Big foot

It turns out that I might be ....the weakest link in my household. We were taking a bit of an audit of electricity usage and as it happens, my heater uses *a lot* of our household electricity. I was a bit confronted by this information, as I think of myself as having a relatively light ecological footprint. I am a vegetarian, for crying out loud! I compost, grow stuff, refuse plastic bags, use public transport where possible and never use a clothes dryer. (Please don't get me started on people who use dryers!!). Surely all that counts for something?

But this situation I find myself in has caused me to reflect on how easy it is to become holier than thou on one aspect of our ecological footprint while ignoring other less comfortable areas.I also wonder whether I am perhaps focusing too much on low impact lifestyle changes and too little on the areas of greatest impact. So I decided to find out for myself which lifestyle choices can make the biggest difference to the environment. Thanks to the World Wildlife Fund online calculator, I have been informed that I am indeed a big foot - I'm using the equivalent of 1.7 planets or almost double my share. The average Australian uses the equivalent of 3 planets.

My ecological footprint results

So, what else did I discover? One of my biggest areas of impact is food. Initially I was surprised. A UN study entitled "Livestock's Long Shadow", indicates that eating meat is the number one consumer cause of global warming, above all types of transport combined. And according to the "What if" section below, if every Australian reduced the amount of animal products they consumed, we could reduce our ecological footprint by 18 million hectares! Yet, food is one of my biggest percentage items. I guess even a vegetarian diet takes a lot of agricultural land. Apart from going vegan or just eating less, which is probably not a bad idea, I can reduce the amount of packaged and imported foods that I consume. If Australians were to reduce the amount of packaging they use, we could reduce our footprint by 14 million global hectares!

My other big area was services. It seems that I am at the same time good (high use of public transport and recycling services), bad (high use of waste services, packaging, and possibly transport related to imported food) and confused (high electricity usage - but if it's renewable is it okay to use more?) which makes it hard to assess whether having a high percentage on the services slice of the pie is a good thing or not. However, given that the amount of land I use for energy is so high, that is one area I can definitely improve upon. If more Australians reduced their electricity usage through more efficient appliances, we could reduce our footprint by 2 million global hectares. If more Australians had solar panels (thereby reducing their *bad* electricity usage down to zero) we could reduce our footprint by 9 million global hectares.

Interestingly, although I travel by plane a lot for work, mobility was not my worst area. The fact that I mainly travel in Sydney by foot, bike, and bus apparently compensates for all the flying I do. Apparently if the average Australian reduced their car usage and increased their use of public transport, we could reduce our footprint by 9 million global hectares. Flights do contribute to 1 million of Australia's global hectares, however, so it's something I need to think seriously about.

Shelter was my smallest slice of the pie, possibly due to the fact that I live in a modest sized house with four others. We can share things that take up a lot of energy like a fridge and also be part of a food co-op. Interestingly, there were not any questions about how many children I have and whether the people I lived with were the result of my own procreation or somebody else's. I felt that should have been asked. An article entitled "The 5 most important things you can do for the environment" lists having fewer or no children as the number one thing we can do. While I take off my hat to those who choose not to have children for the sake of the environment, it's nice to know that my situation (childless, as one friend so delicately put it) lightens my impact somewhat. I'd like to know how many global hectares I'm saving through this sacrifice on everyone else's behalf!!

Interesting to note which areas can have the biggest impact

So while I'm still the weakest link, I probably won't be voted out of the house. They are a very reasonable bunch! But there's plenty of room for improvement. One day I might just have a job where I travel less, reduce my waste and packaging even more, eat vegan and local, and yes, be warm in winter because of my amazingly insulated green house that is heated using passive solar and boosted by as much solar energy to power that heater as I care to use! Ahhh! But until then, I plan to rug up, or take the advice of the student residence in Switzerland when the heating system broke down - go hug a flatmate! 

A tale of two share houses

some of the plants

Once upon a time there was a girl who lived in a small room in a large house in the heart of town. She came with a rather large collection of miniature elephants, her eclectic library of books, her edible plants, a worm farm and photos from travels around the world. The girl liked when the sun came streaming into the lounge room and spent her at-home time pottering in the garden, reading in the sun or watching her favourite shows with any willing flatmates. The house was an easy bus ride to work. Life was pretty good. Not perfect, but pretty good.

But then one day, almost out of nowhere, a cloud descended over the house. It was a cloud of mistrust, miscommunication and misunderstanding. Some people were not talking to others and there was resentment about borrowing of cars and parties and loud early morning blending. Soon there was so much unhappiness that the girl spent all of her time in her room or away from the house completely. Soon enough she started to think about what she really wanted in a home and realised it wasn't all this bitterness and bother, so she set off in search of a new home. It would be a homely place, she thought, somewhere that her quirks were accepted and her values shared. She dreamed of a place that welcomed her elephants and worms, where others shared her concern for treading lightly on the earth and where the atmosphere was welcoming to friends and family who might drop by. If it happened to have a bath, that would also be a good thing. 

