Sustainable lifestyles « Andy Kenworthy

Sustainable lifestyles

Time for Transition

February, 2008

Since I learned about Transition Towns, I stopped waiting for my jet-pack to be delivered.

When I was a snotty-nosed 10-year-old in the mid-1980s, my school teacher gave out a booklet. It described how by the year 2000 we would commute by jet-pack from the roofs of our air conditioned living pods over green fields to gleaming cities of sky-scraping steel and glass.

There we would do a squeaky-clean 20 hour week, while the machines and robots did most of the work. Leisure would be the largest industry; our biggest problem would be working out what to do with all the spare money and free time.

Of course, it didn’t mention that this kind of future would only ever be available for a tiny minority of super rich people at the expense of everybody else. It left out the limits of global resource use, Peak Oil and Climate Change.

Fast forward to now. Surprise. It turns out Star Trek was a science fiction show after all. The jet packs ain’t comin’.

How each of us copes with this reality, how we re-imagine and re-engineer our future with this knowledge and build new dreams, is the greatest and most exciting challenge humanity currently faces.

Transition Towns is one way in which people are coming together to do this. It accepts that the future is going to be one in which we consume dramatically less energy than currently. Most communities, towns and regions, not to mention individuals like me, are terribly ill-prepared for this.

But if we prepare in enough time and engage with enough creativity, we can create a better, more vibrant future than the life we are currently living.

When I cycle up to meet James Samuel, New Zealand’s volunteer national co-ordinator for Transition Towns, he is smiling from his sun bleached shed-come-office perched over Waiheke’s idyllic Oneroa Bay. He’s wearing beach shorts, an open shirt and large greenstone disc dangling from his neck. With his athletic build, twinkling eyes and deeply relaxed composure, he doesn’t seem like a 50-year-old who has been on a computer all night.

“I took a Skype call at about 2am about sales on our latest book,” he explains. “Then at 3am I got involved in a web training seminar with the UK, then another call came in at 5.30am with the feedback from another workshop being held over there. It was great.”

Okay, Transition Towns isn’t some Doomsday Luddite anti-technology cult. I may not get my jet-pack, but I won’t get in trouble for bringing my laptop. We go for a swim in the ocean beneath James’ home. With a holistic work schedule like James’ you take your breaks whenever you feel it’s appropriate.

Nobody can question his commitment. He has now spent most of his savings while working 50 wildly irregular hours a week on this for the past five months, for which he has managed to get $3,500 in funds. He says this doesn’t worry him.

“I will never be homeless on this island, and never without food,” he says simply. “I don’t own my own home, but I have a lot of social capital built up here.”

The concept of Transition Towns began life just about when I was due to start gliding off my garage, by another seaside, in Kinsale, Ireland. It grew – you might say organically – from its originator Rob Hopkins’ study and practice of permaculture, which he had at that time been pursuing for more than a decade.

Permaculture – coming from ‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’ – is a design approach which aims to integrate and harmonise humanity with nature to provide for all our needs in a sustainable way. In permaculture gardens, lakes, ponds, rivers, fields, forests and buildings are designed or reshaped with the intention of being as diverse, stable and resilient as nature itself.

Applying these principles to Kinsale, Rob began to develop ways in which the community could prepare for the approaching realities of Peak Oil and Climate Change. The result was the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, which was adopted by the local town council.

The plan was essentially aimed at creating a vision of what a happy, healthy, thriving post-Peak Oil and Climate Change savvy Kinsale might look like, and then charting out the steps aimed at getting there.

Or, as Rob describes it: “It was the first, as far as we know, attempt at designing a timetabled strategy for weaning a town off fossil fuels.”

Importantly, the plan was informed by community discussions and input from a wide range of local people. Transition Towns is not about politicians or ‘experts’ telling people what they should do. It’s an open invitation for everyone to play a part in creating a really tight-knit, focused, inspired community, which can share the upcoming challenges and successes equally.

