Redecorate with what you already have

When our Big Boy recently moved out of his cot into a full-size bed, I wanted to remodel the space left in the children's bedroom. I determined to do this without purchasing any new items.

Our children's book collection had outgrown its various shelves and baskets around the house. I wanted to bring all the books together and make a lovely space. I wanted a space that made the books look inviting, at child-height, well lit, and that encouraged reading by having an attractive, comfy reading spot. 

We shifted things around to relocate two shelves that had been in other use. One of these is from Tyson's childhood, repainted with left-over black spray paint when it was moved inside about a year ago. Additional shelves and shelf dividers use strong, plain-coloured cardboard boxes.

The carpet piece was from the off-cuts pile at a local carpet store. The installers bring all their excess back to the store and it is piled outside, free to all takers. (Truly. I asked inside)

The 'reading box' is a wooden blanket box that belonged to Tyson's grandmother, for which I made a padded cover. The padding comprises pieces of foam glued together - primarily the end of a couple of long mattresses that we trimmed to fit into the camper trailer, plus some pieces from an old kitchen chair. 

This was cased within a large banner advertising a kindy event earlier in the year. The cover fabric was all in my box of odds & ends of fabric. Some of this was purchased ages ago from the off-cuts box at our wonderful local fabric store (previously used as dress-up scarves, teddy bedclothes, toy animal paddocks, dolls house furnishings, etc), some remained from projects years ago, including fabric from my wedding dress, and other bits were 'scraps' from the sewing table of a friend who recently finished a costume design course.

  

The bunting was a gift to us from that same friend, using her scraps. She also renovated the quilt on the lower bunk for me - a heritage item given to me for my first 'big bed' when I was three.

Initial Time: In all its stages, this took bits of time over more than a week. Half a day of moving stuff. Half a day of sewing. Time picking up carpets while taking Eva to a birthday party. Bits and pieces.

My trusty helper. He presses 'reverse' for me.

Initial Cost: Zero. Oh, except a donation to the friend who did quilt fixing and about $4 for a tube of glue. I tend to overlook the occasional costs of restocking materials, like glue, paint or sewing thread, that get used for multiple projects. For this project, nothing needed replacing except the glue.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero. And committing not to buy a throw cushion for the box (we have SO MANY throw cushions, but I have a weakness...)

Impact: The widespread appeal of shops that sell nothing but items to fit-out a home, especially decorative rather than functional fittings, is indicative of our culture's emphasis on purchasing more and more whenever changes are desired at home. A steady stream of advertising encourages us to desire changes. The abundant piles of household items on the verge at bulk rubbish collection, many in perfectly good condition, affirms the rate at which remodeling and replacing occurs. I love beautiful things, I enjoy creating lovely spaces and I am attracted to all the options for 'improving' our home. While I can't measure an exact impact of this action, resisting the urge to go and buy, and channeling it instead into finding ways to creatively re-use what we already had, feels like moving in the right direction for me.

Getting to school without getting in the car

Our Big Girl started full-time school this year (Pre-Primary). 

Best friends on the bus on the first day of school, back in February

The school is 1.6km from our house - exactly one mile. There is a very busy road to cross. However, we have committed to getting her there without getting in the car. 

Most days we take the bus. There is no 'school bus' (they are not common in Australian cities) but a public bus route picks up about a block away and drops off at the school gate.

Other days we walk, ride or scooter. We are more than halfway through the year, and we have driven less then ten times - almost all when the car was on its way somewhere else and included a school drop-off or pick-up in the same journey.

Initial Time: Walking with Eva takes about 20 minutes, plus about ten minutes for an adult to walk home again. The bus only takes five minutes of actual bus time, but by the time we walk to the stop and wait, it is a 15 minute journey all together to get to school (generally Tyson or I then walk rather than bus our way home again). After school, the bus includes a wait, and is almost always late on top of that, meaning getting home at least half an hour after school lets out, often longer. If both Eva and parent scooter or ride, its less than a ten minute trip each way, including time for tying up the bike. If Eva rides and her adult walks, its more like 15 minutes. 

Driving takes about 5 minutes, so all these options add time.

