Kindy car-pooling

Driving to kindergarten five days a fortnight is not something I had hoped to be doing.

However, when we found the wonderful play-based McDougall Park Community Kindergarten two suburbs away we decided it was worth the short drive. We were thrilled for many reasons that Eva's best friend from a couple of blocks away also enrolled at McDougall Park, but one was that it allows us to share the driving. We split drop-offs and pick-ups between the two families and are effectively taking one car off the road each kindy day.

Initial Time: a few minutes of conversation to make arrangements (unless you count four+ years of cultivating friendship between two families in the same neighbourhood). About five minutes is added to each of our kindy runs to pick-up/ drop-off - but as we are only doing half the kindy runs it is a time saving over all.

Initial Cost: zero

Ongoing time or cost commitment: occasional check-in conversations to keep arrangements rolling smoothly, but its both a time and money saver. To be honest, it was probably the time-saving benefits that first motivated us to car pool.

Impact: The return trip to kindy is around 15km, twice a day. Both families drive reasonably fuel-efficient European diesel cars. Allowing that there will be occasions when we both drive - like the first week when the children were settling in - I estimate there will be about 90 days in the year that we car pool. This means we are reducing our travel distance by around 2700km for the year. At an average of 7.5L/100km, this means about 202.5L of fuel saved, a reduction of 547kg of carbon.

 

Photos by Tyson (except the one by Ben, at the gate) - the dads actually do most of the kindy runs. Thanks J&B for letting me use photos of A!

PS: For those who get this by email - I've totally redesigned the blog in the last month, so just this once click across and have a look. There is also now a Facebook page for the blog - https://www.facebook.com/smallstepsforsustainability - but I won't be putting a 'like us' button up, as those buttons allow Facebook to track the internet use of anyone who visits Small Steps, whether they are on FB or not.

Try fixing it first

We have made a commitment that whenever something at our house breaks, wears out or otherwise stops working, we will try to fix it before considering throwing it away and/or replacing it.

It's a commitment I suspect most parts of the world - and most previous generations in our part of the world - would be astounded to know even needed articulating.

To aid in our endeavours, we have established the 'fixing box'. It lives in a high place in our living area (it's got enough brokenness in it already without putting it where Small Boy can reach!). Mostly when toys get broken I am too busy with other things to be able to immediately repair them, so they go into the fixing box to wait for a fixing session.

Results of two Fixing Box sessions (above and below)

 

(As a parenting tip: the fixing box also works a treat for things broken beyond repair that threaten floods of tears if they head towards the bin: into the fixing box with 'we'll have a look later to see if we can fix it' followed by a good few weeks hidden in the box usually means they get completely forgotten and can be disposed of without fuss at a later date).

Tyson's (tiny) shed is also something of a 'fixing box'. Although some may interpret that as 'unruly pile of rubbish' I am confident that fixed things do eventually emerge from there.

 

Eva at Sydney Airport, aged two

And if it really can't be fixed (like this much loved bag) we salvage what we can for future projects.

I'm particularly proud of this ugg-boot re-soling using fabric from old jeans

Fixing most things does not require fancy tools or equipment. I have a sewing machine. Tyson has no workshop and his tool kit is pretty basic. For a work bench he clamps a hunk of recycled timber beam to the ladder, and works in the back courtyard.

When special tools are required (very occasionally) he borrows from his dad, who has a much more extensive collection. If this is not an option for you (because you don't know his dad... or don't have a handy friend or family member with lots of tools) there may be a tool library near you. Or just put the word out to your networks that you need something - its amazing what people have lying around.

Fixing also rarely requires special knowledge or skills, although it sometimes requires a bit of confidence to give something a try. For example, yesterday Tyson transformed three derelict kitchen chairs from this:

to this:

 

The only 'special tool' was a staple gun - very easy to use. These chairs were verge pick-ups originally and were about to head that way again.

Eva helped with sanding back so the paintwork could be resprayed. I said encouraging things and took photographs. Small Boy supervised.

Fixing furniture may seem daunting but it is often not that difficult - and so rewarding! I once re-strapped an armchair with only a hammer, tacks and strips of old jeans, and it lived for many more years.

Initial Time: This varies from a couple of minutes to glue a piece of toy back on or sew a quick button to projects requiring research, part-shopping and considerable work. Tyson is more likely to do those ones than me. But to be fair, he gets a great deal more pleasure out of figuring out & implementing cunning make-do fixes than I do. There's a lot of the Ken John in him (his grandfather). The chairs above took about 1.5 hours each - a little longer for the two that he re-glued (loose joints).

