April 2011: Toy Library

About six months ago we joined the local toy library (not in April as the heading suggests, but April was when I got to considering it as a sustainable act). The toy library has been wonderful. Every three weeks we get a batch of new toys and send the tired ones back for someone else. Its particularly useful for expensive items that we would never purchase, big items that we don't really want around all the time but enjoy having for a short time,  noisy items that we get sick of, things that Eva will love for a short time but quickly grow out of, and things we want to test out before committing to purchasing our own item.

 
Initial Time: Signing up to the toy library took about ten minutes.

Initial Cost: As we joined part-way through the year our initial cost was about $40.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Annual toy library membership is about $70 I think, less for concession holders. We also have to be on the roster about once a quarter to do a shift checking items in and out (about 2-3 hours depending which day of the week and how busy it is) and participate in the annual stocktake. The form also committed us to participating in fundraising activities but that hasn't come up yet.

It takes about half an hour in general for us to make a trip to the library, by the time we get there, return things, choose new items, check out and get home.

Impact: Significant reduction in the amount of resources consumed in our entertainment, especially plastic, the petrochemical-sourced primary material of so many children's toys. Not to mention the inordinate amount of waste material generated by toys' packaging. And, as kids grow out of so many toys in a short amount of time, especially the big plastic ones, toys purchased today are generally landfill tomorrow, so library use reduces landfill also.

Given the (in)frequency we need to be rostered, I estimate there are about 60-70 families using our toy library. If each of those families buys ten less toys per year as a result of using the toy library, that is 600-700 less toys being produced, packaged and disposed of in our neighbourhood alone. Lets say half of those were strong plastic toys of a moderate size (to give an idea, the ride-on fire engine in the photo above weighs about 7kg and the Noah's Ark set about 2kg). We could be looking at a reduction of 1-2 tonnes of plastic each year from the presence of just one toy library.

March 2011: Verge Collection

Since moving into this neighbourhood ten years ago I have been delighted to participate in the bi-annual hard rubbish verge collection. It is affectionately known in our household as 'chuck out day', but in reality is more of a 'pick up day' or even a pick up week. March was the season for chuck out days, both in our own neighbourhood and in several others we frequent. We needed a new bookshelf, as my habit of buying second-hand picture books from discarded from the WA State Library system had left us with a teetering mountain of kids books in a corner of the office. I had held off purchasing one for some months to await the next verge collection. Bookshelves of any quality, we discovered, are not an item of choice for throwing away. After looking for a couple of weeks, though, we finally found one on our very own street, just six or seven houses away, which given its size and weight was just as well or I don't know how we would have got the thing home. 

Of course, while looking for a bookshelf we came across all sorts of other useful things that are now living at our house too! A list of what I can recall: push-along toddler tricycle, six white plastic outdoor chairs (for my sister who was having a party), cane toybox, yellow plastic children's chair, plastic Fisher-Price castle, most of a timber Viking stronghold (I think it may have had more trimmings originally, and possibly one or two more wall pieces), timber Viking ship (mast broken, easily fixable), several plastic/rubber insects and reptiles, soft toy whale, two soft toy lizards, large metal freestanding lamp (needed a broken globe dug out of the socket but otherwise in working order) and the bookshelf. In the past I have also collected carpets/ rugs, couches, armchairs, outdoor settings, a desk (which with a few additions has been Eva's nappy change table), dolls houses, and chests of drawers, to name a few. On one occasion my mum and I found a very heavy couch in good condition, too big for my car, and in absence of any other wheeled device we borrowed two discarded children's strollers from a nearby verge pile to wheel the couch up a hill to my house. I recommend getting hold of a fridge trolley instead of this method of removal!

I was also please to see the old broken bikes we put out get taken away by people to be reused.  

Initial Time: We didn't make any special trips to look for things, but kept our eyes out along the verges wherever we drove for about four weeks while things were piling up in different suburbs. A few two minute stops to jump out and add an item or two to our car collected most of the items above. The outdoor chairs took a little long to get into the car. A pile of toys down our street took a special trip to sort through and bring things home. The book shelf required taking a fridge trolley (or if you are from South Australia, as 'sack truck') to collect. But none of the collection missions took more than about 15 minutes.

Initial Cost: Zero.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero.

Impact: All of the above items have been saved from landfill. (I have to not watch when the council comes to pick up verge collection items, because the way perfectly good things are crushed and thrown into the truck upsets me so much). In addition, as many of the things we collected are items I would have purchased if they had not been on the verge, a significant amount of raw materials including quite possibly some rainforest timbers have been saved from being turned into my furniture.

I also think that using items from the verge to furnish my house challenges consumer culture and helps us to feel part of our neighbourhood in a different way.

Feb 2011: Buying a Bicycle - hurray!!

Somewhere about when I was pregnant with Eva my old bike died. While Eva was too small to be on a bike, one bicycle in the household was enough, as only one adult could go riding at a time anyway. Finally her head got big enough for a helmet (the main limiting factor) and we purchsed a kids bike seat - but once it was fitted, I couldn't get on the bike! My short legs wouldn't make it over the bar and Eva was perched on behind. So, if Eva and I wanted to go riding, I needed my own bike. 

I was offered a perfectly good old bike but I confess, something in me was doing a foot-stomping tantrum of 'I want my own real new bike because I've NEVER HAD A NEW BIKE BEFORE!!!' so we bought me a brand new bicycle.

While talking with the bicycle selling man about options, I asked him which bicycle companies either used recycled materials or committed to taking bikes back once their owners are finished with them. He looked at me as if I was asking if any bicycles were built out of moon rock. 'Nup. Nah. Nope. Been in the business twenty years and never heard of anyone doing it'. I asked for the company address of the brand of bicycle I purchased, so I could write to them and request they recycle, and asked him please to make the request to the rep when they were next in. 