It does this by helping a community to identify what they need to become stronger and more resilient to the changes ahead. It could be anything from intensive permaculture design courses and setting up alternative currencies to coffee mornings and yoga classes. Anything that binds the community together is thrown into the mix. The Transition Town group’s job is to just to keep stirring.

After his success in Kinsale, Rob moved on to Devon and began work on a plan for Totnes, where a calendar of Transition events and a number of working groups have sprouted. Word spread. What became the Transition Network forged links with similar worldwide movements. Today there are 35 full scale Transition projects in the UK, one in Australia, and two in New Zealand.

Which is where James came in, in about the middle of 2007, with his eclectic background as farmer, woodworker, traveller, paragliding instructor, religious community member and facilitator. When he first heard of Transition Towns, he had already been working hard on bringing his own community together.

He had been manager of the local cinema, ensuring that films covering Peak Oil and Climate Change were screened. He also helped to establish community gardens, the local farmer’s market and even a new primary school.

“I called the first Transition meeting, inviting 20 people, and 24 came, which was encouraging,” he said. “I soon realised that people already knew about Peak Oil and Climate Change, they wanted to talk about the process, about what to do.”

Currently the Transition Towns concept includes guidance on 12 steps – like Alcoholics Anonymous except it deals with our community’s addiction to oil. Rob admits they are not so much designed to take you from A-Z as from A-C, since this is as far as people have got up until now.

The steps are not prescriptive, they can be followed in any order, left out, or new ones added as the group sees fit.

Setting up a steering group designed only to continue as long as a few of the steps have been taken. This avoids burn out or stifling of ideas by strong personalities and bureaucracy;
Raising awareness about the challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change with films, talks and other events. These should all be designed to be positive and constructive;
Connecting with people and groups that are already acting on these issues;
Organising a launch event which celebrates the community’s resources and willingness to act;
Forming groups to work on areas like energy use, transport, food etc;
Using Open Space, a collaboratively organised conference where participants all get a chance to lead discussions and choose the topics;
To avoid becoming just a talking shop, developing physical practical manifestations of the project like tree planting, solar panels, or alternative local currencies, and getting publicity for them;
Helping people train in basic self sufficiency skills and problem solving in a relaxed, social atmosphere of fun;
Connecting the project to your local authority;

10. Learning from those who remember the transition into cheap oil between 1930 and 1960;

11. Letting it go where it wants to go. The Transition group is there to act as a catalyst for the community and to facilitate them asking the right questions, rather than to come up with answers;

Finally, creating an Energy Descent Action Plan.

What it doesn’t involve is getting funding, fighting the law, stepping on the toes of other green groups, waiting for someone else to do something, berating people or obtaining qualifications.

“The idea is to keep the energy going,” says James. “Find great people, and make them as effective as possible, so that everyone can focus on what they have a passion for.”

As an island beside an island nation, with a warm climate and abundant water supplies, Waiheke is fertile ground to test the Transition Town idea. And because New Zealand does not produce large amounts of oil and is a long way from the key oil producing parts of the world, it is likely that energy decent here will be quite sudden.

Current priorities for Transition Waiheke include looking at ways to reduce food imports to the island, working with Meridian power to reduce power consumption on the island, and encouraging house builders to use local materials.

The group is also planning a new sustainable public transport system, sharing sustainable skills like woodworking and blacksmithing and drawing together a full inventory of current community projects.

The Transition Towns push also manifests itself on the island in neat little ideas, like the veggie swap stall on the local market, where instead of money, people’s surplus fruit and vegetables from their gardens changes hands. Or the ‘fabulous fruit tree’ project, which aims to plant 20,000 fruit trees in public spaces on the island by 2014.

These are what James refers to as ‘baby steps’, which get people used to the idea of gathering and sharing natural resources. They also provide fresh opportunities for people to get to know and like each other.

“People want to feel that it is doable, that we can start now,” he explains.

