Go Greener, Australia

At the Green Drinks this week, Alex gave a short talk about the new Somerville EcoVillage that’s being developed north of Perth. The idea is to create a town based on sustainable principles, with human activities integrated into the natural world and a strong community focus.

Somerville will have bike and pedestrian access throughout, and the blocks are laid out in small ‘clusters’ or neighborhoods. There’s a car-free village centre planned for entertainment, retail and services, which will reduce how far people have to go for everyday errands, as well as providing local employment. This will reduce the amount of car travel people have to do. They also hope to be self-sufficient with renewable energy, will have minimum efficiency requirements for buildings, and will be harvesting rainwater. 70% of the surrounding land will be bushland, and all community members will have access to common land as well as community facilities. Somerville hopes to attract a wide range of people: singles, couples, families, retirees. A lot of planning has gone into making the town as sustainable as possible, and it’s pretty impressive.

The idea for eco-villages was thought up by Robert Gilman in the early 90s. Community and environmental principles are given focus, with the intention of making a place to live that matches people’s values and becomes more satisfying than the current suburban sprawl. There are eco-villages all over the world, and a few popping up around Australia now. Queensland seems to have the most so far!

• Currumbin (Qld)
  
• Crystal Waters (Qld)
• Aldaringa Arts (SA)
  
• Kookaburra Park (Qld)
  
• Cape Paterson (Vic)
  

If you live near to one of these, why not pop your head in for a look? If you know of one that’s not on my list, please tell me about it!

How do you clean your house? If you’re like most people, you use sprays to clean your benchtops, sprays for your windows, sprays for your mirrors, some liquids for your floors. If you’re like me, you probably use an oven cleaner reluctantly - I’ve never seen one that didn’t require a complete airing of the house after it’s been opened. Maybe you’ve got a few hard-core grime removers for things like mold or calcium stains in the bathroom.

I used to have the full range of chemical bombardment cleaners in the house too. Now, I’ve gotten rid of most of them - I’ve switched to microfibre cloths. It’s worked out really well for me: no peeling skin on my hands (I’m sensitive to the chemicals), no money spent on new sprays every few weeks, no time spent wondering how to recycle the empty containers. When I need to clean something a bit out of the ordinary (like the toothpaste mess David leaves all over the sink), I tackle it with baking powder and vinegar first, then finish up with the cloths. I find it faster to clean with them too, which is a bonus because I enjoy.. well, pretty much anything, really, more than I enjoy cleaning

The microfibre cloths create a static attraction when they’re dry, which picks up dust and loose dirt. When you wet them, they use capillary force to suck greasy dirt up into the cloth, which is only released when you wash it with laundry powder or liquid (like shampooing your hair). They don’t leave any dirt behind, or a chemical residue either.

They have huge environmental benefits:

• fewer plastics used for spray bottles and disposable sponges, which is great since plastic is made by burning oil
• fewer plastics left in landfill for years to come - not all of them can be recycled, and the recycling is energy intensive too
• less water used to get things clean, very important in Australia right now
• less pollution inside your home, or released to the atmosphere, caused by airborne particles of the cleaning chemicals
• less chemicals washed down your drains, which have to be processed out

For the last few years, I’ve been using the microfibre cloths I got from the supermarket, and they’ve mostly been great. However, my kitchen and bathroom mitts wore out very quickly. On the weekend, I went to an Enjo demonstration at my sister’s house. I wanted to see if Enjo products are better than the ones I had, and if the company’s reputation for being environmentally friendly lived up to our standards.

The demo was fun, and we all had a turn at using the cleaning mitts. The demonstrator explained how the microfibre works, how to clean your cloths and use them properly. The quality of the mitts is better than the ones I’d tried before - they seem sturdier and easier to use. There’s a range of products for each room of the house, but I suspect that’s so that they can sell more, rather than because the kitchen mitt is vastly different from the bathroom mitt.

Enjo has embraced being environmentally friendly. They show buyers how to care for the cloths so that they last as long as possible, and take your used cloths back for recycling. They show you how to use the smallest amount of water to clean with, and suggest you switch your other cleaning products (laundry powder, dishwashing liquid) to low-phosphate types. There’s no fancy plastic or cardboard packaging to throw out. I’d like to see them switch to recycled paper in their brochures and paperwork, as they seem to go through a lot, and describe the eco-benefits on the website. But the owner of the business has become one of Al Gore’s Climate Change Ambassadors, which I think shows a commitment to the cause, and I expect that in future they’ll introduce more eco-friendly changes to how they run things.

