Want to win a prize? Tell me about hemp…

Hemp fabric is one of those things that’s associated with tie-dye and hippies, because it’s known to be eco-friendly but people rarely see it used well. Which is a shame, because as well as being useful and eco-friendly, it can be made into things just as beautiful as we see made with water-guzzling, pesticide-laden cotton.

Although you can grow cotton organically, which is great, it does take a lot of work. Hemp is naturally ahead of the game:

• the plants grow too close together to allow for weeds, so no herbicide needed;
• insects prefer other crops so it needs fewer pesticides;
• and it doesn’t need nearly as much water to grow (which is great for Australia).

Hemp producers can go organic without much extra effort at all.

I’ll admit that I hadn’t paid much attention to it until I saw a beautiful range of hemp purses online. Anne from Sir Tom uses hemp as one of the materials in her work, and she’s showing all those hippies how it’s supposed to be done! I spent quite a while looking at her Etsy store, and was very pleased when she agreed to help me out with a little competition here on my blog.

Anne is giving away a hemp purse from her store to the Go Greener reader who can tell us the most interesting or fun fact about hemp – environmental, historical, scientific, etc – in the comments of this post. If you’re not interested in using a purse yourself (hello, gentlemen!) you might like to enter and win a gift for your partner or a friend.

You have 3 days to leave your comment here, although I suggest doing it now and then telling your friends. On Friday night at 8pm Perth time (so 10pm for you east-coasters) I’ll pick a winner from the commenters, and be in touch with you about receiving your prize.

Hopefully you will be the lucky winner of a very stylish purse, and when people give you compliments on it, you can thank them and tell them how eco-friendly it is too.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

I’ve lost count of how many “101 Things You Can Do To Save The Earth” lists I’ve seen. And although some items crop up again and again, it seems like there’s an unlimited supply of tiny tips we should be following.

But not every green change in our lives is equally worth our time and energy. We need to prioritise our sustainable options, so that we’re getting the most benefit from our efforts.

The major impacts on our environment come from the energy we use to power our homes and businesses, the water we use in our homes and in industry, the food choices we make, and the transport choices we make. So here’s the stuff we need to make a priority:

• insulating and weather-proofing our homes
• switching to water-efficient showerheads and toilets
• buying energy-efficient fridges, washers, TVs and computers when we replace old ones
• switching lights to CFL bulbs – they really do make a difference
• reducing our reliance on dirty energy by using GreenPower, solar PV or even just a solar hot water system
• buying local food, and encouraging local producers to switch to sustainable practices
• reduce the amount of meat you eat, by doing Meatless Mondays or Weekday Vegetarian at least
• using the most fuel-efficient form of transport we can – bikes give you the most distance for the least pollution, but even choosing a fuel-efficient car when you replace your old one makes an enormous difference
• buying a home close to your work, school and other amenities, so you can reduce your transport emissions without even trying.

Tackle the big stuff first. One afternoon spent making an appointment to get your roof insulated will save you more money and make a bigger reduction to your energy emissions than five years’ worth of switching off your TV at the wall every night.

For example, I use a smart power-board in my lounge room. When I switch the TV off with the remote, the power-board switches off our games consoles and DVD player at the wall. The TV is still using standby power, but near enough is good enough when we’re talking about less than 1% of my total carbon emissions. On the other hand, getting solar hot water would reduce our electricity bill and emissions by about 20% – I’ve nearly saved up enough money for this now, so hopefully you’ll see a post from me about it soon.

We all lead busy lives: work, family, friends, finding time to go to the dentist or celebrate a birthday, all of it important and necessary. That doesn’t absolve us of the need to make our lives greener. But we don’t have to let the little details drag us down into a neverending to-do list.

The bigger the item and the bigger the cost to your budget, the more important it is to make sustainable. Your home, your car, your food bill, your water bill – these are worth tackling in big chunks. The rest of it can be dealt with if a good opportunity pops up.

Am I on my own here? I know a lot of you lead very green lives and do pay attention to the little things as well as the big. But which did you start with, and which do you think have been most worthwhile?

Fresh green links

Beyond Zero Emissions – a summary of a new plan to take Australia to zero emissions by 2020 was released this week, with the full report being issued in a couple of weeks. There’s been lots of mentions of it in the media, but I think your best bet is to read the summary for yourself. This is the kind of thinking we need for a bright green future!

Deep in the heart of Adelaide with Tony Zappia – this is why you should chat with your MP about the issues that are important to you: they’ll probably be grateful that you’re not a crazy person and give you extra time. This man spoke to his MP about the internet filter, but it’s got a useful lesson for greenies too.