In New Zealand all Transition Towns activities are undertaken by volunteers, and only three people formally work in the UK home of Transition Towns. The number of people involved ebbs and flows depending on their passions and availability, and the events taking place at the time. Despite, or perhaps because of it, the momentum is growing.

“Things are moving at a phenomenal pace,” says James. “The last film showing we had was on a really sunny Saturday afternoon on which there was a load of other stuff happening on the island. We still filled the auditorium and had people sitting in the aisles!”

As well as Waiheke, Orewa has begun the formal transition process, and a number of meetings have been held. The business of raising awareness is also underway there. This recently included a talk from Cuban biologist Roberto Perez, who provided an example of how his country survived and thrived while oil was scarce because of the US blockade.

More than 30 other areas in New Zealand have expressed an interest in this approach, and are using some of the Transition Towns techniques to bring people together. The chances are there is one near you. If not, James suggests you get in touch, so you can start something yourself.

“It is an amazing, exciting, encouraging, growing thing and I don’t see that stopping,” he says. “We have got to keep learning from each other. When people come up with something really creative everyone can benefit from it, and that is exciting.

“When a community comes together as a Transition Town they are saying ‘we have started’ which means they have already succeeded, not in some future moment. It is a movement and evolution which begins now.”

Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

A green glossary

February, 2009

Alternative energy

Power generation without fossil fuels. Typically wind, wave, solar and geothermal. Plants, algae, human sewage and cow poo are being tested. But it’s not like we’re desperate or anything.

Biodynamic agriculture

Emphasises compost and lunar planting calendars, instead of chemical sprays and fertilisers. Practitioners stuff a cow horn full of cow poo and bury it to create super-powered fertiliser, honestly.

Bioaccumulation

Toxic substances which build up in plants, animals and us. The odd bit of pesticide may not harm you directly, but eventually Kiwi blokes may develop man-boobs and a fondness for Abba records.

Carbon footprint

The total greenhouse gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organisation, event or product, roughly equivalent to how guilty you are supposed to feel about it.

Carbon Offsets

A credit bought to negate part of a carbon footprint. Should cover the cost of additional measures to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, which come into effect as soon as possible. Described by author George Monbiot as akin to medieval religious ‘indulgences’ payments to atone for sins the sinner has no intention of giving up.

Carcinogen

Any cancer producing substance. So many are discovered each week it is increasingly likely that life gives you cancer the same way rain and time give rust to a bicycle.

Climate change

Long-term significant changes in expected patterns of average weather on Earth. Sometimes called global warming, although some places could get colder. Increasingly termed ‘Global Weirding’ as no one has much of a clue what’s happening.

Eco-tourism

A hotel with recycling bins. Rapidly becoming extinction tourism, as we race round the globe taking photos of things our children will never see because of all the pollution caused by international travel.

Eco-worrier

What we become when it takes 15 minutes for us to analyse the global ecological and humanitarian impact of buying a tin of spaghetti.

Emissions trading

Buying and selling the supposedly limited rights to emit greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming. The modern, adult version of shuffling Brussel’s sprouts around your plate, or giving them to your little brother because you can’t face eating them yourself.

Extinction

Dead as a dodo. If the animal is cuddly or cute enough, humans will leave just enough of whatever it is for David Attenborough to whisper at. If it’s an insect – no chance.

Freecycle

Online jumble sale at www.freecycle.org, without the sale. Give away stuff you don’t need; claim free stuff you may or may not, on reflection, discover you need. If you are lucky, this may indeed include a free bicycle.

Fossil fuels

The P-pipe of the industrialised world. Coal, oil and gas, formed from the fossilised remains of plants and animals over hundreds of millions of years. Burning them has made life so easy we struggle to leave them alone, even though they keep us divorced from reality and wreck our health and relationships. (see greenhouse gases and climate change).

