A great find

A friend of a friend posted a link on Facebook, and I followed it to the 12th annual Torino Environment film festival. I was brought there from this blog, which appears to be dedicated to living green in Italy. Italy is not exactly known for being ahead of the curve in terms of eco-conscious living, but it is the home of the slow food movement, and its vineyards and olive groves are usually organic, if unoffically; people here are huge public transit users, and we recycle and separate our garbage. Their one foible is perhaps the bottled water obsession; my Sigg gets weird looks. But where I'm living we use a Brita, so there are people out there trying.
The link was posted by a guy about my age; I think probably this generation the world over is the one with eyes for anything green. However, the site for the film festival talks about a competition between green families: some have come up with some awesome initiatives, like pedal-operated washing machines (they don't use dryers here, or very seldom), gasoline-less living, and backyard/urban gardening.
I might hop on the train to Torino and try to catch a film!

In the spirit of living green in Italy..
My friend Olivia posted a Facebook group she'd joined called No Impact, and out of curiosity I followed the link here to the Huffington Post. They were so inspired by this guy, Colin Beavan, who has written a book, keeps a blog, etc etc. Turns out they are launching a communal No Impact week where you get to experiment in a guided fashion with ways to reduce and eliminate your footprint, and find out what things you really can live without. The guided week is taking place starting October 18th, so if you're interested, visit the sites and join the mailing list for information on how to participate. That happens to be the week that I will be in Vignola, which is a very small town where it is easy to walk everywhere and buy locally, but I am still going to try it. Then I will do my own week here in Milano.