I haven't written. (Its late April and I'm only just getting to blogging this!) I'm pretty confident he hasn't spoken to the rep either. I am just hopeful that others might also start to ask and retailers and producers might have to start thinking about the non-renewable materials used in what they make and sell. 

I am trying to maintain a commitment not to drive anywhere that I could ride in under ten minutes. Its a small start. 

Initial Time:  About half an hour in the bike shop.

Initial Cost: Around $500 (Although if I'd accepted the one from my parents-in-law it could have been zero)

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Riding a bike is a cost saving. (One year when the accountant asked if I had any work-related travel expenses like petrol or car repairs, all I could find was a receipt for $9.90 for bike part). It is a time commitment if I am riding anywhere more than a couple of kilometres, but for short local trips its takes about the same amount of time to ride as to drive. For example, its (about) a five minute drive to playgroup, or an eight minute ride. 

The ongoing commitment is about me remembering to ride instead of jumping in the car, and finding solutions for things like carrying the nappy bag or bringing home shopping. The nappy bag and library books I have sussed; shopping beyond one or two items is still too much for me. Also I sometimes struggle to choose the bike when it is very hot or might rain. Although in Perth it has barely rained in months, so I actually can't recall the feeling of not doing something in case it might rain...

Impact: I am fitter! As most of my cycling is for short trips my estimate is that I am taking 2-3kg of carbon dioxide out of the air each time by not driving (based on this calculator). 

When I went searching for a comparison of carbon footprints from bikes or cars, I was fascinated to find that while some sites (like the calcualtor one) assess a bicycle as a zero carbon footprint, others take into account the manufacturing and transport of the bicycle and, most interestingly, the carbon footprint of the food eaten to generate the energy for riding the bike. This site uses the measure of 50 kalories per mile and looks at different diets! There is also the consideration that taking your car off the road not only gets rid of its own emissions but reduces congestion and therefore allows the cars that continue driving to run more efficiently.

The 'No Rubbish' Challenge

We've just returned from two weeks in Victoria with my family. My brother and his wife, who have a two year old and are expecting a baby next month, are attempting to produce NO household rubbish. My immediate thought was that this must be part of one of those internet/social/group 'challenge' things but no, they just decided it was something important for them to do. They recycle, compost and reuse. Anything that can't be used in one of these ways they try not to purchase. They said they are getting it down to about half a kitchen bin per week of rubbish.

What impressed me about their effort was that the thinking involved came not so much at the point of throwing away but at the point of purchase. They take tupperware containers shopping and buy whatever they can loose by weight rather than in a packet. They seek out brands that are in recyclable packaging - pasta, for example, is available (at a higher price) in cardboard boxes. They bake their own bread. They don't buy some items that can't be sourced rubbish-free. They visit several shops to get what they want rather than settling for the rubbish-wrapped options at a single store. Its amazing how much rubbish you can avoid if you put your mind to it. Perhaps its a little easier if you live, as they do, in East Brunswick, with all the unusual shops and food sources around that neighbourhood, but options other than Coles and Woolworths are within reach of most suburban dwellers now. I didn't ask them how they get on with kids toys (although they buy many of these second hand, so I guess that means no wrapping) or things people give to them. I am discovering that the packaging that comes with kids' toys is outrageous! And much if it arrives in our home as part of the generosity of others.

Currently our rubbish is at about one bin bag per week. We haven't taken on the no rubbish challenge as yet, but it has made us more aware of the rubbish we are producing and we are doing our best to keep it to a minimum.  Being at my brother's house where I felt like the bin had a big 'do not use' sign on top also made me aware of how often I do things like put tissues in the bin instead of the compost, empty little bits of scraps (the end of Eva's dinner, the sink strainer, etc) into the regular bin instead of the compost, or put recyclables like toilet rolls into a regular bin because I am at the wrong end of the house to be near the recycling when I am throwing them away! I'm cutting down on these little things at least for now. Addressing what I buy will hopefully come a little at a time. We do use cloth bags, reuse all plastic bags we acquire, and avoid bags completely for much of our fruit and veg... but I'm not yet at the stage of paying more for my pasta etc so I don't get it in a plastic packet, or avoiding altogether foods that only come packaged.

... and while I'm talking about being inspired by other people having a go at sustainable living, I was put onto this blog recently http://littleecofootprints.typepad.com/ which I am finding challenging, inspirational and fun.

Jan 2011 - Does it need to be washed? Does it need to be hot?

In January we had a water main replaced in our street. Aside from many hours of entertainment for Eva watching diggers, trucks, concreting, workers etc right in front of our house, it also gave me cause to reflect on how I use water. We were asked to turn our water off for a day. This required us saving water to use during the time it was turned off, including putting a bucket of water in the kitchen sink to use for the various bits of washing we do all day. I was confronted by how often I just reach for the tap without thinking, and as a result the first part of my sustainable act for January was to become conscious of tap use and try to ask the question: does it need to be washed? For example, I found I washed mushrooms and carrots I was going to peel anyway, and rinsed vegetables from our own garden that I knew for certain had never been touched with a pesticide.

Because our sink has one tap that swivels between hot and cold, it is often left in the hot position. I takes a while for hot water to come out, so I had got into the habit of turning it on whichever position, doing the quick rinse I needed before the hot got there, and turning it off. In effect I was heating water all day that I didn't even want to have hot. Also I was doing things like putting hot water into the nappy bucket, which at best would affect one nappy before it cooled off. So the second part of my January resolution has been to ask myself: does it need to be hot? 

The third part of this action has been putting a bowl into the sink to catch rinse water, and emptying it onto the garden through the day. Last time we attempted something like this we used a fairly large wash tub and the water got gross quite quickly, so we gave the practice away after a while. I'm finding a smaller container (about 2-3L at a guess) gets full before it gets dirty.

Initial Time: Just some effort to think about my actions. Emptying the bowl takes about 2 minutes each time - more like 30 seconds if I water the potplant right by the back door! Even with this tiny amount of time, it is still so tempting to just tip the water down the sink sometimes. How lazy is that?!

