Post-Christmas details

Ok, I said I wasn’t going to post until after the New Year, but I wanted to report back on how greening my Christmas went.

• I didn’t have many decorations, but am working on some homemade ones for next year.
• I managed to make all my gift wrappings green: mostly I re-used gift bags, paper and ribbon, and bought a small amount of wrapping made from recycled paper.
• I completely forgot to write Christmas cards, but no-one noticed
• I bought some fairly good gifts: Sigg bottles and organic toys for the kids; a wind-up LED torch for my dad; a pashmina for my mum (not particularly environmental, but long-lasting and multi-purpose); and a plant for a good friend.

I hosted a Christmas lunch for my whole family, and was very happy with the results. Everyone have a good time, and the meal was also pretty eco-friendly. We had local ham and free-range chicken, a salad made mostly from local and organic vegetables (plus some tinned lentils), home-made icecream and sorbet using mostly local ingredients, and a fruit salad that wasn’t entirely local, but was at least fully Australian. By preparing a lot of the food ahead of time, we were very relaxed and got to spend time with our family rather than in the kitchen. We used real cutlery, napkins and compostable plates rather than plastic throw-aways. And we had ice in buckets and eskies rather than loading up a second fridge for drinks.

Now we’ve got the clean-up to deal with: leftover food and wrapping paper!

Leftovers can be a huge source of waste over Christmas – people want to feed everyone, but not everyone is hungry in such hot weather! So a lot of food gets thrown out, which is not only a waste of resources, but also adds to landfill. We managed to compost most of our food scraps, although some helpful guests cleared their own plates before we could let them know about the compost. And I’ll definitely be looking for ideas on how to store and use leftovers: the UK site Love Food, Hate Waste has some great tips and recipes.

I managed to salvage some wrapping paper and some pretty ribbons to be re-used during the year. I targeted people who open their presents carefully, rather than those who tear it off with gleeful abandon the way I do! I’ll have to learn to do better with my own wrappings next time. The rest of the paper went into the compost and the recycling bin – I encouraged people to leave their trash with me rather than politely take it home, since I know I’ll dispose of it responsibly

How did you go with your Christmas? If you managed to do things greener than you normally would, or had any problems making greener choices, let me know in the comments.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks to all my readers this year – I hope you all have a merry Christmas, with lots of time with the people you care about, and not too much stress.

I’m taking this week off from posting, but will be back after that with my New Year’s Green Resolutions and much more.

Smart and Green tips for a grassroots campaign

Yesterday Eloise Dortch told us about the Smart and Green campaign she started with Jasmine Horobin to try to prevent the price rise for renewable electricity from major WA supplier, Synergy. Today she’s sharing her tips on how to create a grassroots campaign, and how to deal with the media. Thanks to Eloise and Jasmine, you can get started campaigning on an environmental issue you care about.

Jasmine and Eloise’s tips for a grassroots campaign

• Work with a partner – someone to bounce ideas off and share some of the work, frustrations and triumphs! Find someone you ‘gel’ with.
• Keep an eye out for personal development opportunities while you’re doing it. The contacts you make now could be future employers and colleagues. The campaign could be something you add to your resume.
• Pace yourself – beware of burnout. A campaign will swallow lots of time, but if you are enjoying the process, this will not be a bad thing.
• Welcome and seek input – but also feel comfortable about rejecting unhelpful advice and unsuitable suggestions.
• Spend time to think about the focus of your campaign during the initial research period. Time spent on this will help you navigate uncertainty later.
• Be adaptive. As issues progress, think about different ways to achieve the same goal.
• Remember Perth is a small place. Be respectful to all the people you deal with. Ensure your credibility – be transparent, reference your data, identify yourselves and your sources (provided they have agreed to it!).
• Provide feasible solutions to the people whose behaviour you are trying to change.
• Be bold, aim high – ask to see the Minister/Premier/managing director. These people have the most influence and decision-making power. Don’t under-estimate the value of your ideas and opinions.
• Be opportunistic. If you know someone in high places, or get a chance to buttonhole someone important, take it. Keep an eye out for news stories that may be relevant to your campaign and see if the journalist is interested in talking to you.
• Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions. Just go and ask the person who will be sure to know the answer and keep asking until you are sure you understand the issues.
• If a student, look for opportunities to combine a campaign with your coursework; assignment requirements are sometimes flexible.
• Enjoy the process – you will gain an amazing amount of contacts, knowledge and confidence in a short space of time. Plus you might just save the world!

Media tips

Eloise was a reporter for The West Australian for six years in addition for working for several community and special interest publications. Here are her thoughts if you decide to use media to highlight your campaign. Continue reading »

Smart and Green: interview with Eloise Dortch

A while back I mentioned the Smart and Green campaign against the increased price of buying renewable electricity in WA from Synergy. The price had risen to 18.4 cents per kilowatt hour compared to only 13.94c/kwh for energy from coal and gas plants. Eloise Dortch and Jasmine Horobin organised a letter-writing campaign, arranged for Synergy’s customers to be interviewed in local papers, and met with Synergy to see if they could stop the price increase. As it turned out, the price rise had to stay, but the campaign has certainly raised the profile of renewable power issues in WA. I’ve never started my own campaign before, and asked Eloise more about it.

