Gone are the days where being ‘green’ meant wearing something made out of hemp. With the ingenuity of designers, good ‘green’ design has developed in giant leaps and bounds. ArteryStore.com is an online lifeline to the imagination, and depicts the essence of great ethical design. Stocking everything from watches to baby wash, fish bowls to footballs, ArtertyStore.com is the local, online design store bringing a socially and environmentally conscious range to the world. Each piece sold on the site exudes a form of minimalism with soul and warmth, beauty, ethics and imagination.

People keep saying that they want to live more sustainable lives, but are they actually doing this? Is it just ‘all talk’? Code-X’s solar hybrid yacht is the perfect way to test this out. This solar hybrid yacht is a study of extremes. Combining luxury with sustainability, Swiss company Code-X has come up with a stylish yacht that generates power from lithium batteries. You can either cruise at a brisk 80 knots powered by Formula One engines or you can travel at a more leisurely 9 knots by the twin-electric motors, depending on your mood and requirements. For those who do stand by their stance on sustainability and creating a better world for future generations, choose to cruise, and if you can’t resist going fast, rev up the engine.

Throughout Queensland, fresh produce markets are gaining considerable popularity. With food prices increasing in supermarkets, consumers are recognising the worth of shopping locally, not only for price, but for flavour as well. Buying fresh fruit, vegetables, baked goods, organic meats and flowers, market-goers are finding that they can fill up a basket or a box of goodies for a substantially lower price. Apart from the price, the experience of shopping outdoors and buying produce direct from the farmers is a great experience that promotes a community atmosphere. There are a few things you can do to ensure you get the best out of shopping at your local farmers market.

Unless you’re living in a cave, you would be aware that global warming isn’t going away. The state of the world’s environment has moved up everyone’s agenda in the past few years as people become more conscious about wastage, energy use, recycling and their own carbon footprint. For those of trying to do their bit for the environment, understanding how to ‘green’ your lifestyle can be confusing. The key things that all advisory parties have in common are to cut out waste and become more fuel efficient, which will in turn save you money. Living simply, without all the fringe benefits, will also help. In these challenging economic times, people are forced to cut back and become more environmentally friendly. Here are three things you can do to save money and green your lifestyle simultaneously:

Just when you think you’ve heard every ‘green’ term out there, along comes another one – ‘freecyling’. What sounds like just another fad, is actually quite legitimate. The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,777 groups with 7,093,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely non-profit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own home cities. It's all about reusing and keeping good stuff out of landfills – “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure” as the saying goes. A local volunteer moderates each local group and membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the site’s search box or by clicking on ‘Browse Groups’. There are plenty in Queensland – find out where they are.

Is there a way to teach your children how to be ‘green’? In between homework, toilet training and learning table manners, children do need to know the importance of being ‘green’ – after all, it’s their future that’s going to be at risk the most. Giving your children organic foods, toys and clothes is one way to go green. But there's a lot more to raising green kids – you need to incorporate them into the green activities you partake in. Teaching children to be green is just one of the many experiences adults can pass on to the next generation so that it becomes second nature for them to care for the world around them. Here are just a few tips:

So how can you help the environment and how much damage do you cause it already? By taking small steps in your day-to-day life, together Australians can make a big difference. The Australian Conservation Foundation’s (ACF) website has an application you can use to calculate how much your lifestyle impacts the environment. Once you’ve completed the questions you can pledge to change your lifestyle so that your result is better. Choose a couple of actions you think you can commit to and see the difference you could make in one year.

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