Initial Cost: Riding, walking and scootering are free (Eva's bike was a hand-me-down gift; her scooter we found on bulk rubbish and Tyson fixed it up). The bus costs 60c each way for Eva and between 60c or $2.25 for Tyson and I (depending on whether our concession is current, and whether we bus home again or walk back). If we caught the bus each way each day that could be between $12 and $28.50, but as we always mix it up with some walking/riding/scootering, and also share accompanying children on the bus with another family, in practice its more like $6 a week.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Over the course of a year, I estimate we are spending about $240 on bus fares getting to and from school. Best case scenario we add about 1 hour a week to our travel times; worst case (lots of slow walking or waiting for late buses) we add up to 5 hours. However, this time has its own value (see 'impact'), so is not 'wasted' time in the week.

Impact: 

If we drove to and from school every day, this would be approximately 32km of driving per week. Given the stop-start nature of the trip, including a set of traffic lights that often takes a couple of cycles to get through at peak hour, the car doesn't run as efficiently for this sort of trip as is it can at optimum. Driving every trip would use around 2.72L of fuel per week - approximately $3.80 worth, generating around 7.4kg of CO2. (By comparison, this tool suggests that taking the bus would add about 3kg of CO2 to our carbon footprint, but that's a very rough estimate with many variables). In a year, allowing for some carbon footprint when we take the bus, we are saving around 270kg of CO2 each year by not driving to school.

Studies have shown that the rates of Australian school children in suburban areas using 'active transportation' (ie human-powered) to get to school have declined by around 40% since the early 1970s. In 2003, around 65% of primary and 40% of secondary school students in a Sydney study were driven to and from school, up from approximately 21% and 10% in 1971. Walking and bus-riding both declined. (Cycling was such a small number it didn't figure in the statistics, possibly because the area studied was quite hilly, However, other studies show the number of children riding bikes at all, let alone to school, is declining). If we were to postulate that 50% of Australia's approximately 3.7 million school students are driven to school every day, and conservatively estimate round trips of 1km at each end of the day for these students, that adds up to 74 million kilometres each week being driven to get children to and from school. That's over 1.3 million kg (1,300 tonnes) of CO2 being pumped into our air every week just getting Australian kids to school (much more, actually, as this doesn't allow for longer distances travelled to country schools, but I accept that in regional areas there are fewer alternate options). Taking our car off the road is a small contribution to reducing that, but hopefully we can inspire a few others to join us too. 

Not driving also addresses general traffic congestion. Everyone knows how much easier it is to get around the city when its school holidays, because there are far fewer cars on the roads. When congestion in the school carpark was a problem earlier this year, the school staggered the times of classes ending their day but never once suggested that parents could consider not driving to address the carpark problem! We can do better than that, surely?

Its not just about getting our car off the road, though - its also about getting us active. I prefer to walk or ride rather than bus because the exercise at each end of the school day is good for both me and Eva. She is a pretty active, physical person - it helps her school day a lot if she has burned off a bit of steam before arriving in the morning; it helps our afternoon tempers a great deal if she has one mile of exercise to stretch herself out after being cooped up all day, especially when wet weather has kept them off the playground. Of course, exercise is good for our general health as well!

Although I err away from the bus when I can, Eva loves it, especially as her best friend is mostly on the bus too, and they sit with admirable self assurance amidst the teenagers from our local high school who also use that bus. The after-school time playing freely on the vacant lot beside the bus stop waiting for the always-late bus is a highlight of her day (less so of mine).

There is also much intangible value in teaching our children that they can be self-sufficient. They can transport themselves to school (with adult supervision at this age, but eventually alone or with friends). In a culture that breeds dependence and, in doing so, de-skills children, this is very important. We are also teaching by example that they don't need to have a car to get everywhere, which will hopefully shape their implicit sense of 'normal' into adulthood.

Links:


Key 2012 Heart Foundation report into 'Active Travel to School' in Australia, which everyone else quotes in their articles.

Environmental Benefits of Walking (Diabetes Australia)

2011 article at The Conversation about decline in Australian children riding to school, what is causing it, why its a bad thing and what can be done to reverse the pattern.