Greenhouse gases

Gases which trap the heat in the Earth’s atmosphere like a fart under a duvet. Human activities are releasing more into the atmosphere than ever before – and our duvet is getting very stinky indeed. (see climate change)

Recycle (incorporating downcycle)

The separation and collection of materials for processing, remanufacturing and use as new products. What normally happens is ‘downcycling’, where the resulting product is less valuable than the one you started with. Upcycling, on the other hand, is about making more valuable products from less valuable pre-used materials.

Self-sufficiency

The ability to provide all of your needs yourself, without the help of others. Unlikely in a civilisation breakdown scenario: you have potatoes, your neighbours don’t have potatoes, they steal your potatoes when you’re not looking.

Sustainable

An activity which can be continued indefinitely at its current rate and scale. These days this is taken to mean without irreparable environmental harm or compromising opportunities for future generations. You can have your cake and eat it, provided you are growing all the ingredients to make another cake without polluting the garden.

Toxin

A poisonous substance produced by living cells or organisms capable of causing disease. Some commentators on Radio Live qualify. (see also Bioaccumulation)

Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

Good food from the supermarket, without going off your trolley

If you want good food from the supermarket without agonizing over it or spending a fortune, ignore the mind control and keep it seasonal and simple.

June, 2009

For me, being an ethical food shopper can tricky. Is it Fair Trade? Organic? Rainforest Alliance? Does it come from a country with a dubious human rights record? Has it been the subject of a recent health scare? Does it contain palm oil not sourced from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil? How many food miles does it have? Does it contain potentially harmful additives and colourings? Is it tested on animals? Is the company owned by a global conglomerate with any subsidiaries which block cheap drugs to poor countries/push inappropriate baby milk powders to people without clean water to mix them with/ invest in arms/smash unions? And on and on and on.

Then I have to try to give this bewildering number of parameters some kind of relative value.What’s better: organic beans fair traded from the indigenous people of wherever, or the ‘conventional’ ones from just round the corner? This creates such a quantum level of complexity I’m lucky if I make it to the check-out before inflation pushes my purchases out of my price range.

I’m vegetarian, which tips the ecological balance sheet slightly in my favour and reduces my confusion by cutting down on the options. Sadly, it sometimes cuts the options down to the extent that there aren’t any, and a smug glow in the belly is not very filling at supper time. I have a vegetable patch. It currently contains three gigantic silverbeet, three spring onions, some lettuce and a rose bush, which is not really enough to live on.

I buy as much stuff under the Fair Trade and various organic banners as I can, and it’s great to see that more and more of them are hitting the shelves. But since I am not an investment banker, the prime minister, or both, there’s a limit to that as well.

So, given that people like you and me still have to use supermarkets, how do we ensure we shop effectively without being a complete sell out?

Firstly, let’s arm ourselves with a little knowledge on how supermarkets work. From the moment we walk through the door, we are entering a carefully controlled environment designed exclusively to do two things – fill up our trollies and empty our bank accounts. Supermarket do this by spending truck loads of cash working out how people move through their shops, how they buy and when they buy.

It’s called Neuromarketing. The gorgeous aroma wafting from the bakery is not just a by product of bread making. It’s also there to make you hungry, so you will buy more food. The mellow in-store muzak is there to slow you down, so you will spend longer browsing the shelves. And the shelves are not stocked for your convenience, they are stocked to maximise income.

For example, the first thing you always come to in the supermarket is the fresh fruit and vegetables, which makes very little sense for shoppers. They can be easily damaged, so you spend the whole time digging them out from under your tins and bottles. But research suggests the experience of selecting good wholesome fresh food at the outset of a shopping spree makes people feel less guilty about stocking up on rubbish later on.

More expensive items, or items the store particularly wants to sell, will tend to be to the right at eye level or just above it, because this is where most people look first. Sumptuously branded product lines from the best known producers will hog the carefully designed, expensive and power-hungry limelight, while cheaper home brands will be languishing somewhere near your ankles.

This is partly because many producers actually pay for prime positioning. For the same reasons products intended for children will sport the colours of a nuclear explosion and just happen to be within reach of your offspring, or at their eye level.