Initial Cost: Zero

Ongoing time or cost commitment: The bowl-emptying is an ongoing time commitment that adds up to at most 15 minutes per day. I am considering putting a small sign near the kitchen tap that says 'Does it need to be washed? Does it need to be hot?' to help me remember my commitment.

Impact: Tyson tells me 1 unit of energy will heat about 16L of water in a domestic hot water system, give or take a couple to allow for the miriad of varying individual factors (which let me assure you he CAN AND WILL explain to you if you let him!). I get close to using that amount of water in dribs and drabs through the day, especially keeping up with wiping up after Eva. If all of that water I am allowing to heat but not using as hot water, because it just gets into the pipe and cools until I next turn the tap on for a quick burst, by paying attention to turning the tap to cold I am saving 1 unit of energy a day - 3.6 megajoules.

Being conscious of the questions means I am using less water. Also, because there is relatively clean water in a bowl in my sink most of the day, I turn the tap on less - so often I just need to dip  my fingers in the bowl for a quick rinse and that's enough.

Christmas Baking Day

Christmas Baking Day is an annual baking extravaganza held at our house. This year we had about 22 people, other years it has got up closer to 30. Kids and adult come together. It includes a wide range of friends and family, many of whom don't know each other as we have so many circles of contact from which to invite people. I provide all the ingredients, and I make people work really hard all day baking gourmet biscuits and confectionery. There is a lot of chocolate involved and, I discovered this year, a lot of nuts (amazing what a friend with a nut allergy will bring to light!).

 

Is this a sustainable act? We use the oven for up to 6 hours straight and make the poor fridge work harder than it does any other day of the year. However, our energy bill for the period didn't have a spike, so this musn't be too much of a strain on our overall usage total. We end up with quite a lot of packaging rubbish, but we re-use washed and saved take-away containers (saved all year) to package up the resulting goodies. Many of the ingredients I cannot guarantee are fair trade. The chocolate in particular (this year close to 5kg worth) is not fair trade sourced - mostly because I have not found a fair trade source for decent cooking chocolate that melts and resets appropriately. 

The reason I have included Christmas Baking Day as part of this blog is that I believe it does contribute towards sustainability in a number of perhaps more subtle ways than changing light bulbs or taking shorter showers.

Firstly there is the basic good of many people coming together to share work, food and conversation. I see Christmas Baking Day as a living experience of what might happen if we let down our barriers a bit and got involved in each others' lives - stuff I consider essential for living sustainably together on our planet. 

The Day also contributes to sustainable thinking about Christmas, as it provides nearly all of what we give as gifts, and models to others a way to make gifts with our own hands, rather than buying manufactured items. We don't wrap the biscuits we give out, and many of those who bake bring their own container to take their share home in. 

Over many years I have also overheard some quite remarkable conversations taking place around the baking tables, including friends opening up concepts of justice, equality and the mess we have our world in with others who have had less experience of these issues. It seems such conversations are easier to have while working alongside one another elbow-deep in chocolate - perhaps less threatening? Perhaps less needs to be defended? 

And then there is the value of sharing an experience of abundance and generosity. Not just that we are being generous in offering to our friends the space and the ingredients, and most of the produce, but the generosity of our friends in giving us their time and friendship and hard work and joy, all of which are essential to the day. Generosity I think is also essential for sustainable living.

Finally I think it is important to demonstrate that living sustainably doesn't mean being misers and doesn't mean having no fun. I suspect some of our friends or family sometimes think our life choices and attempts to live sustainable must make our life awfully drab, tight and limited. Grey. Christmas Baking Day is the antithesis of grey, and I delight in sharing that with my friends, especially those who think our lifestyle is perhaps just a little odd.

Initial Time: About 4-5 days. We rearrange our entire living space to fit in 20+ bakers. Sorting out an ingredients list and doing the shopping is another day. The actual day is a marathon beginning about 8am and often not finishing until we collapse into bed about 10pm. Delivering goodies afterwards takes varying amounts of time depending on how far away people live this year. Lets just say that cleaning up a living space after it has hosted 20+ bakers, including children, is no quick nick around with a broom either!

Initial Cost: Around $300.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: zero (until next year...)

Impact: I guess that's what I've been trying to tease out above. Also I think I put on a couple of kilos each year in the week following...

18 months on - progress report

I started writing this post in May, and just found it now in my saved drafts. Oops! I have updated and completed it, and here it is. Now titled '18 months on...' but initially '12 months on, as reflected in the intro.

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Twelve months on feels like time to check how things are going. Did we keep up our commitments? How have they worked out for us? Are we going on with the project?

Weather sealing the front door - Yep, less drafty. My only comment is that it makes the door a bit harder to shut - if its not locked it sometimes swings back open.

Pipe insulation - It would be good to insulate the rest of the pipes but they appear to be unreachable. The insulation doesn't seem to be sustaining weather damage or coming away from the pipes.

Laundry & Dishwasher Powder - Right after we agreed to do this I accidentally bought a whole lot of regular laundry powder super cheap, and we had only recently purchased regular dishwasher powder, so we took a couple of months to work our way through that. The eco-friendly stuff seems to give an equally good clean.We buy either Earthchoice or Aware laundry powder and it is on special often enough that I don't have to pay the shelf price as quoted in my initial blog very often.

Hot Water Temperature - Cold weather came and went and our showers were still plenty warm enough in the morning.

Getting rid of 'standby' - It took a little while to get into the habit of switching the whole system off, but now it is second nature. The only drawback is that if we want to leave one thing plugged in, like a mobile phone charging overnight or a fan to speed up drying nappies in rainy weather, we have to leave the whole computer system on standby as there is only one power outlet in the office.