Gillard bids to revive Australia’s stalled carbon trading scheme – an overview from the Guardian. Seems like she feels that Rudd lost the public’s interest and needs to build it up again. But it still sounds like there’ll be plenty of giveaways for polluting industries.

Recycling the right stuff for Tasmania - ever wondered how recyling works? The ABC takes a tour of a Tasmanian recycling facility, with photos and explanations.

One Free Bike – can’t afford a bike or not sure if you want to commit to one long term? This group will give you one for free for a year. It’s got advertising on it for socially-responsible groups and seems well organised. Thanks to Clint for passing this one on to me.

Climate Change and Skepticism talk at UWA, Perth on Monday – I’ll be attending this talk by scientists from UWA on the topic of what consensus means in science and how we can move towards a clean energy future. Come along and say hi! Also listed as an event on Facebook if that’s more your style.

A new Prime Minister – is she green enough?

Image shamelessly stolen from ABC News

Well then – what an interesting 24 hours in politics. We’ve got our first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, installed in what looks like a bloodless coup.

I’m not sure what this means for environmental issues. She’s backed down on the mining tax, which in itself isn’t a problem but might indicate a willingness to back down to the mining companies. She supported dropping the CPRS as a policy, but I’m not sure if that was with the intention of trying again later or canning it for good.

Gillard has worked her way to the top, rather than having been parachuted in at the last minute. But she hasn’t said much about policy so far. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what she does next…

There’s a lot of nonsense in the media today. Every journalist is convinced that Rudd was dropped because of their own pet issue: the mining tax, the insulation, the ETS, an inability to compete with Tony Abbott.

But insiders are claiming that it’s because of his poor showing in the polls. That drop in popularity happened right after Rudd ditched the ETS as a policy. People were really pissed off about it, and started parking their votes with the Greens.

I think many of them would have come back to Labor when the time came to actually cast a vote. The two-party-preferred vote shows that if an election had been called in the last 3 months, Labor would have won. But it’s clear that whatever the media say, the public wanted action on climate change and were annoyed that it wasn’t happening.

If Gillard’s government doesn’t address this issue, if they don’t come up with a good policy for the environment, I’m not sure they can win the next election.

Perth is Australia’s least sustainable city

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find out last week that Perth is Australia’s least sustainable city (PDF) according to the Australian Conservation Foundation’s rankings. I know that people here aren’t as green as they could be, and that we lack a lot of the resources that make sustainable living an easier choice.

Perth has a population getting up to 1.8 million people, sprawled all over a large area. Greenies are often tempted to move to the country and start hobby farms – but if we all did that, we’d lose even more natural bushland, and use even more oil for transport. As No Impact Man says, to escape city life, we have to embrace it.  We need to make Perth more walkable, with public transport linking us together and no need to rely on cars to get around. We need to learn how to conserve water and electricity. And we need a sense of green community.

Perth has a solid base to work from in this regard. We’ve got lots of jobs going around (even though a lot of them are in the mining industry), our schools are pretty good, we’re mostly pretty healthy. We’re not very inclined to do volunteer work though, which is pretty selfish. I grew up in a family that did a lot of volunteer and community work, and it’s always disappointed me to find that very few people want to join in with us.

Our public transport system is high quality, but it’s not very extensive. Land developers here are committed to urban sprawl, even complaining about having to leave room for endangered animals. House prices are through the roof here, which I’m sure is good for those developers. But it isn’t much help to people who’d love to live close to transport and amenities, but can only afford the cheap lots out on the fringes of the city.

Perth has been using up our extensive groundwater supplies to cover for the fact that our rainfall is a third of what it used to be in the 1950s. And yet we’ve got the lightest water restrictions in the country, and no plans for water recycling.

The positives are that farmer’s markets are just starting to take off here – in the last few years we’ve gained half a dozen, and I hope that the next time ACF does this ranking we’ll have improved in this regard. Cycling is becoming more popular, and we’ve got the weather and flat land for it.

Some of our local councils are doing really good work on sustainability issues. And we’ve got a few active green groups. But we don’t get any support from our Liberal state government, who only seem concerned that they can’t get the fossil fuels out of the ground fast enough, and are eyeing off our remaining forests.

I really love living in Perth. We’re a prosperous little city, with great weather and friendly people. But we can do better – I hope we can work on making Perth more sustainable and get a better ranking next year.

How did your city do? I’d love to hear your opinion about your own city ranking, either in the comments here or at your own blog if you have one (if you link your post back to mine, then I get a little notification so I can visit and read what you’ve said).