Some items, even whole sections, are moved from one position to another in the store so that you keep moving, collecting other items as you search for what you originally wanted. Some Pak’n'Save stores even have a zig-zag course through the grocery section as the only method of entry, just in case you want some courgettes on your way to pick up a six pack.

Brightly coloured tags on the shelves might point you in the direction of a sale item, or they may just say something meaningless like ‘Everyday low price!’ to draw your attention to the items the store wants to shift. At the checkout queue either you or your children may be feeling tired and peckish, which is why there are shelves full of chocolate there.

None of this is to say that supermarket owners are especially evil or manipulative – they just have a lot of money invested and to invest and are good at their jobs. The good news is that knowledge is power, and you can fight back.

Firstly, stay out of the supermarket as much as possible. If you can do all your shopping in one go it’s easier to stick to a budget and avoid impulse buys. A great way to do this is to shop online. This bypasses the in-store neuromarketing, reduces the time and stress of shopping, and removes the need to drive to the store in the first place.

You can easily check what’s left over at your house, and if you have the time, you can Google the eco/ethical credentials of potential purchases before selecting them. And because the system adds up your bill as you go, you can stick to your budget without having to abandon things at the checkout. Once you have cracked the supermarket’s website you are more likely to discover other more ethical online choices. If you get hungry while online shopping, you make yourself a much cheaper snack than you would probably buy in the store.

If you have to go in, you could take own mp3 player to keep you going while you read all the labels, but you should definitely take a detailed budgeted list of what you want and ignore aisles you don’t need to go down.

Aim low, but keep in mind that even actual sale items are infinitely more expensive than not buying them if you don’t need them in the first place. Some of the ‘own brand’ products, as well as being relatively cheap, can be quite healthy, with less salt and sugar than goes into some of the more well known tastes. Look at the unit price, not the overall price. Buying in bulk can save you money, save on packaging and save the number of car rides to the store. But you obviously need to ensure that the product won’t spoil before it’s used in your home.

What do the experts recommend? Laura Faire recently worked with Kathryn Hawkins on the book Shop Local, Eat Well – Cooking with Seasonal Produce in New Zealand. She says the key is to shop for simple unprocessed ingrediants which are local and in season.

“The best way to shop ethically is to buy New Zealand grown,” she says. “If you can buy in season it is cheaper too, and if you think about it supermarkets have an incentive to source locally. It’s all about shelf life. They offer the options, it’s up to consumers to buy them. The more local produce we buy the more they will put on the shelves.”

Seasonality can vary from region to region and store to store, so you may need to search online for a local guide, or ask a friendly gardener. Things can get tough to find around spring time, when everything is growing but nothing is ready.

Green Party MP Sue Kedgeley has a similar approach. She has been campaiging on food issues for more than a decade, and runs her own ‘Shop with Sue’ sessions to help guide people around their local supermarket.

She says, “Currently I don’t think it is getting easier in most places to shop healthy and even ethically.”

She reckons it’s not fair that if we want to know what’s in things, we have to rely on a ‘nutrition panel’ which often requires a magnifying glass to read and a chemistry degree to understand.

“Things have got better with eggs, at least you can check whether they are caged hens, barn hens or free range. That is some progress,” she says.

In the absence of the mandatory and legally binding country of origin standards she is pushing for, the supermarkets have started their own voluntary system for fruit and veg.

But a key point for Sue is your choice of which supermarket you go into in the first place. She recommends New World, Pak ‘n’Save and Four Sqaure, as they are all owned by Foodstuffs – a 100% New Zealand operation owned by a co-operative of the shop owners themselves.

Finally she asks: “If you have 50c for food and it’s a choice between a single vegetable and a packet of Maggi instant noodles, what’s it going to be?”

Erm…I’ll get back to you.

Innovation / Sustainable lifestyles — 1 Comment
7
Jan 10

Bringin’ in the rain…

August, 2009

Freshwater is one of the world’s most precious resources. So it’s handy that so much of it falls out of the sky in New Zealand. All we need to do is collect it.