The good luck elephant

As she pursued her search, the elephants stood by, with their trunks up in hopeful anticipation. Kind people offered her suggestions of households that they'd heard about, and she dutifully checked them all out.  But none was quite right. Some were too far away. Others didn't have the right "vibe" and some didn't feel that the girl would be a good fit for them. She started to feel a little despondent.

Then, when she was least expecting it, and thinking about something completely different, a new acquaintance mentioned she was looking for a person to complete a new household. They were mostly vegetarian, had a beautiful garden, liked to welcome friends to the house and best of all - they not only had a bath, but a spa bath with a duck's head for a spout and peacocks strutting all over the bathroom tiles! So the girl moved in, and they all lived happily ever after!

Getting totally sustainable, man

This weekend was pretty inspiring for me. Sunday was sustainable house day all around Australia. A whole bunch of houses that had either been retrofitted with sustainable design or designed from scratch were open to the public. We managed to slot in to our busy schedule two inner west houses and it was pretty awesome to see what they had achieved. One had built an entirely new living structure out of recycled timbers factoring in north facing windows with deciduous trees to provide shade in summer and allow direct sun in winter. The other had actually added windows to a north facing wall that had no windows previously to increase light and warmth. It's quite surprising that passive solar design has only recently become a focus in a land of so much sun.

This outing confirmed for me just how important it is to choose or design a dwelling with warm, sun-lit living areas. Of course, if you're renting as we are, then there's a limited amount of changes you can make to your abode. But, don't give up, as I'm learning that there is still an aweful lot you can do. For example, we hardly need the lights on because of the natural light coming in to our apartment. We also manage to "bucket" that first 30 seconds of cold water before the shower heats up, and that's enough to feed our small balcony garden, which incidently does provide us with a few vegies and herbs. We do wonder whether our climbing peas and beans will one day meet with the disapproval of the body corporate, but it's our small rebellion against the "not items hanging on the balcony" rule.

Talking of our own vegies, on Saturday morning Pete and I went to a free No Dig Gardening workshop and learnt all about the correct way to prepare a vegie garden bed, and about getting the right balance of carbon and nitrogen in the soil. At the end of the workshop everyone got to take home a new little garden with its own seedlings. We are now the proud owners of a bucket containing silverbeet and asian greens. We got so inspired that we retrofitted an existing pot with a new summer crop based upon no dig principles. The purple flower, which my mum gave me for colour, isn't coping with the wind in this photo, or perhaps it is just dancing with joy!

A winter growth spurt

Adolescence can be a painful time. While everyone else's voices go down an octive practically overnight, the late developers are still singing boy soprano. Well, that's what it's been like for my broccoli.

I was visiting a friend's house the other day when reality hit. There it was in her garden - an early flowering broccoli plant - sitting there mocking me. "Oh, that" my friend said casually, "it's been like that for weeks". It's not fair. For 4 months I had been patiently watching and watering my plants with no results.

I am sure that for the parent of any slow-developing teenager, there is the temptation to imagine the worst. I began to despair that they would ever reach maturity. I wondered whether I had deprived them of sun, or whether my natural worm wee fertiliser was not enough. What had we done to deserve this?

Then, one day when I had almost given up all hope, my broccoli plants began to flower - all of their own accord. Of course, they still have a bit more growing to do, but I'm pleased to say that my gardening confidence has had it's own little growth spurt too. After all, there's nothing wrong with being a late bloomer, is there?

Creating your own worm community

One of the things I decided to do while Pete was away was to build my own worm farm, or rather - my own worm community. While I am very grateful that there are two large compost bins and two worm farms within our unit block, I had become weary of carrying my compost downstairs every week or so, and then making an additional trip downstairs to my neighbour's worm farm to collect the all-important worm wee for my garden. It was time to get my own worms.
Not satisfied with buying a plastic box complete with its own worms, I had decided to put two of my white styrofoam boxes to good use and make my own. Having helped my brother set up his worm farm not long ago, I felt that this was a project I could manage. There's lots of information on the web about worm farms, but if you're interested, here's how I did it:

Step 1: Doing the research. I enrolled in a free evening course on worm farming through my local council (The Watershed in Newtown). This was completely unexpected, as while I was googling instructions I happened to find out about this course on the same day, and it was really informative. They tell you what worms eat and don't eat, how to care for them, and how long before you can expect to be harvesting worm wee. Then you all crowd around a worm farm and see how it workds. This was when I began to see the worms as real animals, rather than slightly squirmy things.

