Bulgaria screens The Age of Stupid

The movie contains some powerful images but treats the understandable aspirations of people in the developing world with a touch of condescension

Yulia’s angels

Once upon a time there were three little girls who went to the tennis academy...

Netherlands assists Bulgaria in developing the Black Sea coast

The Bulgarian-Dutch project, entitled My Coast, for the economic development and environmental protection of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast is almost complete. It was started two years ago, in early 2007, when Bulgarian authorities first approached the Dutch government with a request for assistance in managing the fast-developing Black Sea economy, Bulgarian National Radio said on January 30 2009. The government of The Netherlands has since allocated 400 000 euro for the project under various pre-accession programmes.

Bulgaria's Piccadilly food chain throws out plastic bags

Bulgaria's Varna-based supermarket operator Piccadilly will replace with polydegralex bags the polyethylene bags used in all of its 19 stores as of January 12 2009, the company said.

Choose (Bulgarian) organic - a new option for Christmas shopping

Make this Christmas season better for the planet. When shopping for gifts (or, why not, items for yourself) between December 8 and 12 2008, stop by the new Bio Park Sofia in Business Park Sofia for its first holiday bazaar. Available for purchase are various products of organic origin - including ones produced in Bulgaria - like foods (chocolate, bread, yoghurt, wine, baby food), cosmetics and clothing, and gift items that were produced in ways that respect the environment.

MAKE YOUR WEEK GREENER: This week - Make your office green

A recent edition of the daily newspaper Dnevnik had a free pocket guide to a greener office. The guide is a collaboration between the teams behind Gorichka and Dnevnik. We have put together an in-depth, informative guide to the endless ways you can save energy and resources while at work. There are chapters on energy, recycling, transport, becoming CO2 neutral, water, furniture, cleaning

MAKE YOUR WEEK GREENER: This week - Plant trees

This weekend you can go up to Vitosha for something other than hiking. On Saturday October 13, from 10am, you can join Gorichka and a team of volunteers planting conifer trees in the area of Momina Skala (signposted from Zlatnite Mostove). This is an area of about 1.2ha that Gorichka planted in the spring. However, due to the hot summer, some trees dried out and need replacing. On Sunday October 14, also from

This week: See "The Earth From Above"

gorichka.bg

Yann Arthus-Bertrand's photos are not easily forgotten. If you have stumbled across the Frenchman's open air exhibition in one of the 100 cities it has already toured, you will remember the encounter. His images of the earth from above - from lavender fields in France to coral reefs in Australia - are unique in telling a story. Rather than just "shoot and run", Arthus-Bertrand documents our amazing environment through

This week: See "The Earth From Above"

Yann Arthus-Bertrand's photos are not easily forgotten. If you have stumbled across the Frenchman's open air exhibition in one of the 100 cities it has already toured, you will remember the encounter. His images of the earth from above - from lavender fields in France to coral reefs in Australia - are unique in telling a story. Rather than just "shoot and run", Arthus-Bertrand documents our amazing environment through

ANNUAL AWARDS FOR PRESERVATION OF BIODIVERSITY

On September 12 at a ceremony in the Doctor's garden in Sofia the Annual Biodiversity Awards were presented. The jury's members were Bulgarian former tennis player and active environmentalist Magdalena Maleeva, PricewaterhouseCoopers director Ivailo Vutev, Gerasim Gerasimov from the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation and the Bulgarian media expert Georgi Lozanov.

MAKE YOUR WEEK GREENER: This week: Recycle toner cartridges

This year, more than 350 million laser and inkjet cartridges will end up in America's landfills. That's equivalent to more than 90 000 truckloads and worth a recycling value of more than $1 billion. Toner cartridges don't have to go out with the rubbish. Ninty-seven per cent of the components are recyclable. They can be remanufactured into new ones, which saves raw materials, landfill space and other important

MAKE YOUR WEEK GREENER: This week - Choose organic cotton

I would be lying if I said that wearing organic cotton feels different from wearing non-organic. But the issue lies elsewhere. Cotton may well be the most sprayed and, therefore, polluting crop known to man. Twenty-five per cent of insecticides and 10 per cent of pesticides in the world are used on cotton. If we genuinely care about the land - soil, water, biodiversity -- this is serious stuff. This may be the reason the organic

This week - Watch the Monster Tomato Tour

This summer Friends of the Earth is sending its Monster Tomato on tour around Bulgaria, Macedonia and Romania to raise awareness of GMOs (genetically modified organisms). While 70 per cent of Europeans are firmly against GMOs in their food, fields and countries, few Bulgarians know about the problems that GMOs can cause. Having said that, Bulgaria already has five GMO-free municipalities. The tour will pass

This week: Watch Live Earth

If you thought that Live Aid or Live 8, the 1985 and 2005 concerts in support of Africa, were huge and truly global, you may need to think again. This weekend's Live Earth concert, the music feast that aims to raise awareness of global warming and climate change, is expected to be watched by 2 billion people. Now, that's one third of the world's population. According to organisers Al Gore and Kevin Wall, the latter