So now, the important factor: how much do they cost? The Enjo cloths and other items were all expensive, about $30-$40. My supermarket brands had cost about $10 for a similar product. Cleaning sprays usually cost under $10, but you need to buy them frequently. Anyone who’s bought Tupperware or compact fluorescent lightbulbs understands the decision to pay more up-front for a quality product that will last for a long time, replacing other more disposable products you might have chosen. And the environmental benefits are significant. However, if you’re not sure if microfibre cloths are for you, there’s no reason you shouldn’t try out a cheaper brand from the supermarket before spending the big bucks on Enjo.

I’ve bought the kitchen pack from Enjo. I’m going to try to clean the oven as instructed, and if it works then I can finally throw that stinky oven bomb spray out

On Friday night I went with some friends to the Sustainable Home Show at the convention centre. There were mostly the same exhibitors we saw last year, with a few new products and services. As always, the WA government’s Sustainable Energy Development Office booth was good, with free thermometers, magnets and compasses to give away.

The new product that caught my attention was an LED bulb to replace halogen lights. As you might already know, halogen bulbs aren’t that great for the environment: they’re low voltage, but that’s not the same as low-energy, and they waste most of that energy in heat instead of light. But compact fluorescents aren’t always a good replacement for them, as they don’t respond to dimmer switches as well, and have larger bulbs. This is where Bright Green come in - they offer LED bulbs that look and perform similarly to halogens, only much more efficiently. They are supposed to last at least 30 years!

I would love to see a larger show next year. The equivalent sustainability shows in Melbourne and Sydney seem to be much more varied than we get here.

In other product news, I also saw on the weekend that Target now has a GreenSource organic label, with t-shirts and jeans for men and women made from organic cotton. GreenSource is a US company with an established organic process. Each product has a number on it’s tag, which you can enter in their website to track where and how the cotton for that product was made. Each step of the production process is covered: growing, spinning, manufacturing and design. Target also has brochures explaining the process, and giving other tips on how to reduce the environmental impact of your clothes (washing, drying, recycling).

I didn’t buy anything from the range, because I didn’t like the women’s shirts on offer and don’t need new jeans at the moment (my organic cotton ones from Just Jeans are still going strong!). But the guys shirts were more appealing: I wanted to buy Dave the one that says “I (heart) tree-hugger chicks”. I didn’t see if there was anything for kids in the range. But I hope it’s a success and they continue it - having an open and accountable certification process is really something now that marketers have caught on to the possibilities of greenwash!

If you’ve bought either of these products, please give us a mini-review in the comments!

The Redefining Progress environmental footprint calculator has been updated: it now takes into account more recent information about local averages and new options like hybrid cars and water-saving devices. You might like to give it a whirl to see what it’s like.

Footprint calculators are a way to get a rough idea of how you’re doing with your environmental impact. They estimate the area of land and ocean needed to provide your food, goods, services, housing, and energy as well as absorbing your wastes. They’re not perfect by a long shot, but they can help people understand the consequences of their choices. The Redefining Progress one can also compare your impact to the averages for your own country (you can read more about how RP calculates their figures here: FAQ).

My footprint is much smaller than the Aussie average in greenhouse gas emissions, and a bit smaller than average for food, goods and services, and housing. Even so, if everyone lived the way I do, we’d still need more than 2 planets to provide for us all. Luckily, I’m not done yet with improving my house and food, and I’m finding more and more eco-friendly shops for when I do need to replace things.

Are you conserving water?

Originally uploaded by RXAphotos

Given that I haven’t done anything about water efficiency in our house, even though I made a resolution about it, I thought it was time to come up with a plan of action. I’ve had a look at the usual water-saving websites and come up with a series of things I can do, roughly in order of difficulty.

1. Find out total water use for 2007, so we can tell when we’ve actually made a significant change.
2. Check for leaks and fix them.
3. Check how we use water: this means going down the lists of water-efficiency steps like shorter showers, only running the washing-machine on full, etc and making sure that we actually do them.
4. Get flow aerators or something similar for our taps.
5. Get a shower-head with at least a 3-star water-efficiency rating.
6. Change our toilet to a dual-flush.
7. See if it’s worth upgrading our washing-machine to a more efficient model or not.
8. Make the garden more water-efficient. We already mulch and only water on our scheduled days, but I’d like to look into rainwater tanks, greywater systems and so on.

Tips, recommendations and suggestions are all welcome! Let us all know if you’ve got some good water-saving advice.

If you’re interested in getting a photo-voltaic solar energy system for your home, and you live in the Perth metropolitan region, you might like to check out the RenewableLogic website. They’re going to buy 1500 systems in bulk and install them, lowering the usual cost from about $4500 to $1500 after you get all the usual government rebates. They’re only offering small systems at the moment, in a limited area, but have had a huge response so they may expand their range later on.