Bicycle Network's Ride2School program

Results hot off the press for the National Cycling Participation Survey 2015 (released last week)

Cycling tips for school drop-off

Australian Bureau of Statistics article (2013) on Australian car ownership trends and implications. Gosh I love the ABS. Such brilliant, ongoing data collection and analysis.

International Walk To School (yep, that's a thing)

Walking School Bus program in Victoria and more generally

Various SA Education Department fact sheets on safe travel to school, including everything from catching a train to knowing the road markings as a pedestrian.

Take the stairs... or the lift

While working in the city for a few months, I have made the effort to take the stairs rather than the lift (that's 'elevator' for you friends in the USA).

When they are such beautiful stairs as these, its hard not to. Mostly I do it for the pleasure of the stairs, and for my health, but it also seemed the obvious sustainable choice.

However, when I sat down to research it I discovered that lifts use hardly any electricity to operate. This is completely counter-intuitive to me: great big metal boxes being lifted many metres straight up through the air by electric power... surely that must guzzle energy? It seems, on account of the system of counterweights involved, not really. It probably uses more energy to keep the lift air-conditioned with a light on and back-lit buttons than it takes to actually lift me three floors to the office.

I use more energy to make my cup of tea when I reach the office than I would have used to get there in the lift.

So for once I am saying to you:  This thing I've chosen to do? It doesn't make much difference to the environment; don't feel remotely guilty if you're not doing it too.

That said,  I still feel better taking the stairs.

Initial Time: To climb three flights of stairs generally takes me about half a minute longer than if I walked straight into the lift. If I have to wait for the lift, the time is not much different and the stairs can even be quicker.

Initial Cost: Zero (although it uses more of my energy)

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Same as above each time.

Impact: 

There are many factors determining exactly how much energy a lift uses, but calculations on this reputable-looking blog put it at roughly 0.0015kWh per floor. That would mean I use 0.009kWh per day if I use the lift (I don't leave the office much once I'm there). Over the course of the three-month contract I'm currently completing, in a third-floor office accessed by the gorgeous 109-year old timber staircase shown above, I will have saved 0.342kWh of electricity - a grand total of 280g (yes grams, not kilograms) of CO2. Even if these calculations are wildly low, its in no way a substantial saving.

Of course, there is the issue of embodied energy in the lift, as well as air-conditioning, lighting and computer systems to run the lift, which are questions when considering whether to put in a lift at all, but on balance having universal access to all levels of a building without enormous ramps probably outweighs these concerns, and this energy is used whether I get in the lift or not.

Climbing stairs uses approximately 0.17 calories per stair going up and 0.05 per stair going down (depending on your weight and how fast you climb - slower uses more!) so my daily climb uses about 15.5 calories up and 4.5 down. I'm not a very fit individual, so it is definitely worth me using those calories each day.

The other stairs I climb regularly in the course of my work. If you recognise them and value this place, you might consider popping a letter to your MP about funding cuts...

Links:

One Two Three blogs or articles about the energy savings (or not) of taking the stairs (the last one has quite a detailed calculator, but you need to know a bit of technical detail about your favourite lift)

A mug's guide to how a lift works.

Fun facts about stair climbing -  but don't believe their 'fact' about taking the stairs saving 0.3-0.6kg of CO2 per day; I can't find any data to support this claim.

Bring a plate

I am two days into a three day conference that includes lunch and snacks, with disposable plates and cups and cutlery.

So today I took my own.

Which is such a simple thing that this is going to be my shortest blog post ever.

Initial Time: two minutes to pack, two minutes to clean, two minutes to unpack at home.

Initial Cost: zero.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: six minutes again tomorrow.

Impact: I saved two plates, two forks, two styrofoam cups and two plastic water cups from the bin. Not a big contribution, I know, but something. I'm hopeful that my brought-from-home items maybe made one or two people at least notice that they were chucking stuff away after a single use.

Australians throw away about 2.7 million disposable cups a day - nearly 1 billion each year (part of 500 billion annually world-wide). I couldn't find a figure for plates and cutlery. This would be lower amount, as plates in particular are not used for take-away food at the rate that disposable coffee-cups are used for take-away coffee, but even so I can't imagine its a small number.

Image by Max Temkin at Adbusters.

I say tomato

This month we finally bit the bullet and had a go at improving the ethics of our preserved tomato consumption.