This week: Calculate your CO2 emissions

Calculating our CO2 footprint is a very powerful tool in terms of building environmental awareness. A great number of organisations offer to calculate the extent to which each and every one of us, as individuals or businesses, pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. There's nothing quite like measuring a car journey, weekend break or gas bill in terms of carbon dioxide to teach us about the dos and don'ts of our low-

This week: Recycle your batteries

Batteries are among the most toxic waste we produce. Nickel, lead, mercury, cadmium, alkaline/zinc - these heavy metals have no place in a landfill, because these active ingredients leak into our soil, water supplies and eventually end up in the food chain. Yet in Bulgaria, batteries regularly go in the rubbish bin, just like ordinary domestic waste. The Environment Ministry has appointed Bateria AD - once the

This week: Don't leave appliances on stand-by

It's common sense to switch off the telly before leaving the house, but not all of us know that leaving appliances on stand-by will still consume electricity. I've read various estimates as to how much a TV draws from the grid in this idle mode, and the figure seem to vary between eight and 12 per cent of the total consumption. The exact number is not that important. The idea is that appliances left on stand-by consume

This week - plant trees

Earth Day may be gone, but it's still tree planting season. On Sunday May 5, Gorichka joined forces with Project Vitosha to plant three acres of wood around Momina Skala, close to Zlatnite Mostove on Vitosha Mountain. Hundreds of trees had to be cut down because of severe infestation in 2001 and it's taken a while for the area to be replanted. Project Vitosha works with companies and organisations that wish to

This week-jump on the train

Guardian journalist Leo Hickman, author of green-living bible/bestseller A Life Stripped Bare, was trying to make a point about sustainable transport when he jumped on the train to Italy for his annual holiday. Travelling along were his wife and one-year-old daughter. This made a lot of people think "if they can do it, I can do it", which of course was the whole point. Currently, trains (and ships, but let's leave those aside

This week-beware of air miles

Last week saw Michael O'Leary, head of no-frills airline Ryanair, proclaim that he will start flying people from London to New York for under a tenner within a few years. Environmentalists were outraged. Air miles are a major contributor to CO2 emissions and all talk about reducing green house gases is rendered meaningless when someone announces that he or she is planning to fly yet more planes.

This week - start composting

I don't compost as such, I just collect organic waste from my kitchen and give it to someone who has a compost heap. The size of domestic waste in my home has since gone down dramatically. I read somewhere that close to a third of our waste can go straight into the compost pile. I second that. If sent to landfill it will not biodegrade because of lack of oxygen. And our gardens will lose valuable nutrients that no chemical

MAKE YOUR WEEK GREENER: This week save water

After a winter of very little snow, it's easy to see how saving water may turn into one of the most important green-living issues. Water shortages and the need to stop wasting this valuable resource were highlighted during last summer in the "house-pipe ban" Britain. But water levels are dropping all over the world and the problem is global. In some places in China, farmers dig wells that are up to 300 metres

Get energy-saving bulbs

I suppose it's a well known fact that incandescent bulbs use 90 per cent of the energy to heat up and only 10 per cent to light up. This is probably why the quest for electricity did not stop with Edison and we are on the brink of mass producing the next "bulb" - the light-emitting diod, or LED. While we wait for this wonderful invention to make the world 50 per cent more energy efficient, we can turn to another worthy

MAKE YOUR WEEK GREENER: Go see An Inconvenient Truth

What a great choice for a closing gala for the Sofia International Film Festival on Sunday March 11. When the organisers picked An Inconvenient Truth, they couldn't have known they were choosing to see off the event with an Oscar winner. In late February, Hollywood voted Al Gore's global warming film Best Documentary of 2006. Yet, although last year may have been the year of An Inconvenient Truth in

MAKE YOUR WEEK GREENER: This week - reduce food miles

Food miles is a relatively new concept in Bulgaria. At the market I always ask for the origin of what I am buying and I often hear "Argentina" or "Brazil" being spoken with pride. The farther, the better, it seems, as if the far-away origin is a guarantee of quality. However, food miles are a huge problem and statistics show that 30 per cent of transport in the world exists to support the food industry. It

Make your week greener: This week - reduce, reuse, recycle

Reduce, reuse, recycle is of course the golden rule of saving valuable natural resources. We have too many "things" in our lives, and whereas Bulgaria was once safe from consumerism, it now seems to be making up for lost time. I always ask myself if I really need something before parting with my money. If reducing is not an option, buying reusable stuff should do the trick. Glass is better than plastic because chances

MAKE YOUR WEEK GREENER: This week - recycling

If you were to go by the number of recycling bins on our cities' streets, you'd think that Bulgaria was the recycling capital of the world, making New Zealand with its exceptionally successful zero-waste policy look somewhat provincial. Not so of course, but we are trying. Over the past few weeks, we've been enjoying a cute ad on national television, the first ever about recycling. A bunch of cool-looking people dance around

READING ROOM: Udder purity, udder taste

The challenges of an organic, environmentally friendly lifestyle number more than one could care to think. Or do they? For Magdalena Maleeva - yes, Bulgaria's international tennis champion - no challenge is too daunting to help make such a way of living happen. Since the beginning of October, she has not only initiated and put online a website (www.gorichka.bg) dedicated to environmental awareness and