The fixing box method takes about two hours every three months to have a blitz on accumulated broken things.

Initial Cost: Again, this varies enormously. Most things can be fixed with a bit of thread, tape or glue, which I estimate costs us about $25 a year. 

Some fixes are a huge cost saving - like the car door latch pictured above. Tyson did that for me last Christmas for about $45 (cost to join online Picasso-owners forum, and buy a manual and a just-right tool) and half a day fiddling around, after the Citroen mechanics quoted us $1000+ for the same work.

Others cost more in dollars and/or time than it would take to just buy a new one.

Pedestal fans are a good example of this. You can pick them up for $10-$20, and every year there must be hundreds of them put out on hard-rubbish days because of minor faults. We have three and Tyson is getting quite good at stopping their odd rattles, making them turn (or not, depending on the problem) or getting them started again when they have apparently died. Pedestal fans should be kept out of land fill! They use about 50W of electricity compared with our reverse cycle air-conditioner which uses 2.5kW. That is, our aircon is equivalent to running fifty pedestal fans together.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: As above, ongoing.

Impact: Australian households produce an estimated seven million tonnes of waste per year. Our average rubbish per person is higher than Canada, Germany or the UK (although less than the USA). LivingSmart illustrates this quantity graphically as each Australian family producing the amount of waste it would take to fill a three-bedroom house from floor to ceiling. Compressed. Every year.

It is crucial that we don't put anything into the waste that doesn't need to be there. Fixing everything we can is a big step towards that.

It also gives much joy. Here that pesky pram handle finally comes good.

And as a household norm, it helps to set our children's default to 'fix' rather than 'bin'.

PS: I just want to clarify that the reason I am not in any of the photos is not because I don't do any fixing; its because I take all the photos. Except when Eva takes them, when focus can be a bit optional. Here's one of Eva's to prove I do fix some things myself:

Links:

Tool libraries in Brunswick VIC and Angle Park SA

Wikipedia article on tool libraries including links to tool libraries all over the world

Or find your local men's shed and take your project there to use their tools. (If you're a bloke, presumably. I understand that men's sheds are an important men's mental health initiative, but... I would like to have somewhere I could take my project too! I guess I could try the Australian Sewing Guild but I would prefer to wrestle the staple-gun away from Tyson and have a go at upholstery)

Australian Bureau of Statistics data on waste

LivingSmart data on waste

Living Smart Queensland offers a free online course to help you reduce your household footprint - tips, calculators, information, suggestions... its good stuff.

Celebrating our four-year-old

I was surprised how interested you were in my post about our one-year-old's birthday so have decided maybe it is relevant to share a bit about how we celebrated Eva turning four this month.

This was a much anticipated birthday for our girl - but not because she wanted presents or even a party. No, the most important thing was that she moved up the pre-schooler hierarchy from 'Three And A Half' to 'Four'. It has been made clear to me by the one who knows best that such a transition is a very important matter. 

Rather than a 'party', with all the associated expectations and activities, we invited Eva's three best friends to join us for half a day playing at Landsdale Farm. Eva had been there not so long ago and wanted to share this favourite place with her friends. We are fortunate that we avoided socially awkward choices about excluding others, as none of these closest friends are from the big kindy friendship group. 

We talked it up as 'a play to celebrate Eva's birthday' rather than a 'birthday party' and insisted gifts were unnecessary, but all three guests still brought gifts. 

However, these friends know us well and no-one went silly with gifts. At least two of the three guests had been allowed to (and wanted to) choose their gifts themselves, which resulted in gifts that were exactly what a four-year-old wanted - as chosen by a four-year-old and a three-and-a-half-year-old - even if not quite exactly what their parents had in mind. I loved that the kids were encouraged to be involved in choosing.

Gifts are tricky. There was not one gift Eva was given, from friends or family, that was not very appreciated, thoughtfully chosen and lovingly given; not one that I would want to return or am not thankful for. And yet the net outcome is that a whole lot more stuff has come to dwell at our place. For next time I am considering ways to do a 'give away' in preparation for any time of receiving. Still working on that.

Rather than 'party food' we took what we would ordinarily take for a picnic outing, and ate it out of the packets or off our laps rather than from fancy single-use disposable 'party wear'.

All the children had a blast, even (especially?!) in the rain. 

 

You would have been forgiven for thinking the main event was not the farm, though, but the half-hour drive in our car with all the children in the back. 

Yes, this is why we bought a seven-seater. We could nearly have driven them the length of the freeway and back and considered the birthday well celebrated without even getting out of the vehicle!

