Office walls alive with greenery are now possible with vertical gardens invented by Joost Bakker, an Australian sculptor, who uses raw steel and discarded objects among his construction materials.

“I’m not really into luxurious finishes, I like using things that people perceive as ugly”, says Joost.

Vertical garden is a sculptural, almost architectural form, allowing leaf and flower to inhabit spaces, to create spaces, with a natural raw beauty.

Premier Peter Beattie and his deputy Anna Bligh announced the government has scrapped its controversial plans for a $10 million referendum on the issue, involving 18 councils.

Mr Beattie said south-east Queensland residents would get recycled water as the drought and subsequent low dam levels had left the government with no choice but to introduce treated sewage.

He said the fact Wivenhoe-Somerset Dam system’s water levels currently was less than 23 per cent had convinced him and Ms Bligh to abandon the March 17 plebiscite.

“Inflow to the dam system is currently 20 per cent lower than the worst on record,” Mr Beattie told reporters in Brisbane.

A fascinating scenario by Bob Holmes in New Scientist.

He writes:

Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet’s land for our cities, farmland and pastures.

By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we’re leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change.

If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet.

Now just suppose they got their wish. Imagine that all the people on Earth — all 6.5 billion of us and counting — could be spirited away tomorrow, transported to a re-education camp in a far-off galaxy. (Let’s not invoke the mother of all plagues to wipe us out, if only to avoid complications from all the corpses).

Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust.

Continued here … and click here for an informative infographic based on the scenarios outlined above.

Making cement is one of the most energy-intensive industries, producing vast quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuels.

The relentless flood of concrete drowns more and more C02-absorbing vegetation all over the world, giving yet another boost to the cycle of global warming.

Eco-Cement, developed by Tec-Eco of Tasmania, Australia, is designed to save fossil fuels – and to absorb CO2. Based on reactive magnesium oxide, it needs CO2 to harden and set.

Better still, it can be combined with wastes such as fly ash from power stations and many types of slag which are too chemically reactive to be used with conventional cement to make concrete.

Switzerland’s Freitag brothers, Markus and Daniel, have built up a worldwide market for their bags — of all shapes and sizes, and for all kinds of users — always created from recycled materials.

Their raw materials come from original, used truck tarpaulins, bicycle inner tubes, car seat belts and used airbags.

They’ve now gone a step further and created an amazing mini skyscraper office in Zurich from recycled shipping containers.

Their Flickr albums show how it came into being.