I have known for quite a while that there are major ethical concerns about tinned and bottled tomatoes but doing anything about it just seemed too hard. Cheap preserved tomatoes are so easy to grab off the bargain shelf! But they are also almost always imported, with concerns about the working conditions of tomato pickers in other countries. It is ridiculous that we don't eat our own tomatoes: Australia has the ideal tomato-growing climate, with the things even surviving as weeds in abandoned gardens.

So after a week of unseasonal rain here in late January, Tyson was on the look-out at the farmers markets for over-ripe, excess or slightly damaged produce being sold off in bulk, and came home with a large box of very ripe tomatoes ready to bottle. (He also brought home peaches for jam, so it was a busy weekend!)

Our method was: Wash and quarter tomatoes (ends removed).

Squash tomatoes into oven-sterilised bottles with wooden spoon, removed air bubbles. Add a teaspoon of lemon juice to cover the top of each bottle before putting the lid on.

water level was much closer to the lid prior to boiling

Place bottles in water not quite up to their lids and boil for about an hour.

The bottles seal themselves as they cool. It was a very hot weekend, so we boiled them fairly late in the evening and sat them outside to cool so their heat wasn't added to our house.

We forgot to weigh the tomatoes, but think it was about 12-14kg of fruit. We ended up with 23 bottles of tomatoes. This should see us through about six months (although as Australians each consume on average 25kg of processed tomatoes a year, perhaps I have over-estimated how long they will last us!). 

The second part of our tomato commitment, therefore, is to buy Australian when our home-processed stores run out.

Initial Time: two hours

Initial Cost: $14 for one large box of tomatoes

Ongoing time or cost commitment: approximately the same again, once a year; about 50c more per tin of tomatoes once our home supplies run out and we are buying Australian (perhaps $26 more in a year?)

Impact: 

Almost 80% of processed tomatoes purchased in Australia are imported, mostly from Italy. Italy is a journey of around 9,200 nautical miles from Perth (17,000km), taking 39 days at sea. That is a lot of food miles. Despite apparent improvements in recent years, workers' conditions are not as well protected in Italy as in Australia and there are many documented instances of tomato workers, many of whom are African migrants and often without valid work visas, being treated not much better than slaves. Quality standards for farms and processing plants are also less rigorous in Italy than in Australia. 

The import from Italy has over the last decade nearly destroyed the Australian tomato industry. Several processing plants have closed (eg Heinz, Rosella). Due to the high Australian dollar, oversupply in Italy, and European Union subsidies to tomato farmers, it was possible for Italian growers to sell tomatoes to Australia at less than their own production cost. This is called 'dumping' and is actually illegal. About 18 months ago an inquiry finally blew the whistle on the practice, and last year the government established tariffs to stop it. As a result we are probably not going see as many 59c tins of tomatoes in the grocery aisles (and should be grateful, not grumpy, about this). Woolworths responded in August 2014 by signing a five-year deal with SPC Ardmona to source Australian tomatoes for their store-brand tomato lines. SPC is now looking to double the size of its tomato processing plant, which two years ago was under threat of closure. But for this hopeful news to become a good outcome, Australians need to abandon our baseless infatuation with 'Italian tomatoes' as a synonym for value and quality, and support Australian growers and producers.

Supporting Australian food producers is not charity. It is in MY best interests to have a robust domestic food industry. It is in MY best interests to have a healthy local economy with plenty of rural and manufacturing employment opportunities. For the reasons outlined above, and drought in tomato-growing regions of Australia for most of the years of this century, Australian tomatoes are generally more expensive. This is despite Australian growers being literally twice as efficient as their Italian competitors in how many tonnes of tomatoes they produce per hectare (150 tonnes compared with 74 tonnes). I am prepared to pay a little more for my tomatoes to support food security and Australian economies. Tomato farmers at present make about 4-5c profit on each 400g tin of tomatoes sold ($100-$125 per tonne after production costs) which is a pretty slight margin to be living on. At the bottom of this post is a bit more information about how to identify Australian tomato products.