Why did you decide to start the Smart and Green campaign? Had you done anything like this before?

No, I’d never done anything like this before. While working as a newspaper reporter, I had always steered clear of ‘showing my colours’ as someone having strong opinions on any one issue. That was simply a practical thing to do since I was always interviewing people from various sides of an issue. Since my teens I had been involved in passive forms of activism, if that makes sense, such as joining the odd protest march, donating or becoming a member of various ‘green’ organisations and signing petitions.

Jasmine and I decided to start the campaign because we were both really cross about the issue. Synergy’s NaturalPower customers were already paying more to buy renewable electricity at a time when conventional coal-fired electricity in WA was clearly under-priced. Since the price of conventional electricity for small business and households in WA is to remain capped until 2009 it seemed insane and completely regressive in terms of action on climate change that only NaturalPower and SmartPower were experiencing a price hike based on inflation.

How did you decide on your tactics?

This was a process of evolution. Very early on, Jasmine and I recognised the need to be transparent and open in our dealings with anyone who came into contact with our campaign. An initial step was to see if any other group planned to take action and to see whether we could add value to their activities or whether we would be doubling up. We also talked to just about everyone we could think of who understood WA electricity policy or could add to our understanding of the issues. Although the two of us had previously worked on an energy policy document for WA as part of a university assignment, there was still aspects of the WA electricity industry we had trouble getting our heads around. So we went to conferences, made a lot of phone calls and met a lot of people. We found most people were deeply annoyed about the decision but no one was taking action on it.

The next step was to write proforma letters to be sent to Synergy’s managing director and to State MPs, to test the instructions we developed for emailing these and then to write the covering email that would be sent to all the people we hoped would join our campaign. We double-checked and tested this a few times by forwarding it to different email accounts in our names. Having two heads for all of this helped! We then sent out the first wave of emails to friends and family, waited a few days to see if we had stuffed up in anyway and then began expanding the network of people we emailed. As we thought of more contacts, we kept emailing it out.

We asked people to cc the proforma letters they sent to Synergy and their MPs to a special ‘SmartandGreen’ email account we had set up so that we could keep track of the rate of participation. We also invited people to send us their feedback. Some people were critical of our campaign because they said it would put more people off buying ‘green’ electricity. We responded to each email with our thoughts about such issues.

What kind of response did you get from the public, and from Synergy?

Synergy responded pretty quickly – by the end of the campaign in October/November – its managing director, Jim Mitchell, had received 48 emails from our campaign direct to his email in-box. Synergy’s head of corporate relations, Andrew Gaspar, developed a standard letter which Synergy sent to the campaign participants – however many people, of their own accord replied to this, thus further engaging Synergy on the issue. Meanwhile, certain MPs, most of whom happened to be Labor and thus in Government, started to receive multiple letters from their constituents and we were copied in on their responses which were mainly promises to investigate the matter. In total, 36 letters were sent to 13 MPs that we know of.

Continue reading »

UN climate change conference in Bali

I’m back! And it was lovely to come home to the news that Australia has (finally) ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and that the US was unsuccessful in trying to derail the negotiations in Bali.

So what exactly was agreed to in Bali?

• to halve emissions by 2050
• to negotiate a binding set of short-term targets in 2009
• to help developing nations with reducing their emissions and adapting to changes

The US was being difficult throughout the process, and managed to get references to the IPCC and the science removed from the documents. But at the last minute they decided to let everyone have their agreement, after everyone else in the world made it clear that they’d be outcasts if they didn’t.

The general feeling is that the US will continue to stand in the way of negotiations until President Bush is gone in 2008 (they have 2-term limits over there), and after that we’ll all be able to get on with things. This is pretty depressing, because the situation is incredibly urgent. What I don’t understand is why the US can have any impact at all – they haven’t ratified the agreement, so why do they get a say in the final Bali conference documents?

Still, it would be great to see the same grassroots environmental action in the US that put environmental issues on the table during the Australian election. Grist.org has an article about how we got climate change to be talked about here, and what would need to happen in the US for the same result.

At any rate, Australia now has to work out what our precise options are. When Rudd became opposition leader, he commissioned the Garnaut report. It’s a review of the economic impact of dealing with climate change, and the costs of possible strategies we can use. In theory, it should be similar to the Stern report, only specifically for Australia.

The only problem is that the Garnaut report isn’t due until September next year. I’d like to see some action sooner, but I’d also like our action to be fully informed (rather than the back-of-a-Weeties-packet kind of research Howard did). So it looks like we’ll be waiting a while for specific targets to be announced. I’ll be campaigning for some actions to be taken before then – such as efficiency measures for households and businesses, which have an economic benefit no matter what our final targets are.