Shade Cloth on east wall - We considered rolling it up for winter, as the office got very cold  even during the day, but there is no direct sun on that wall in winter anyway, so we didn't bother. We wore ugg-boots and jumpers, wrapped blankets round our legs (well, I did - Tyson I think sees that as too much like a granny thing) and referred to the office as 'the icebox' for a couple of months. I seem to recall it was pretty cold in there the previous year too, so I'm not sure it was because of the shade cloth. Now its summer again and shade cloth is my friend.

Grey Water - All summer we carted buckets of water from the washing machine and showers to keep the garden alive. We didn't turn on a hose for the garden at all! When the rain started I didn't know what to do. It felt so wasteful to let the water go down the drain, but the garden didn't need it. We used the shower buckets to flush the toilet again for winter, but the washing machine had to just drain away. This summer we have enough water for the garden from showers and Eva's bath, as she is in the big bath now. Also, the buckets from the washing machine got quite grimey with soap scum and I haven't been that keen to return to using laundry water if we don't need to. Perhaps in the hottest months we will do it again. Tyson captured some laundry water last week when he needed to do five loads of washing in one day.

 
Irrigation - The system has been revamped for the new garden and works better than ever. As an added bonus, Eva loves the routine of carrying buckets outside and watching the water come around the garden. She has dug herself a lake under two spouters and watches it fill up and drain away every morning.

 
Heat Barrier Curtain -Still there, still working, no trouble at all.

Compost - Our tubs weren't working so well, and we got rats (which ATE OUR PUMPKINS!!! I can't tell you how cross I was, especially as I saw the last one get taken in front of me). Next we tried a pile in the garden, wrapped in plastic and hemmed in by bricks. We still got mice. Eventually we bought a compost tumbler. Tyson wanted one with a handle that goes round and round rather than end over end, but they are ludicrously expensive (about $800!!) and his friend who runs a hardware store assured him they rust out quickly. End-over-end can get quite heavy and awkward to turn, but so far not unmanageable. The only flaw in the system now is that we tend to be lazy about taking the scraps outside, and once the inside bucket is full I think organic matter does end up in the regular bin sometimes. 

Cloth Nappies - We are still using cloth. In the past year we have used about two packs of disposables (total 60 nappies?) plus a few disposable swimmer nappies. The system of cloth wipes only lasted about 6 months, though. I always felt like I was spilling water around the place, and the cloths seemed kind of scratchy for a little bum. At first I meant to replace them with softer fabric, but now I have admitted to myself that I am never going to do that, as disposable wipes are too convenient. But the cloth nappies... I am happy to recommend the brand we use (see original post) as we have had only one wet bed (and that was our fault for not getting the nappy cover on properly) and a handful of leaks of any kind.We had to buy more covers a few months back as the first lot were getting a bit small and their elastic was wearing out, and we will have to buy another round of covers before Eva is through with nappies, but the nappies themselves are lasting brilliantly.

Lighting - Still in place. No globes have needed replacement yet. I forget  they are anything but plain ordinary globes.

The Conversation -Its been a while since we revisited our commitment to living sustainably. But then, I think it has become embedded in our lifestyle, which was initially our hope in taking up the monthly challenge. We still like the idea but have trouble finding time to implement it every month. Its an ongoing but sporadic conversation now.

Now its December...

So as you can see, I have not been the least bit successful at keeping up with this blog. I have to confess that as we headed into the second year of our sustainability commitment we also began slipping away from doing something every month. Having said that, though, we are still averaging one thing a month and not naming it as part of the original commitment.

Things we have done this year since May:

Garden make-over. This involved help from about ten friends, bless them, especially the guys who forked a whole trailer load of woodchips in and then out of the trailer, and around the garden. The garden make-over was to reduce the water needed for the garden (and also to reduce the number of spidery corners as our little girl began to get mobile) and also, we hoped, to improve our vegetable returns. We installed a raised garden bed and Tyson reworked the gravity-feed irrigation system to service it. Most of the front courtyard was woodchipped to get rid of grass areas, and the remaining woodchips were used to mulch every pot and garden bed around the house. Initial time: one full working day with an average of five workers at a time, plus another day with two of us finishing things off. Initial cost: about $300 for sheets of corrugated iron and a few sturdy posts (all from the salvage yard), two trailers of good quality soil, and a donation for the woodchips that we collected from the front lawn of a church that needed to get rid of a large fallen tree. Ongoing cost: various bits and pieces, but no more or less that for any other garden - well, perhaps less, as vegetable seeds cost less than, say, pots of orchids, and the most successful vegies have been the ones grown from seed either harvested at the end of season or accidentally sown through the compost. Ongoing time: Less than for most gardens, as the woodchips stop most weeds and there is no longer grass to mow. Impact: Sorry, I just can't calculate that one. But I know that the new garden makes me happy, and I spent much of winter just enjoying looking at it out our windows.

Rugs and Carpets. Our living space is tiled, which in winter means it can get quite cold, but in summer it is lovely. This year we acquired two more floor-covering pieces for winter, making five rugs on the floor in winter. One was a second-hand piece from a nearby carpet store, which Tyson trimmed and turned around to fit under our dining table and chairs. The other was from his parents as they were replacing a large rug at their house. For summer we have lifted three of the pieces, leaving soft coverings only at the areas where Eva's toys are kept, so that she has some softer play space. Initial cost: zero (except maybe the $5 for a roll of duct tape for reshaping carpet pieces into the floor piece we needed. We didn't use the whole roll, of course) Initial time: about 15 minutes going through carpet off-cuts to find a decent piece; about 30 minutes for Tyson to work the carpet into a good shape. The rug given to us was no time at all! Ongoing time and cost commitment: about 5 minutes at the change of seasons to pull up and store or lay down again the rugs. Storing a couple of large rolled carpets through summer is also a bit of a space-taker. Impact: Its hard to prove whether we turned the heater on less in winter once the carpets were down, but I suspect we did, as my feet didn't feel cold when working on the laptop at the dining table. As for summer... Eva sometimes lies down on the nice cool tiles when it is hot but so far I have not got hot enough to shake off my social conditioning that says adults probably shouldn't be found lying on their kitchen floor.