Our house is in the right area, and a small system would suit the two of us just fine, so we’ve put our names down. We’re a bit concerned that our roof might not be suitable (possibly the wrong angle), but it’s only an expression of interest so if we don’t work out then they just move on to the next person on the list.

We hadn’t considered getting a PV solar energy setup, because it was way out of our price range for home improvements. However, if this works out, we’d really like to give it a try. I’ll post updates as I find out more.

At the beginning of the year I came up with 3 resolutions I intended to keep in 2008. I thought I’d better check in and see how I’m doing…

Switch to reuseable bags

I was given an Envirosax bag as a Christmas gift (thanks again, Chris!) and it’s been fantastic. It just sits rolled up in my handbag until I need it, and then I whip it out at the shop counter before the salesperson puts my purchases in a bag. I’ve used it a couple of times for picking up a few groceries after work, but mostly I use it at bookshops and clothes shops.

At first Dave and I weren’t doing too well with remembering our green bags for our weekly grocery shop. We only brought them once in January! After that we got better at it, and we haven’t forgotten them since the end of February. I think that remembering to put them back in the car was the hard part, but once we got the hang of that it all started working better. We’ve now re-used about half of the old plastic bags we’d saved from grocery shops, so by the middle of the year I don’t think we’ll have any left at all (fingers crossed!)

Reduce household water use by 25%

I have to confess that I haven’t done *anything* about this one, which is pretty pathetic really. Next week I’ll come up with a plan of action so I can just work my way down a list of things to do to cut our water use.

Keep writing to politicians and businesses about green issues

I’ve done an ok job on this, but nothing spectacular. Because I’m a GetUp regular, I get notified of their email and letter-writing campaigns, so it’s easy for me to join in on their environmental ones. However, I haven’t written anything without being prompted by them first. Could do better on this one, I’m afraid!

How are you all going on the resolutions you made? Have you forgotten them, or finished them already?

Like most people, I find it hard to remember to pay bills by going directly to a company’s offices or Australia Post. Either I put the bill in my handbag then forget to go anywhere near the post office, or I slap my head when I see the office because I’ve left the bill at home. The number of Aussies using BPay to pay bills is increasing every year: it’s not only more convenient to pay from home, it’s a real time-saver compared to the queues you endure when paying in person.

Something you might not have thought about is that paying your bills online or by phone is one of the little things you already do (or can easily start) that’s good for the environment. As well as saving time, you save the petrol/pollution it would have taken you to drive to a company’s office or Australia Post. It also saves paper compared to the old-fashioned method of paying by cheque.

Save more trees: go paperless

If you pay by direct debit you can save the biller the trouble, trees and petrol it takes to print the bill, stuff it in an envelope, and deliver it to you. The disadvantage of letting a company have your bank details so they can just withdraw the money as the bill falls due, is that you could end up overdrawn. And even if having the money withdrawn from your account isn’t a financial concern, it’s still a bit disconcerting to have it disappear without you knowing about it.

This is where paperless billing comes in - I get my Telstra bill emailed to me instead of using snail mail. I get to review the amount, then click a link that will allow me to pay on the spot via credit card or a one-off direct debit. This still saves me time and prevents the wasted paper, but also gives me control over when the money is withdrawn from my account. And honestly, I’m more likely to just get on with it when I’ve got the email right in front of me, and it’s as easy as clicking a link

Any mail I’m not keeping, like bills and their envelopes, goes into our recycling tub or sometimes into the compost. This is better than just sending them to landfill, but obviously it’d be best to save the effort and waste of making and sending them in the first place.

If a business offers paperless billing, you’ll need to provide them with your email and a secure password, and then you’re ready to go. If someone who bills you doesn’t offer an email or SMS alert for your bill, then write them a letter to ask them when they’re going to start.

There are very few companies now who don’t offer BPay via phone or online now for their regular payments. Most phone companies offer an email or SMS notification service as well. Think about the bills you pay - insurance, electricity, gas, rates, etc - and see how many you can make paperless. My gas company only offers regular direct debits, but I’ll be switching my insurance and electricity to paperless bills this week. After all, I don’t actually enjoy getting bills in my letterbox!

Edited to add: I’ve just come across this post about The green impact of going paperless at Greener Pastures blog. The quantities of paper, etc are in pounds and gallons, but I think it’s interesting to see anyway.

Over the Easter long weekend, Dave and I painted our bedroom. Previously it had been a bland beige, now it is a lovely medium blue. We used an eco-friendly paint and picked up a handy tool for reducing the water you need to clean up afterwards.

