filmmaker Robert Kenner, it’s primary focus is on the United States, however this is now relevant worldwide as the companies which it examines – and the methods of production – are multinational.  These are not American problems, these are world problems.  The corporations which have come to dominate the world production of beef, pork, chicken, maize, soy, potatoes and other staples, are not rooted in any one single country – they have global reach.
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Pete Wilkinson Co-Founder of Greenpeace Talks About His Life

I imagine that nearly everyone has heard of Greenpeace.  It is one of the most famous non-governmental organizations in the world and it is renowned for activist protests to protect the environment.  I did not genuinely know much about the organisation until the other day a librarian at Edinburgh Central Library told me I should go along to the Edinburgh Reads event as one of the founders of Greenpeace was going to be talking. Read more…

International Waste Management; Crises and Opportunities by David Brown

Here David Brown, Waste Development David Officer for Derbyshire County Council, gives a talk about International waste management; the crises and opportunities which are presented to us.  In an age of neo-magical thinking, the culture which has developed is wasteful – that is, we imagine things both have no cost to the environment, and that our waste just magically disappears when it is out of sight. This is the major crises of our time as we are discovering in quick and powerful terms that the planets resources (of which the ecosystems which keep us alive are included) are finite.

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Sustainability in the Curriculum: University of Manchester

I was recently invited to sit in on a meeting of the Community of Practice at University of Manchester which is thinking through how to embed Sustainability across the curriculum. This area of thinking and study is massively relevant as it connects with each and every human and living thing on the planet. How we move into greater synergy with our environment and life supporting bio-systems is an emerging field which is complex and multi-disciplinary.

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19th June 2014: Fostering Vandalism of the Earth or Stewardship? Towards Education for Sustainability by Susan Brown

Yangtze River Turned Red
Yangtze River Turned Red

Come along to The Castle Hotel at 7pm to listen to Susan’s thoughts. Share a crust of bread, and hear the talk she has to share…

 

Title:

Fostering Vandalism of the Earth or Stewardship?: Towards Education for Sustainability
by Susan Brown
 

Bullet points:

I’ll explore with the audience:

  • What we mean by the term ‘sustainability’ ;
  • The rationale for the development of curricula with a focus on sustainability;
  • What understandings and skills we are trying to foster through sustainability education and why?
  • What curriculum with a focus on sustainability might look like?
  • As a group we’ll have a go at devising a potential curriculum for sustainability 😉

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