We're hearing a lot about eating local as one of the best ways to reduce your carbon footprint. So increasing the amount of food grown in urban areas seems to make sense.

In this video, depave.org instigates the conversion of a disused parking lot in Portland, OR, into a community garden and gathering place. The term they use is "perennial food forest." It's a concept new to us, but certainly appealing.

Thanks to Elizabeth Press of Streetfilms for the video.

"It is certainly a vintage vehicle. And now Prince Charles's beloved Aston Martin DB6 is running on vintage too.

A nice little white from a vineyard in Wiltshire, to be precise.

Aspart of cutting his carbon footprint, the prince has converted the38-year-old classic car - a 21st birthday present from the Queen - torun on 100 per cent bioethanol fuel distilled from surplus Britishwine."

For the rest of the article, visit the Mail Online.

Honestly, we're still trying to get our minds around the notion of a British vineyard: don't you need sun to raise grapes?

I stumbled across this on YouTube today. I was definitely ready for something slightly cheerful on this topic, with all this dark news. Ok, the first act, the seafood parade, could be slightly shorter. Granted. But stay with it, cause the animation that follows is not only cute, it's on the money with the facts. Jason, keep it up.

As we got started on our documentary about how carbon dioxide is radically reshaping the world's oceans we were eager, and maybe even felt a bit obligated, to try to reduce the CO2 footprint of our own filmmaking process.  In this 3 minute clip, filmed as production began in the spring of 2007, Barbara, Sven and Ben talk about their big ideas for making A Sea Change a sustainable film production. 

This will be the first of many blog entries focused on sustainable filmmaking.  As we chart the trials and tribulations of walking the walk of reducing our filmmaking footprint, we're eager to hear your thoughts on what we tried to do, what we might have done, and what you're doing in the film and video universe to reduce your impact on the planet. 

We've been working since the beginning of 2007 with the Greencode Project, an international collective of filmmakers based in Canada working to promote and establish environmentally friendly practices that willhelp create an International set of standards for the film and mediaindustry.  We're also working with Carbon Planet, based in Australia, who are helping us to conduct an energy audit to establish a carbon footprint for our film which will help us to estimate how many carbon credits we're going to need to buy to offset the mess we've made during the production of A Sea Change.

Special thanks to Josh Aronson for shooting.

Thanks to Steven's Portal for his vote of confidence: we're a featured link for May. His portal is focused on the efforts of people who are helping and healing the world.