On her actual birthday we had hidden the gifts we bought for her around our room, wrapped in pretty fabric as described at Christmas. Eva loved hunting them out - hide and seek is one of her most favourite games at present.

Our six gifts were: two picture books, a set of wooden alphabet magnets, a train tunnel (her particular request), heart-shaped post-it notes, and a small plastic car & horse trailer & horse. I think I bought too many gifts (although a $4 train tunnel and a $2 pad of post-it notes, though received and used with much glee, are not exactly exorbitant). I am not a great success at living smaller, just one person having a go, and the lovely things on offer for children easily get me in. This time around I didn't check how sustainably the timber for the toys was produced, and the horse trailer etc I confess was a complete impulse buy of unnecessary plastic on a day Eva had enjoyed driving behind a horse in traffic. However, it was at least bought from our lovely local independent toy store rather than some bulk-rubbish warehouse store.

Breakfast was her choice: dippy eggs on this occasion, although she has many breakfast favourites and Tyson could have been up for a trickier cook than that!

We gathered with Tyson's family for an afternoon tea picnic at Eva's favourite local play area, Tomato Lake, which involved much bolting around with cousins and eating food brought by all to share. Cake by Grandma again - she's very good at that. Eva had asked for a red snail cake.

 

Of course if you're going to dress in a frilly pink outfit, you need to do a bit of gardening too...

The next day we went to the zoo with her my-side cousin. We often go to the zoo, as we have season passes, so that wasn't a particular treat in itself, but we only go on the carousel for special occasions. Because it was Eva's birthday we let the girls have two rides. That's very near to paradise.

Her kindy, church and Wiggly Woo all sang happy birthday and gave her a small something (sticker, chocolate, pencil). Her Children's Church leader cut watermelon into a cake shape, stuck in candles, and made it a birthday morning tea - especially thoughtful, as Eva doesn't really eat cake. We bought a bag of chocolate frogs and gave them out at kindy. Tyson made sure his rostered day for parent help at kindy was in the birthday week. One evening in the week after her birthday we went out to dinner as a family at a local restaurant we often frequent, where Eva likes to order and devour an enormous chicken parmigiana, and made note to her that it was another part of remembering her birthday. 

And perhaps most importantly I tried very hard to make her birthday and days around it days of 'yes'. So often when at home with two small children I find myself saying 'no' all day. Now and then I set myself a day of 'yes' - where unless it is dangerous, expensive or impossible I do my level best to say 'yes' to what Eva suggests, even if it is not the most convenient choice or not the one that I personally would enjoy most. I never tell her it is a 'yes' day, I just do it, and usually the result is a happy day all around. Why don't I do it every day? (Because I am too often tired and grumpy and sometimes things do need to get done... before next Christmas...)

Happy birthday to our precious girl. We love you lots and can't believe you are four already.

The usual 'time/ cost/ impact' section that would go here doesn't make a lot of sense for this one. The impact is as per what I wrote about birthdays in July but it is intangible and impossible to quantify. The whole birthday cost us about $100 I think, including $6 farm entries for four kids and $4.50 bag of chocolates for kindy kids, but I didn't keep track closely so that may not be entirely accurate. Dinner at the restaurant is not in that amount - can't remember how much that was.

Thanks parents for allowing me to include photos of your lovely children on my blog.

Buying a more efficient car

The impending arrival of a second child meant we needed to look at purchasing a different car - primarily because the Subaru Imprezza sports wagon we have had cannot fit two child seats with a pram in the back. Other than buying something we could afford, our two biggest considerations were (1) ensuring the new vehicle allowed us to offer lifts to people and (2) fuel efficiency. The first criterion put us in the market for a people mover; the second launched us into the world of European-manufactured diesel cars.

We are now the proud owners of a 2008 Citroen C4 Picasso people mover.

 

Why a people mover? Already I have had several people respond to our choice with 'how many kids are you planning to have?!'  For us it is about ensuring our vehicle allows us to live in line with our values around hospitality and generosity. If our car is only sufficient to meet the needs of our immediate family members, it is too limited. We were already at capacity once a week in our smaller car, as we regularly give a lift as a family to another adult. We want this new car to get us through at least the primary school years, for which it will need to be able to cart our kids plus their friends plus assorted junk treasures, and in the more immediate future we want to be able to take more than two adults in the car while it has two child seats.

Temporarily we are a two-car family again, but we intend to sell the Subaru just as soon as we get our heads above the water of a newborn in the household. I can't at this stage see how we could manage with no car at all, so researching and purchasing the most efficient model we could was the next best thing for us in retaining our commitment to sustainable living.