Step 2: Collecting all the materials. I already had two styrofoam boxes (which we picked up free from the supermarket), and I also collected a milk crate to stand it on (a few bricks will do the trick) a tap (constructed from a small bottle with a long narrow neck), some newspaper, soil, worker's tape, a skewer (or anything to pierce small holes) and some worms (I took my worms from the neighbour's worm farm, but ideally you need about 1,000 of them which you can buy online or from the Watershed).


Step 3: Construction begins. I chose one box to be the ground floor box and the other to be the first floor box. The ground floor box is where the worm wee will collect. The first floor box is their playground. I punched small 1mm holes about 1cm apart in the bottom and in the lid of the first floor box for ventilation, then one larger hole (about the size of the bottle neck) in the ground floor box for the tap and tape the tap in securely so that no water can escape. I then wrote "Aletia's Worm Community" in bright colours on the box, because I wanted it to be a happy place where the worms were valued and comfortable.

Step 4: Preparing the bed. I lined the first floor box with shredded wet newspaper, followed by soil up to a height of about 10cm (or a third of the box). Then I placed the worms on this bedding. When they were ready for bed, I tucked them in. (No, seriously, you have to put about 5-10 layers of wet newspaper as a blanket over the whole bed, as worms don't like sunlight.) It was suggested to me that I wait 2 days before giving them any food, as the newspaper provides them with nutrients while they settle in, but I gave them a few bits of food and then increased it a few days later.

Now they're on a full diet, and I have even noticed baby worms appearing. It is such a delight! I just hope I don't smother them too much - I must let them grow up without interferring in their development.

Green thumb?

The women in my family are gardeners. My grandmother's garden was every child's heaven, with pickable fruit, little hideyholes, a mini-train track, and a table and chairs made out of a dead tree trunk. When my grandmother died, my mother took up the habit, and our backyard slowly morphed from a potential cricket ground to an oasis of calm.

With the financial market the way it is and of course being a proponent of a healthy vegetarian diet, it seems natural that I follow in the steps of my foremothers and try my hand (or rather, my thumb) at growing my own greens. Sadly, I am somewhat limited by living in a unit, but nevertheless I have set my balcony up with a few herbs and small vegetables, and excitedly check them each day. I'm sure that my ancestors are watching as I overwater the Aloe Vera, prune the mint out of existence and, most embarassing of all, fail to realise that it's normal for Basil to die over winter. I quietly hope that I inherited the green thumb, and it's just taking a while to form.

There's something so satisfying about "just ducking out for some lettuce" (or tomatoes or basil or mint or parsley or rosemary or coriandar or .... hopefully snowpeas) without leaving home. Better still is knowing that it's fresh, there's no pesticides, nobody died harvesting it, and no carbon emissions were used to transport it to me. Let's give kitchen gardening the green thumbs up!

Photos: my mother in her garden (right) and me in mine

Last weeks in Sydney

A friend recently commented that preparing for living or travelling overseas in your late twenties is very different to doing the same thing in your early twenties. I definately agree. When I was planning a year's working holiday in Britain and travel in Europe at the age of 21, it was the end of an era, and I was out to find myself. I had nothing to lose. Now, as I approach the age of 30, I know what I want from this experience, I am a bit clearer about who I am, and I am leaving much more behind. Quite a few friends have babies that will grow up while I'm gone, my grandfathers are not as young as they once were, and my partner, Pete, has kindly agreed to revolve the next year of his life around Europe and my dream of working for the UN. Being away from him is definately going to be tough.

The past few weeks have been filled with scanning the second hand shops and markets for cheap woollies, driving my flatmates crazy by umming and ahhring about the right size for my new pair of walking boots, booking flights and train trips, packing my life into boxes (again) and taking the opportunity to dispose of even more clothes, books and kitchen utensils! Charlie the visiting cat is sadly missed - he ran under a car a few weeks ago. My tomato plants have also died, signalling the onslaught of winter and coinciding sadly with my departure. I will miss my flatmates and our vegetarian household (see photo). The free yoga classes I get as a volunteer are definately a welcome relief as I begin to stress about those silly little details....including the thesis that won't go away!!

I promised myself that I wouldn't travel overseas again without a purpose. With air travel costing the earth (literally), I wanted to only go overseas if I thought I was contributing something worthwhile, and if I was experiencing a city as a resident or at least a visitor in somebody's home rather than a tourist simply hanging out with other foreigners in hostels or hotels that don't reflect the true "vibe" of the place. So a job at the United Nations working on issues of disarmament fits the bill, I think. I will try to be a bit Swiss for a year. I'm looking forward to swiss chocolate, fondu, cycling to work (can you believe that I have already been offered a bike?), French alps, catching up with old friends in Europe and hopefully even a trip to Morocco, staying with local people and learning a bit about the culture there.