Bamboo blinds for the back window.  We were given a couple of bamboo blinds so Tyson rigged one up on the back toilet window. This room gets the afternoon sun and absolutely bakes in summer. The blind fits perfectly and makes an amazing difference! Initial cost: zero, as the blind was a throw-away. Initial time: about 15 minutes to attach the blind - hooked into the small screen/vent at the top of the window with hooks Tyson made for the job. Ongoing time and cost: zero. Perhaps in winter we will decide to take 5 minutes and roll the blind up again at the start of the season. Impact: We never heated or cooled the toilet, but it was a very hot buffer between outside and inside temperatures. As it is now substantially cooler, the inside temperature is not pressured nearly as much from this side. Its also much MUCH nicer in there on a hot day - which, although it is not the toilet we mostly use ourselves, is a huge improvement as it is the room where nappies get dealt with.

Making Eva's Christmas present out of items salvaged from hard rubbish. The items: two dolls' houses. Tyson is in the process of renovating them, pulling bits off one to make the other perfect. So far everything he has done has used recycled materials from around our home, except for the rewiring of the lights. Initial cost: I think Tyson spent about $30 on wiring and little LED lights. He tells me he is working on a plan to put a solar panel on the roof and run the house lights that way. I'm not sure how serious he is. Initial time: Lets just say this is a labour of love for Tyson and he has spent many happy hours in the shed pottering about creating the perfect recycled dolls house. Ongoing time/ cost: hopefully zero, but probably a few repairs along the way. Impact: most of two dolls houses saved from landfill; numerous bits and pieces of household 'waste' saved from landfill (did you know a plastic honey sachet makes a great sink?); all of us saved from buying more stuff for Christmas for this one time, a tiny ripple against the great tsunami of Christmas consumption.

Shed vent. The shed is a tiny tiny place, from which Tyson has to unpack several items in order to have space for himself to get inside if he wants to use it as a work space. It is also extremely hot and humid, as it was built with no windows, vents, or openings other than the door. Tyson bought a vent and installed it so that hot air could escape into the roof space above the ceiling and thus through the tiles. I don't go into the shed except to reach in and get a broom or snail bait, but even those brief forays were unpleasant pre-vent. Tyson says the vent has totally transformed the place into a viable workspace. (For the record, no we didn't ask permission from the landlord. I'm sure he would have said yes - eventually. Everything takes forever on that front. We figure we've made an improvement, at our cost, so if he even notices the vent he surely can't complain). Initial cost: bout $15 for the vent. Initial time: I'm starting to forget details, but I think cutting a piece of ceiling out and fitting the vent into the space took about half an hour. Tyson is pretty handy. It would probably have taken me at least twice that long. Ongoing time/ cost: zero. Impact: we didn't heat or cool the shed, partly because there is no power point in there (you gotta love investment builders ... don't put anything in past the bare minimum specs if you won't be living there yourself!) but Tyson doesn't come inside wilting and need cooling down like he used to. Also I think it counts as a sustainable action to improve quality of living without increasing energy usage or global impact.

Better compost system. We decided to put some of the money left to us after Tyson's beloved grandmother died towards buying a decent (read: completely sealable) compost system. It works. It also seems to breed tomatoes, capsicums and pumpkins effortlessly. Initial cost: $200. Initial time: about an hour to assemble the tumbler, transfer the existing compost pile into it, and get the new tumbler settled into its garden home. Ongoing cost/ time: five minutes a day to put the scraps from the kitchen into the tumbler and give it a spin. Impact: great soil! and self-sown vegies. I don't think we will need to buy potting mix for a while. Also of course we are saving all that organic matter going into landfill.

Tarpaulin shading the northwest wall. In summer this wall soaks up heat in the afternoon, and transfers it pretty quickly through into the living area. Our clothesline is there, and last summer I had tried making sure there was washing on the line on hot days to provide some shading, but this was not really enough. This week Tyson has rigged up a tarpaulin to cover about half of the courtyard on that side of the house, shading much of the wall - and also a decent chunk of the shed. It is hooked into the gutters with metal hooks, and tensioned with shock cord (left over from earlier exercises in shading windows). So far we think it is helping reduce house temperatures. We haven't had a real heat wave to trial it on yet. Much of the clothesline is shaded now, but only the nappies really need direct sun and they can either go on the sunny bit or go on a free-standing drying rack out in the hot bit of the courtyard. Initial cost: zero (the tarpaulin was given to us by a neighbour who was getting rid of it; the shock cord was left-overs) Initial time: about half an hour. Ongoing time/ cost: this one will need to be taken down in heavy weather, as it blows around a bit. Its also quite noisy, so Tyson is thinking of ways to soften the scratchy noise of the hooks in the gutters. Even if it doesn't come down in heavy weather, it will need to come down at the end of summer.Impact: Reduced need for airconditioning in summer. Possibly also longer life for clothes that don't appreciate drying in direct Perth summer sun!

 
Front blinds. It took us ages but we finally found a spot suitable for the second of our donated bamboo blinds - a larger one. I was hesitant to allow Tyson to put the blind on the front living area window, as I love sitting in the lounge looking out at our front garden - especially since it got remade at the start of winter. However, we tested it out and to my amazement you can see right through bamboo blinds, much like a fly screen but not so grey! I'm sure everyone else in the world already knew this, but it was news to me. The blind is hooked into the gutter - no permanent fixtures. It can be retracted with a draw-cord, but so far we haven't bothered. Initial cost: zero (blinds were a cast-off gift). Initial time: about 15 minutes to put the blind up. Ongoing time/ cost: need for removal at start and end of season, and probably during heavy weather as they are loosely attached to the guttering. Its the lee side of the building, though, so not too punished by weather. Impact: I can have the inside venetian blinds open in summer without heating up the house dramatically - which is extremely good for my mental state when I am home all day with Eva on a hot day. I know shutting the blinds is good sustainability sense, but I get tetchy living in a cave. Somehow the sun still sneaks in the side of the blind until about 9am (later when its not the middle of summer), so the venetians are still shut then. Overall it seems this is making the room much cooler, hence less airconditioning. And the not-cave effect makes me happier about living in a shaded house.