Paints are usually full of VOCs - Volatile Organic Compounds. These are chemicals used in many home furnishing products, and as they are released into the atmosphere they can make you sick, and contribute to air pollution. It’s generally a good idea to avoid or minimise them. Treehugger has a good summary about VOCs in paints.

The last time we painted, we went to Painted Earth in Fremantle to try some Porter’s Paints, because we’d seen them at the Sustainable Home show last year. We were really happy with the Porter’s, which have a great range of colours, low-VOC and no-VOC options, and seem committed to a low-impact business model. There was no paint odor and it was a quality product.

However, we didn’t have time for a long drive to Fremantle just for paint this weekend. We went to Bunnings and found several low-VOC paint options. We went with British Paints, because they had the colour we wanted. Many of the low-VOC paints we saw were marketed based on their low odour rather than their eco-friendliness. This seems fair enough to me, as I imagine there are more people annoyed by the smell of paint than by damage to the planet - as long as they end up with the eco-friendly paint I don’t care why they choose it! And hopefully they’ll come to expect low-VOCs as a standard feature for paint, demanding it in the future. As far as I can tell, the British Paints brand isn’t as low on the VOCs as the Porter’s version: there has been a bit of a paint smell, although it’s much less than you’d get with normal paints.

We also bought a tool for cleaning roller-brushes, based on it’s claim that using it would reduce the amount of water you use for cleaning from about 20L to about 6L. The Rota Cota Roller Cleaner is a scraper attached to a tube. First we used the scraper to remove most of the paint, saving it for re-use later. Then we stuck the roller in the tube, attached our hose to one end, and used a small amount of water forced through the tube to rinse the brush. I found things went faster (and therefore used less water) if if I did the scrape-and-rinse twice instead of persisting with the rinsing until the water became clear. I’m not sure we quite reached that 6L target on the weekend, but I’m pretty sure we used to use way more than 20L to clean up using our old method, so that’s an improvement.

All in all, it was a productive weekend: we’ve finished a project we’d been putting off for some time, and managed to make the more eco-friendly choices while we did it.

Replacing your normal incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs is one of the first things you’re told to do by greenies, and I’m sure you’ve heard about it already! But I wouldn’t feel right not mentioning it, because it really is one of the easiest things you can change that will help reduce your greenhouse gas emissions.

CFLs use 66-75% less electricity to light a room than an incandescent bulb. This means less pollution is caused by the coal-fired power plants most Aussies get their electricity from. As a bonus, they last longer than normal bulbs - over 8000 hours of light compared to just 1000 for incandescents. That means less energy is wasted on making new ones, packaging them and shipping them around.

According to calculations by the Sustainable Energy Development Office in WA, switching all your lights to CFLs for a year will save you about $80 off your electricity bill, and prevent over 600kg of greenhouse gas emissions from getting into the atmosphere.

But don’t they have mercury in them?

CFLs do have a small amount of mercury in them (2 milligrams), which is necessary for them to work. Mercury can be hazardous if you inhale it, or if we let it pile up in landfill, or puff it up into the atmosphere. But each CFL has less mercury in it than the amount created by using an incandescent light bulb - this is because mercury is a byproduct of coal-fired power generation. CFLs use less coal-fired power, so there’s another good reason to switch!

The mercury in an unbroken CFL isn’t a problem for you, but don’t just chuck used CFLs in your bin, or in with your recycling. The bulbs can be recycled, but your local council’s recycling program probably isn’t set up for it yet and a nationwide collection system is still being developed. In the meanwhile, find a place that accepts “hazardous” waste like paints, oils, and so on - stuff that shouldn’t be left to sit in landfill - and see if they’ll take your bulbs. Otherwise, check this list of disposers - so far it looks like NSW, VIC and SA have more options than the rest of us.

Because of that little bit of mercury, you should also be a little bit careful about how you clean up a broken CFL. The steps at the environment.gov.au site are similar to what you’d have to do if you broke a thermometer.

We’ve started to switch

I have CFLs in our living room, dining room, bedroom and bathroom. The rest of the house still has incandescents, but they’ll get replaced when they blow. As good as CFLs are, I don’t want to throw out something that is still useful just to replace them. We’ve got some CFLs stored in the laundry cupboard so that we’re ready with the type we like when the next bulb blows, instead of having to run to the deli for a quick replacement.

Your CFLs shouldn’t flicker - if they do, they’re either not properly screwed in, or it’s a faulty bulb, so there’s no need to put up with it. We quite like the Phillips and Mirabella brands and have found them pretty reliable. We always get the ones labelled “warm white” but some people prefer the “daylight” or “neutral” ones. I’ve never met anyone who likes the “cool white” ones, but I guess someone out there does because they keep making them!