The benefits

Collecting and using rainwater is one of the easiest ways to add a touch of eco-friendly self-reliance to your home and help preserve our environment. And if you are on a metered supply, it will save you money too.

Most areas of New Zealand have a pretty good supply of fresh water, but it’s not always in the right place at the right time. Like the components of any complex long distance supply system, mains water storage dams, pipes, and treatment facilities are costly and come with inherent environmental impacts, including the potential to damage the health of our river ecosystems through excessive extraction and pollution.

The mains system is also susceptible to occasional failures which leave you, or at least your precious vegetable patch, high and dry. This is particularly true in hydro-power areas like Auckland, where in dry periods water and energy authorities have to strike a delicate balance between supplying fresh water and power.

Even small roof water systems can take a huge load off of the mains supply and inspire you to be much more conscious of the water you do use, and how you use it. And they help slow the flow of water in our urban areas, improving storm water management and reducing the risk of flooding

The paperwork

You may need a minor plumbing consent from your council, or a building consent, especially if you are planning anything larger than 25,000 litres. You will also need to fit a backflow prevention device if your tank is being topped up from the mains supply, to keep the two types of water separate.

If you plan to drink roofwater, some councils require you to treat it. Others require an annual inspection of your system. On the plus side, some local authorities offer cash rebates to encourage rainwater use.

Watch out for…

Cleanliness: keep the roof and guttering clear of overhanging branches and regularly inspect and clean them. Consider fitting one of the many guttering filters on the market. The ministry of health recommends disinfecting roof water with small amounts of chlorine, but for those of us who dislike that ‘fresh from the swimming pool’ an ultraviolet light filter system costs about $1,500, plus installment.

Contaminants on the roof: You will need to unplug the system from your roof and find an alternative for a while if you use chemical paints or moss killers up there. Don’t collect from a roof which has lead, chromium or cadmium materials or is unpainted metal. Any paint used should be labelled ‘suitable for potable water supply’.

Your intake: Rainwater is naturally ’soft’ water, meaning it does not contain the dissolved minerals, like chalk, lime, calcium and magnesium mains water in some areas picks up as it percolates through the ground and into our waterways. Getting the right amounts of these minerals is important to our health, so its worth cross-referencing the decision to switch to rainwater with our dietary considerations. This is especially important if we choose a vegetarian or vegan diet, where obtaining the right mineral levels can be more challenging.

Small people: For the same reason, as well as the risk of possible contamination, some doctors advise that even filtered rainwater may not be ideal for pregnancy or for bottle fed babies.

The sums

You only need about five litres of drinking-quality water for each person a day, for cooking, drinking and food preparation. The rest – about 160 litres per person in an average household per day – is used for toilets, showering, washing, the garden, and other uses.

There are many variables, but as a very rough guide each metre of roof space you get hooked up to your system provides around one litre of water in an average year. Even in relatively dry areas, an average home with 120-150m² provides the potential for at least 100,000 litres of free water each year. A smaller household should get by on a 25,000 litre (5,500 gallon) tank. A larger household may need two.

Metered mains supply of water costs about $1.50 per 1,000 litres, plus a couple of hundred dollars a year for water testing and meter reading. If you are in an area which is not normally metered, you may have to pay $500-$1,000 or more to get one installed. This, plus the cost of your system, suggests a payback time of somewhere around 10 years.

Unless you have a lot of roof, a lot of rain and a plenty of tank space, or you are very frugal with water use, you will probably want to keep a mains back up, to avoid costly water truck deliveries through dry spells.

Innovation / Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

You are my sunshine

September, 2009

Aliens are probably laughing their tentacles off at our approach to energy generation. We spend our days fighting wars over a dwindling supply of black sludge, beneath our very own giant free fusion reactor.