Tyson's work. In October Tyson passed his 100th home sustainability assessment. That's something like 200 hours spent one-on-one educating people in their own homes about ways to reduce their impact. If everyone he visited reduced their energy bills by one unit per day (not an unreasonably estimate as an average) he would have taken about 21.5 tonnes of carbon out of the air (as of today). We heard yesterday of a family of four who he visited about six months ago who have since installed solar panels and made lifestyle changes so that their last energy bill was $1.05!

May 2010 - Weather sealing the front door

The less drafts in a room the easier and more efficient it is to heat. Winter is approaching here and the cold air coming in around the front door was making it hard to keep the living area warm, so this month we added weather sealing tape to the front door to stop the drafts.

Initial Time: Ten minutes to cut and attach tape (Tyson adds: it would have been quicker if he wasn't carrying Eva on his back at the same time)


Initial Cost: Five metres of self-adhesive weather sealing tape cost $10.98, and was almost exactly the amount needed for one standard size door.


Ongoing time or cost commitment: zero.

Impact: It is noticeably less drafty - and also much quieter! Other external windows and doors to the living space were already weather sealed. I still prefer to wear warm clothes and have a window open as long as I can bear it, though - which is usually longer than everyone else around me. (One former housemate's boyfriend dubbed me 'the ice queen' because of this tendency...)

April 2010 - Pipe Insulation

Even the most efficient water heating systems still face the problem of water cooling in the pipes before it reaches the point of use. We collect about half a bucket of cold water in our shower before the hot gets there, and a substantial amount of cold water goes down the kitchen sink while waiting for it to warm up also. This month we decided to insulate the water pipes where we could get to them.

Initial Time: 15 minutes to cut and fit insulation piping on outside pipes. Tyson got into the roof space to see if the pipes were exposed there also, which was an additional time commitment, but after insulating a section of gas pipe by mistake he concluded that the hot water pipes are not in the roof cavity, so I won't count his roof crawling time here.


Initial Cost: We were given four metres of insulation piping free as a promotion from Environment House and bought some extra from Bunnings - $6.89 for a two metre section.


Ongoing time or cost commitment: zero.

Impact: We still run a lot of cold water in the shower before the hot kicks in, as it is on the other side of the house to the water heater. Its hard to say whether the temperature is warmer once it gets going, as we did this right on the change of season so the pipes are contesting with colder weather than before we made the change. In the kitchen, which is closer to the water heater, we have noticed that the water appears to have less cold delay, and is hotter when it arrives.  This is definitely true in the laundry, which is directly through the wall from the water heater.

I can't give a precise measure on any of that, though.

Update: Tyson has put some measurements in the comments. 

Also I think I should emphasise that even when you are not using any hot water, the outlet pipe from a storage hot water system acts as a kind of wick, drawing heat out of the storage tank. Insulating the pipes not only keeps the water we are using hotter, it also keeps the water waiting in the tank hotter.

March 2010 - Laundry & Dishwasher Powder

I had been getting uneasy about the amount of laundry powder that we are letting into the ecosystem, especially as we do eight or nine loads of washing a week keeping the nappies clean,and recycle much of the water onto the garden. This month we made a commitment to purchasing more eco-friendly washing powder. We have a couple of brands as Tyson's parents gave us some, and I also bought a wool wash for occasional use. While we were at it we added eco-friendly dishwasher powder to the equation for good measure.

Initial Cost:  1.5kg of Aware laundry powder costs about $8.40 if its not on special (and so far it hasn't been on special often). This compares with $1.99 for 500g of regular brands (the shelf price is more but I always stock up when its on special). EarthChoice dishwasher tablets cost about $15.80 for a box of 28, compared with about $13 for 1kg of powder from regular brands. I also investigated the products available at our local organic store, but although they were potentially better quality they were outside my price range.

Initial Time: zero

Ongoing time or cost commitment: I estimate we use about 13.5kg of laundry powder a year. Using the prices above, this works out at $75.60 for earth-friendly powder or $54 for regular brands - an extra $21.60 per year. If we average three dishwasher loads a week, the EarthChoice dishwasher tablets will cost us about $95 a year. My rough estimate of how much I spend on regular dishwasher powder in a year came out at about $100, as we get less washes from the powder than from the tablets.

Impact: Its hard to tell precisely what chemicals we have been putting into the water. EarthChoice dishwasher tablets assure me they are biodegradable and phosphate free, but make no promises about their use of petrochemicals. The ingredient list is: sodium carbonate, citric acid, sodium bicarbonate, sodium sulphate, sodium silicate, sodium percarbonate, tetra acetyl ethylene diamine, sodium diethylenetriamine pentamethylene phosponate, glass protection additive, polyacrylic acid, polyethylene glycos, colloidal silica, enzyme, dye. I don't know what that means - but the regular brand I still have a packet of tells me nothing about its contents at all.

Aware laundry powder is also biodegradable and phosphate free, but so is the regular Duo that I still have a packet of. Aware contains no petrochemicals or palm oil (a major cause of deforestation) but uses coconut oils, sugar, citrate salt from corn, and cellulose colloids from cotton and wood pulp.

Mostly I think the impact of our change is to put 13.5kg less of petrochemical-based powder into the environment each year from the washing machine. I'm not sure the difference with the dishwasher.

February 2010 - Hot Water Temperature

Heating water is one of the biggest users of energy in a house. We have a large storage gas hot water system. This means that it works all day to keep the 135 litres inside hot and ready to use. This month's sustainable action was to reduce the temperature that the water is heated to and stored at. As I sit to write about how much effort it took and how much impact it has, I can't believe we didn't do it sooner. The water is still easily hot enough to have a great shower, even on a cold morning (not that we have had many of those in Perth this year).