Totally gratuitous brag photos of our new little man and his super-proud big sister

Initial Time: As you would expect when taking on an expensive purchase, we spent a considerable amount of time researching before making this decision. Once we had identified the type of vehicle we wanted, the challenge was to find one - no easy search, as few Citroen C4 Picassos are sold in Australia and even less seem to come onto the second-hand market. A brand new Picasso could of course have been ordered, but that was beyond our budget.

We were assisted by Allpike Citroen in Osborne Park, who eventually located our car through a dealer in Sydney and arranged its transport to and re-registration in WA. From standing in the Citroen yard discussing options to driving the car home took about two months. Our Picasso arrived four days before our baby, which was perhaps cutting things just a little fine...

Initial Cost: Our drive-away cost was $24,000. This included all the running around to find the car and get it to us.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Any car has ongoing costs! Modern diesel engines need servicing only about half as often as petrol engines and, we are led to believe, generally require less maintenance. We shall see. It is also possible that parts will be harder to obtain, and take longer to turn up, as there are not many Citroens on the road here. The cost of fuel, however, will be less (see below).

Trip computer showing distance travelled, fuel economy and average speed

Impact: Various car information sources suggest we have reduced our fuel consumption from around 10L/100km to something closer to 7.4L/100km (combined urban and open road economy).

In the 2011-12 financial year we filling our car with petrol 30 times. As we roughly fill it every 400km, I estimate we travelled about 12,000km in the year. Averaging 10L/100km, this means we burnt around 1200L of petrol in the year. Petrol produces 2.3kg of carbon dioxide for every litre used, resulting in the 2011-12 carbon dioxide contribution from our car being 2760kg.

Assuming our travel distance remains constant this year, our fuel use will be around 888L - a reduction of 420L. Diesel has a higher rate of CO2 emission than petrol, at 2.7kg/L, but we still come out well ahead as diesel engines are so much more efficient. Our 780L of diesel will produce around 2398kg of carbon dioxide - 362kg less.

In the 2011-12 financial year we spent $1847.64 on petrol for our previous car. Diesel is generally more expensive per litre than ordinary petrol, but on par with the high-octane petrol we tended to opt for, so we are likely to spend closer to $1370 on fuel this year, a saving of nearly $480. As fuel prices cannot but increase over coming years, and we hope to retain this car for at least a decade if not longer, the cost savings on fuel will only increase.

In the not-quite four weeks we have had the car, we have driven only within the metro area and are running at around 7.4L/100km as per the estimates (rather than the urban driving estimate above 8L/100km, probably because our urban driving includes regular runs on roads where we can cruise along at 70-80kph or more). I am enjoying monitoring how efficient my driving is with the real-time fuel efficiency read-out on the trip computer, which is helping me learn to drive more efficiently. Any car's fuel efficiency is only as good as the way it is driven. As I drive more gently, I immediately reduce our fuel consumption.

At this stage we are not exploring options for biodiesel, but it is a nice feeling to know that we have a vehicle that could go in that direction if (when? surely this must be 'when') technology catches up with making it readily available and issues of biofuel vs food crops are addressed (perhaps using Australian native microalgae?!). Many diesel products already on the market are blends that include biofuel.

Links:

The Australian government's Green Vehicle Guide gives all sorts of useful information and allows comparison of cars across 'green' criteria. It compares air pollution and greenhouse ratings as well as simple fuel consumption.

The government also provides an online calculator to determine the carbon emissions of your vehicle.


This article at a website about family cars has a useful fuel efficiency comparison table for people movers.

The online second-hand car sales website http://www.carsales.com.au was the main searching place once we knew what sort of car we were looking for, and also to do a little bit of comparing between some of the different makes and models that were competing for our attention. Information about listed cars includes 'green info', which for some cars only includes fuel consumption and for others has details such as CO2 emissions and a green rating. My guess is that if there's not much 'green info' included its because the report would not be very encouraging to a potential buyer.

Pretty much the day we signed a contract to purchase this car, this article about the cancer-causing properties of diesel fuel was in the news. While it is concerning that diesel has been linked to cancer by the WHO, our understanding is that these findings relate primarily to the 'particulate matter' (ie soot) in diesel exhaust. This has been dramatically reduced in recent years as cleaner diesel has been produced to meet the demand of pollution-conscious consumers and greenhouse legislation, especially in Europe.

For information about biodiesel: The Australian Government's site on biofuel quality standards; Biofuels Australia - industry peak body, with plenty of background information (although of course they are pro-biofuel so its all positive coverage!). For some discussion of other, less encouraging, aspects of the biofuel industry, have a look at these links.