So after all those reasons to support Australian producers, why are we bottling our own? Several reasons:

- 'Local' is a bit of a stretch for us here in Perth. The three surviving Australian tomato processing plants are in Echuca and Shepparton Victoria and Jerilderie NSW - at least 3,300km from me (Echuca). West Australians grow tomatoes too, and I would like to buy their produce when I can, which means buying it fresh from our local farmers' markets. (Supermarket tomatoes are not necessarily fresh or local: check out this short video from Local Harvest).

- The biggest Australian producer, and the one it is easiest to find on supermarket shelves, is SPC-Ardmona (based at Shepparton - the 'S' of 'SPC'). SPC-Ardmona is owned by Coca Cola, a company with boycott calls on it due to its involvement in torture and murder of union leaders in Latin America (who were protesting terrible Coca Cola work conditions) and destruction of water supplies for communities in India, as well as varied complaints in many other countries. I want to support Australian producers but I don't want to support Coca Cola, so I am balancing out buying some SPC with doing my own bottling.

- The amount of packaging used in commercial products leads me to want to do my own processing at home - even if much of the packaging for tomatoes is recyclable, not all of it is, and it still carries the energy use of producing and transporting that packaging. The jars we uses were saved from shop-bought tomato products and will be used many times over.

- Although tomato farmers pay their picking contractors appropriate wages, it is not always clear that the contractors pass a fair wage on to the individual pickers who, in Australia as overseas, are often migrants, minorities, non-English speakers, etc, who don't always have the ability to speak out if they are not being treated fairly.

total waste from our box of tomatoes: approx 1kg of ends and two bad fruit

- Buying bulk over-ripe fruit saves food from going to waste. It also means we are bottling the tomatoes in season, at the peak of their flavour, which is not always the case for commercial products. We have the option to use organic produce (although on this occasion we did not) and we know exactly what goes into the jars and don't put any chemicals or additives in (like the mysterious 'thickening agent' in one brand of tinned tomatoes on our shelf).

- Its fun! Really. Eva and I had a lovely afternoon together working on the tomatoes. She insisted on being involved for the entire process, long after I expected she would get bored. She loved getting thoroughly tactile with juicy, squashy fruit. She enjoyed the challenge of getting as many chunks of tomato into each jar as possible, and removing all the air bubbles. She is learning kitchen skills, like handling a sharp knife, as well as a sense that all manner of challenges are very possible to achieve. Being involved in processing our own food also teaches our children where their food comes from and, in my opinion, gives them a greater appreciation of what comes out of packages.

Links: 

The best article I read on the tomato industry (although note this is from May 2012, before the inquiry into dumping and the Woolworths deal, so things were looking very grim at the time)

Findings of the inquiry into Dumping  (Dec 2013 draft; April 2014 final)

A more readable analysis of these findings

About Woolworth's deal with SCP-Ardmona (August 2014)

Local Harvest - Melbourne-based group allowing you to enter your postcode and find 'local food' options near to you

A current social media campaign called 'No farmers No food' captures something of my reasons for trying to support Australian food growers and producers. (They also have plenty of catchy, shareable graphics to pass around)

How to identify Australian tomatoes:

Australia's three tomato processors are:

SPC-Ardmona, based at Shepparton Victoria; owned by Coca Coal Amartil. Tomato products are mostly branded 'SPC', but SPC also supplies to some other companies, such as Woolworths (but not all Woolworths tomatoes are guaranteed to be from SPC).

Kagome, at Echuca Victoria; a subsidiary of the Japanese tomato company of the same name. Kagome claims to be 'Australia's largest grower, harvester and processor of tomatoes'. They only sell wholesale to other producers, so you won't find anything on the shelf labelled 'Kagome'. Their website http://kagomeechuca.com/ has a graphic at the bottom showing specific products that are 100% Australian tomatoes.

Billabong from Jerilderie NSW, a family business who claim to be 'Australia's ONLY wholly owned, made, and grown cannery'. Their products are branded 'Billabong Produce'. I am investigating whether they can be obtained in Western Australia (check comments for updates).