Initial Cost: zero

Initial Time: five minutes

Ongoing time or cost commitment: zero

Impact: I thought there would be a nice easy calculation for this - an equation of 'water takes x units of energy to heat to y temperature therefore a reduction of z degrees means an xyz reduction in energy usage'. Tyson sighed at me and said its not as simple as that. Each brand of water heater uses a different amount of energy when new, and then it depends how old the system is, whether we use our hot water all in one go or in little bits through the day, where the system is located (if its in the sun, it stays warmer. Duh. Why didn't I think of that?), what the climate is like, and so on. Also when we opened the box we found the dial didn't say what actual temperature it was set to. It was on the highest one - at a guess probably about 70-80 degrees C. We turned it down from '5' to '3', which we guessed would be about 60 degrees C. (It's not safe to store hot water at less than 60 degrees C as there is a danger of legionellas breeding)

BUT: Our recent gas bill was about one third less than the same period last year, and we only use gas for cooking and hot water, so even without a clever formula I can say that it is making a big difference!

Actions that pre-date the month-by-month plan

I realised as I began writing this blog that there were actually quite a few things we had already instigated prior to beginning the ‘one act a month’ commitment. Here is the list of what I can think of that we were already doing at our house to try living more sustainably:

• water saver shower heads in both showers (I was worried they would make the shower feel pathetic, but you can still get a good ‘big shower’ feel so I am happy to recommend them to others)
• buckets in shower to catch as much water as possible, especially the few litres that runs out cold before the hot water gets there (Initially we were using this water to flush the toilet, but the toilet cistern was getting pretty gunky with the soap etc of the shower water, so now we just use it on the garden.)
• toilet flushing limitations (Without being too detailed, you don’t need to flush every time – and certainly not with the full 10L of the cistern)
• front-loader low water/ moderate energy washing machine
• no clothes dryer (even super absorbent bamboo nappies dry within about 4 hours in summer and two days in winter – less if there is a heater on)
• green energy (yes I know the actual electricity we use comes off the grid same as my neighbours’, but we pay the extra to ensure the amount of electricity we use is somewhere put into the grid from renewable sources. Its not ideal but it’s a start)
• energy-saver light globes in the two main living areas

• shade cloth to rear area, to shelter living area windows from afternoon summer sun 
• minimal air conditioner use – only on REALLY hot days, and even then only for a few hours in the afternoon (in hot weather we close the blinds/ curtains/ doors/ windows to keep out the sun, open everything at night to get cross-ventilation, and use fans for most of our cooling, all of which dramatically reduces the house’s temperature without using the energy-guzzling split-cycle air conditioner.)
• minimal heater use  - only on REALLY cold days, and then only for a few hours in the evening (In cold weather we put on more clothes, have rugs on the tiles and wear ugg boots. We don’t heat bedrooms at night, just have lots of blankets and snuggle up. I was hoping ugg boots might qualify as a sustainable measure for funding support, as they make such a difference to my use of the heater, but no such luck)
• timer set on the oil fin heater in Eva’s room so that it runs only part of the night (We bought a 5-fin oil heater when Eva was due, as it was late winter and we needed some way to have a warm space ready for night time feeds and nappy changes. The timer was set so that the heater turned on and off every half hour, which took the chill off the room sufficiently. After about 6 weeks Eva didn’t need night time attention and the weather was getting warmer, so both the heater and the time were retired after only a short run)
• air conditioner set to 27°C in summer and heater to 19°C in winter (Every one degree higher (winter) or lower (summer) a heating/ cooling system is set uses 10 percent more energy, so we aim to take the edge off the temperature without making it super warm or cold)
• lights off during the day, or when we are not using a room at night (It was only when a house guest was here recently and left her bedroom light on all the time that it occurred to me that not everyone turns lights off)
• one car
• using public transport or riding bike for work and uni; walking to anything within about 20 minutes (one way) and occasionally longer trips, like the 35-40min walk to the nearest café strip/ shopping area, when we don’t need to carry too much (mostly – it’s a bit trickier with a baby, but when she can sit up properly we’ll look at a seat for her on my bike)
  

• enviro-friendly dishwashing and floor scrubbing liquid (We also tried toilet enviro-friendly toilet cleaner but it was useless)
• using recycled toilet paper and paper towels
• using recycled paper for the computer – both re-using scrap paper for drafts and purchasing recycled paper for good copies
• ensuring that we put everything possible into the recycling bin supplied by the council, not into the general rubbish bin
• minimal alfoil use (I was astonished to discover the amount of electricity required to produce aluminium. Alcoa uses 40% of Western Australia’s electricity! That’s outrageous! So, we still have alfoil in the cupboard, but we have found that a plate or tray over the dish usually works just as well in the oven, and gladwrap or baking paper works for most cold purposes)
• free-range eggs and chicken
• reducing lamb, beef and pork to only occasional mince or sausages, and choosing kangaroo or goat for other dishes (Australian red meat is not produced using as much energy as in Europe or North America, but it is still not the most sustainable land use – kangaroo and goat are much better)
• fair trade coffee and some fair trade tea – or Australian-grown/ made if fair trade is not available (but I confess to not buying fair trade herbal teas most of the time, and I am mostly a herbal tea drinker)
• careful seafood choices, especially no tuna unless specified as yellowfin tuna (I was appalled to discover that current rates of commercial fishing mean that within my lifetime wild fish stocks will die out completely. We try to base our choices on the seafood shopping guide. Tuna, being at the top of the food chain, are one of the worst fish to eat. I love tuna, especially those little sandwich tins, so cutting tuna out of our diet was challenging, and I confess I sometimes fall off the wagon when the little tins are 99c…)
• cloth shopping bags, and some attempt to make purchases, food in particular, that have less packaging
• worm farm
• vegies instead of lawn in much of our front courtyard

Putting together this list has lifted my spirits considerably. Drawn into one place it appears we are actually doing quite a lot, even if each thing feels small.

