HORIZONS

Dates for your diaries

Coping with the 'rubbish society'

Over 300 delegates are expected to attend Environment Ireland, the fourth annual conference on environmental policy and management in Croke Park conference centre, Dublin, on Tuesday and Wednesday. The event, which is organised by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government, will hear experts speak on topics including the role of planning in sustainable development, Ireland's waste challenges and how to move climate change to the top of the international agenda. Speakers include Martin O'Brien, author of A Crisis of Waste: Understanding the Rubbish Society(Routledge, New York 2007), Prof Martin Parry from the intergovernmental panel on climate change, and Sharon Turner, environmental law specialist. See  www.epa.ieor phone 01-6613755 for details.

Learn to cook with seaweed

Interested in cooking with seaweed or finding out how to bake bread with flour you've milled yourself? If so, head for the second annual Harvest Feast festival on Saturday and Sunday next at the Organic Centre, Rossinver and in Drumshanbo, Co Leitrim.

Throughout the weekend, there will also be cookery demonstrations (including one on raw gourmet food), a children's cooking session, tours of the Organic Centre gardens, a slow food picnic and nature walks. Organic food week will also be celebrated at the Organic Centre next week with a special day for children and teenagers looking at healthy lunchboxes. See  www.harvestfeast.ieor  www.theorganiccentre.ieor phone 071-9854338 for details.

The great biofuel debate

Are Biofuels Good or Bad?is the theme of a symposium organised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) at University College Cork (UCC) on Tuesday, September 16th. Topics to be discussed include what crops should be grown? What biofuel (first generation biodiesel from oilseed rape, bioethanol from wheat, maize and sugar beet or second generation biofuels from non-food sources) should dominate the market? And what are other countries such as Australia, Canada, Denmark, the US, Germany and South Africa doing about biofuels? The symposium will be led by Dr Jerry Murphy, lecturer in transport engineering at UCC and principal investigator into bioenergy and biofuels at the Environmental Research Institute. The IEA is an energy policy advisor to 27 countries. See  www.ucc.ieor phone 021-4903178 for details.

Lessons in sustainability

ECO-UNESCO, the environmental education and youth organisation is running an Introduction to Sustainable Development evening course in Alliance Française, 1 Kildare St, from September 24th to December 17th. The course, which will run for 10 weeks, will look at sustainable communities and the links between society, the economy and the environment. See  www.ecounesco.ieor phone 01-6625491 for details.