Brands that are using 100% Austalian tomatoes (mostly supplied by Kagome):

MON

SPC

Beerenberg

Maggie Beer

Sabrands (Rosella)

HJ Chapmans (POPs Sauce)

Edlyn (Wood relishes)

Della Rosa Foods (pizza manufacturer)
Masterfoods 100% Australian Grown Ketchup
Dolmio Pasta Sauce from 100% Australian Tomatoes

Brands that use Australian tomatoes but sometimes blend with imported stock (depending on availability):

Simplot (Leggos)

Mars (Masterfoods Ketchup, Dolmio)

Symingtons (5 Brothers, Raguletto)

General Mills (Latina Fresh Pasta, Old El Paso)

Cerebos (White Crow, Fountain)

Campbells

Vesco 
Heinz

There may be others this list has missed, so its always worth checking with the supplier. Enjoy your tomatoes!

Extractor fans, security screens and other passive cooling tricks

The key to passive cooling is ensuring the cool[er] evening/morning air gets into the house, while the hot day time air is kept out.

We often find that by about an hour after sunset the house is warmer inside than out. Our trick for getting the warm air out and the cool air in is: Extractor Fans. They are designed to remove steam and smells, but they are also brilliant for removing hot air.

 

We generally run them for a couple of hours at night, turn them off while we're all asleep (they are not designed to run for twelve hours at a time) then pop them on again in the morning around dawn if the house is still too warm. We also line up our pedestal fans so that they assist the overnight breeze (generally easterly in summer here).

If you've followed this blog even a little you would know that we also shade, shade, shade the house in summer. [If you're new to the blog, have a look at these posts on shading: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8] However, its two years since I last wrote about shading so here we go again with some more ideas we've been trying:

- pillows between glass and blinds in the lounge room window (above - NE window, guarded by Eva's scarecrow)

 - cardboard boxes between glass and blinds in the office window (NE window)

- large cardboard tray from a flat-pack furniture item, and a pile of polystyrene cooler boxes, to add insulation to the laundry door - nearly four square metres of glass that gets afternoon sun in summer (SW facing). It can only partially be shaded from the outside, given that it is a door so is not suitable for shading that can't easily be pushed aside.

- a mattress across the window in the children's bedroom (SE window).

- a cot mattress and more flat-pack boxes between glass and blinds in the bathroom (SE window)

- a former painting canvas between glass and blinds in the other bathroom (NE window). Neither bathroom has eaves, so shading these windows in other ways is particularly crucial.

All these shades are removed at night to let the night air in and the day's warmth out. This is possible because most of our windows have security screens. If we were not renters we would fit security screens to the two main living room areas immediately, as not being able to leave them wide open all night significantly hampers our overnight cooling.

After two weeks of lovely cool holiday in Victoria, we last week landed back into the peak of Perth summer. Its hot here! The temperature dipped below 20°C this morning, briefly, for the first time in six days, and maximums have been between 33°C and 40°C for a week, with a similar week forecast ahead. So far we have run our airconditioner for about five hours, on one night when it was not forecast to cool down and the air outside as full of bushfire smoke. Twice in the past ten days guests have commented on how cool our house feels, even noting that one room felt like the airconditioner was on (this at a time it was around 31°C outside).

Initial Time: All the additional shades above are daily measures that we only put up on the hottest days, and require about five minutes at each end of the day to put up and pull down. Extractor fans take seconds to flick on and off; pedestal fans take a minute or two to get into place where they are most effective for night times.

Initial Cost: Zero.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: As above.

Impact: An extractor fan uses around 25 Watts to run. We run three, for about five hours in total: 375Wh per night (about one third of a 'unit' in our system). 

Pedestal fans use around 40-50 Watts. We run four, all night, a total of around 1440-1800Wh. However, we also run them with the airconditioner if its on, so that we can direct the cool air up the passage and into the bedroom, due to the awkward placement of the airconditioner unit in our living/kitchen area.

Our airconditioner uses (roughly) between 1.5 and 2kWh (units of energy) per hour, depending on what temperature we set it to, what the temperature is outside, what the temperature is inside, etc. The night this week when we didn't open up the house, we ran the airconditioner for five hours (and pedestal fans for about twelve hours) to bring the inside temperature down to a bearable level ready for the next hot day - that is, to achieve the same effect that running fans and opening the house usually manages. Overnight cooling by airconditioner (and fans), then, uses about 9-12kWh per day, while overnight cooling by using the evening breeze assisted by fans uses around 1.8-2.2kWh.