We also attempt to build positive relationships with our neighbours. I don’t know quite how that fits with the list above, but to me it feels like a significant aspect of sustainable living to challenge the isolationist suburban box mentality that dominates much of our culture. We try to make our home a place of hospitality – having a spare bed and welcoming guests, inviting neighbours to dinner, making an effort to chat to people in the street rather than walk past, offering our living space as venue for various group events, attempting to be generous. Small things, I know, but for me it is not sustainable to decrease water and energy usage, reduce our waste, make considered choices about what and how we consume but live isolated from those around us. Christopher Jamieson, applying the wisdom of St Benedict for modern life, says ‘we get to heaven together or not at all’. It’s a tough call, but I believe the only real way to get to any sort of ‘heaven’, including the heaven of sharing the planet well, is to travel together as community.

January 2010 - Getting rid of 'standby'

One of the things Tyson learnt in his course was that electronic equipment left on standby uses 10-15% of the power it uses when turned on. Everything in our house is on standby! Most notably, the computer/ printer/ screen/ speakers/ backup hard-drive gobble up energy. This month we purchased a six-point power board that has its own ‘on/off’ switch. When the computer etc is off, rather than sitting on standby, we are now turning the whole powerboard off.

Initial cost: $20. There are apparently also a range of more expensive options, including one with a remote switch, for when your power points are in a weird unreachable position, so you can set the switch up somewhere easy.

Initial time: 15 mins to rearrange the electrical cables.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: An extra few seconds when shutting down the computer to press the ‘off’ switch’.

Impact: At least 16 hours per day that the home office is drawing no power, where previously it was using an estimated 15-20W to sit on standby.

December 2009 - Shade cloth

This month’s challenge: cooling the rooms on the south east side of the house, which get morning summer sun and heat up like an oven. We have no yard on this side, only the driveway through to the rear houses. Two years ago Tyson successfully installed a shade cloth across most of the rear courtyard, primarily to shade a glass sliding door and large kitchen window from western sun on summer afternoons, but also to make a more pleasant outdoor area. We couldn’t afford a big shade sail, and as renters are limited in what permanent fixtures we can install for anchoring such sails. Tyson’s method was to use shade cloth over timber battens, which fit inside the gutters and are wired to the gutter brackets, thus being entirely removable. This has proved very successful for the courtyard, so we went with a similar approach to shade the two windows on the south east wall, one of which has no eaves at all. The bottom edges are anchored with shock cord... and we did install two hooks into the brickwork (we’ll remove them when we go... don’t tell the landlord).

Initial cost: About $40 for timber battens, shade cloth, shade cloth nails and shock cord. 

Initial time: One hour.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Possibly occasional need to clean away spiders webs from the inside.

Impact: The third bedroom has been transformed from a room where you really couldn’t spend time on a summer afternoon without the air conditioner running to a pleasant space that is temperature-manageable with only a fan. The bathroom is no longer a sauna! Additional unplanned benefits are that the glare from the neighbours fence is much reduced, and the angle of the shade cloth acts as a wind scoop to catch the south or southwesterly cool breezes and channel them in through the bedroom window.

November 2009 - Grey Water

Now that we have an irrigation system up and running, the challenge was to find a way to use water from the washing machine – especially as it runs every day cleaning nappies. Again, being renters, we can’t retrofit a grey-water recycling system, or even cut a hole for piping to get outside from the laundry. Also, our laundry is at the rear of the house but the majority of the garden, including the vegies and the irrigation system, is at the front. Our solution: buckets. We now have three buckets in the wash-trough catching washing machine water. What overflows the buckets goes down the drain, except on rare occasions when I happen past the laundry between the wash and the rinse cycles and empty the first round of buckets in time to also catch the rinse water.

We already had two buckets catching water in our shower, and have now also added a bucket in my sister’s shower, plus the water from Eva’s bath, the nappy bucket, and any hand washing done during the day.

Initial cost: 10L buckets cost $2 each. We supplemented our existing supply with another four.

Initial time: 5 minutes a couple of times over while we figured out the best bucket configuration. (For the record, letting the whole wash trough fill and overflow into the overflow holes means the washing machine stops draining once the pipe-end is in the water. We have a front-loader. Messy.)

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Ten minutes per day emptying buckets of water – shorter when all the water goes into the irrigation; longer when some of it is distributed to the pots and plants in the rear courtyard. However, we no longer spend any time watering with a hose, so it evens out.

Impact: Each day approximately 10L of baby bath water + 20L shower water + 30L laundry water is put to good use rather than going down the drains (that’s a whopping 22kL of water saved every year!).

October 2009 - Irrigation

Last summer we spent a lot of time hand-watering our vegies, and still lost most of them in a couple of heat waves (OK, yes, and the final nail in their coffin was a week when, discouraged by the small harvest, we were just too lazy to water).

We had been talking about ways to do it better this year, and also I was disturbed at the amount of virtually clean water from Eva’s baby bath that we were pouring out each night. So when I spied a pile of polypipe being thrown out on hard rubbish collection it motivated Tyson to build an innovative irrigation drip system.

Initial cost: $26 worth of polypipe fittings and silicone sealant from Bunnings, some thrown out polypipe on verge collection day, an old recycling tub to act as a header tank, broken dining chair for a tank stand, some old shade cloth to keep out the leaves and act as a filter.

Initial time: 3 hours to fit, cut, glue and seal everything together.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: 10 min each morning to empty captured water into header tank. Periodic maintenance eg re-drilling the drip holes when they gunk up.

Impact: No mains irrigation needed to water the vegetables. Also the drip delivery means the water is delivered to the plant right at its roots under the mulch – less evaporation, less sprinkled in the vicinity of the plants to feed the weeds. Much water saved from going down the drain... which leads us to November...