Special birthdays

When Tyson turned forty in June we wanted to celebrate him well, without massively increasing our footprint. 

The main agenda was to gather people together and enjoy each other, with good food. But here are a few things that also had an eye to our sustainability commitments:

We asked for gifts of sustainability actions in lieu of presents, and were touched by how many friends offered Tyson some idea of what they are doing to live within our earth's means. Some made new commitments; others reiterated choices already made. I was particularly moved by one (slightly) older friend who gifted to Tyson her decision to make more use of public transport, along with an invitation to ask her how it was going and an admission that the idea of using public transport scared her a bit. The traditional photo board included space for people to add notes about their sustainable choices.

Cooking one big roast dinner for sixty people used less energy than all those households cooking their own roast dinners at home (and was more fun!). We used about 15kWh of energy for cooking; a household roast dinner takes around 2kWh. The meat was free-range pork.

We borrowed cutlery and crockery from Tyson's parents to reduce our use of disposable items. We still have a pile of disposable plates, cups and cutlery in the cupboard from before we really got moving on this sustainability journey, some of which have been reused and returned to the cupboard several times, and these bumped up the numbers, along with some compostable plates. (I have my doubts about how they compost, though - I tore them into quarters and soaked them in water for a week and they were showing no signs of breaking down or being suitable for our compost any time soon!) Despite me encouraging guests to leave the dishes for us to run through the dishwasher in big loads the next day, a happy team got going in the kitchen and cleaned them all for us. They really did seem to be having a great time in there. Perhaps for some this was their sustainability 'gift', but most I think just enjoyed talking and laughing while working together.

We minimised our use of gladwrap and alfoil. So often at parties or events these are used to cover food for quite short periods of time. Instead, we used baking trays to cover salads.

We labelled our bins and encouraged people to separate out compost, recycling and genuine rubbish.

 

Eva made her own decorations. We also re-used the cloth bunting made for us by a friend last year, and ran one string of LED fairy lights.

Cards were home-made. The two gifts we did purchase were wrapped in cloth, one from each of the children. (We are not scrooges; its important our kids experience both giving and receiving. We encouraged them to be involved in choosing gifts that suited Tyson, to help them learn to think of someone other than themselves) The cordless drill set in particular will be put to use to facilitate many future projects along our sustainability journey.

Two weeks later my dad turned eighty, on the opposite side of the country. We celebrated by all my siblings (five of us) gathering, along with spouses and children, to share a holiday in the Grampians with my parents. The emphasis, again, was good time together. Bushwalking. Eating. Talking. Cuppas. A visit to the farm where Dad grew up. Grandkids' shenanigans. Reading books. Spotting wildlife. My gift was to arrange for my sisters and I to sing a couple of songs for Dad.

However, as we don't live near each other (not even all in the same country) a very great amount of fuel was used to bring us together. Would we have had less environmental impact if we had all sent my dad expensive presents instead? Maybe. But we would not have celebrated him well, and we would not have modeled for our children that people are always, always more important than stuff. 

Happy birthday to two of the finest men in my life.  

Some of the sustainability actions Tyson was gifted:

And finally from our small man, a gift not of sustainable actions but of hope:

The Unsustainable Holiday

We have just had two and a half weeks of lovely holiday time. (Thanks to everyone who had us stay or made the effort to spend time with us!) Our carbon footprint from those two and a half weeks is probably about equal to our impact over the entire rest of the year. 

We flew about 7000km, including three take-offs and three landings in large aircraft. We hired a car for one week and drove further than we usually drive in three weeks, including driving within Sydney and Melbourne where there were public transport options available. Friends also drove about 150km in their car to spend time with us. Family drove us around on lovely long day-trips through the Melbourne hills and from regional Victoria back to Melbourne. 

We took a holiday from cloth nappies and washing machines and added about 75 disposable nappies to landfill. Our cabin accommodation in NSW did not offer a recycling bin and we left our recyclable items with the ordinary rubbish. When we departed the cabin we left behind three times the rubbish we generally dispose of at home. Hardly anywhere were we able to compost. 

We heated one cabin the whole 5 days we were there (slow-burn pot-belly), cranked up an inefficient old reverse-cycle airconditioner on two cold mornings at another cabin, and happily enjoyed plenty of heating in our family's homes where we stayed with them. 

None of the water from our showers was saved for reuse, and shower heads were generally not water-saving models. We used full-flush toilets most places we stayed and, being guests in others' homes, felt obliged to flush every time. As the weather was colder than we are accustomed to, I suspect we had longer, hotter showers, I turned on heat-lamp lighting in the bathroom where it was available, and I ran cold water down the sink many times to get warm water for hand washing/ face wiping, where at home I generally use cold. I'm pretty sure the water heaters were set to a higher temperature than at home and the pipes were not insulated most places we stayed.

As guests we gratefully used products chosen by our hosts, whether or not the toilet paper was recycled, the laundry powder or dishwashing detergent environmentally friendly, or the coffee, tea or chocolate fairly traded. Given we have almost completely abandoned using alfoil at home, on account of the ludicrous amount of electricity required to produce it, we probably participated in using more alfoil than we will use for the rest of the year.

Our food was purchased from huge corporate grocery stores, and much of it had excessive packaging. (Notably, Eva did not enjoy the taste of either mandarins or cherry tomatoes from these stores, two of her favourite foods when purchased from farmers' market or growers' cooperative) We used plastic shopping bags, not having taken our cloth ones with us. I even bought imported out-of-season American cherries - I love cherries and we were so far off the sustainability wagon by that point that I gave in to their shiny blood-red temptation. 

Were there any redeeming factors? We did catch trams in Melbourne (for one day!), walk rather than drive to places close to where we stayed, and train rather than drive from Melbourne to Warrnambool (about 270km by rail/ 230km by road) in one direction at least. On the Qantas leg of our flights we recycled our in-flight rubbish (other carriers didn't offer to do this). At our cabin we chose not to turn on the reverse-cycle airconditioner, oil-fin heater or electric blanket. Anywhere we stayed we did not turn on heating in the bedroom and rugged up before turning on heating when we could. All our laundry was dried hanging outside or over racks in an already-warmed lounge-room rather than in dryers. Arguably we saved a whole long-distance flight by bundling trips to Melbourne and Sydney into one holiday rather than crossing the country twice. We paid the carbon neutral offset for our flights, however token that may be in practice. By being away we had our computers turned off for the duration.

Could we have done it better? Does anyone have suggestions for sustainable holidaying? I'm not looking for an eco-experience saving turtles or the like, just a manageable way to visit my family and friends across the country. I'm not prepared to resign myself to relationship-by-Skype, especially not for Eva's connections with her grandparents. Any ideas?