Many homes in New Zealand have 20 – 30 times more solar energy hammering down on them each year than the owners use in electricity or gas. We have, at least, got as far as developing photovoltaic cells to convert this energy into electricity. But with the average Kiwi household using about 8 kWh of electricity per person per day, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority calculates that to supply all the needs of an average family of four would require a system costing between $60,000 and $170,000.

So reducing power use remains the first priority if you want to save money and protect the environment. But the tantalising prospect is that if every New Zealand home had a 3kW photovoltaic solar panel array, they would generate enough power to satisfy more than a quarter of New Zealand’s residential electricity needs.

That would mean we could shut down the Huntly coal fired power station, assuming we didn’t need it to back up our renewable sources on those still winter evenings…

The dark side of the sun?

There’s no such thing as free electricity, either economically or environmentally.

The glass, plastic and metal fittings in PV systems take energy, water and a wide range of chemicals to make. Some of these are toxic or hazardous. PV modules also use palladium silver, nickel, nickel chromium or tin for metallic contacts and usually a tin/lead solder for electrical connections. Not to mention small amounts of cadmium, which is toxic and has a tendency to accumulate in the food chain.

The resulting cells are generally only good for about 20 years. And although the cells are more or less benign in use, disposal of dead cells is also problematic. Recycling programmes are being developed, and some manufacturers will take back old panels to recover the more valuable materials.

There are some other, unavoidable, limitations. Because PV cells only produce power during the day, and relatively little when it is cloudy, even the most super frugal electricity user will need some sort of backup if they don’t want to be left powerless from time to time.

Other renewable generation options like wind can help to iron out the peaks and troughs if you have the right conditions, but for most people off the grid, lead acid batteries containing sulphuric acid are the most useful option. Nickel-cadmium batteries are less common and much more expensive, but last longer. Depending on the system and how it is maintained, the batteries you use will last somewhere between 3-15 years.

As PV technology advances the costs are falling and the efficiency of the panels is increasing, making it a more viable option. However, as things stand, when you take into account the costs of installation and maintenance, and even once you have negotiated with your local energy company to sell power back to the grid, you will almost certainly be paying more for each watt of electricity than if you plugged into the mains. And whether your system adds its full value to the cost of your house depends on the temperament of the potential buyer.

While there are 100% renewable energy providers like Trustpower and Meridian around, even the overall environmental benefits of having your own PV system are difficult to quantify. But wind farms are a blot on the landscape, and there are benefits from reducing our hydropower use to reduce the pressure on our water systems. There’s no doubting the added self sufficiency and resilience provided by your own personal power generation. And if you can’t get on the grid, or don’t want to, PV is less polluting than gas.

The paperwork

Building or resource consents may be required for photovoltaic systems that penetrate the roof or are considered by neighbours to affect their property. Any grid-connected photovoltaic systems need to be agreed to by both the lines company (for the connection) and the electricity retailer (for pricing arrangements). And you need to get an installer who knows what they are doing as the system must meet the AS/NZS 3000:2007 electrical installations wiring rules.

Innovation / Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

Carbon Farming

July, 2009

First published in Idealog magazine

http://idealog.co.nz/magazine/september-october-2008/ecoinnovator-spring-2008/carbon-farming

Shortly after entering the Simunovich Olive Estate, about 18 months after emigrating from the UK, my body’s internal calendar finally blows up.

I thought I’d adjusted reasonably well. But as I turn into the imposing stone gates of the estate, I sense a little boing and a broken cuckoo dangling on a spring from where my understanding of the seasons should be.

It’s July—summer where I come from, winter here—but after a frosty start it has dawned sunny and warm. I wind my car window down and try to relax. I am in Bombay, a 40-minute drive south of Auckland. Outside, lines of olive trees laden with fruit march over green hills threaded with silver streams. I am rolling though a perfectly European panorama of harvest.

In 1999, Branka Simunovich and her husband Ivan bought five titles, covering a total of 86 hectares of farmland, for what she describes as their “retirement project”. The entire site was then landscaped into a mind-boggling network of terraces and 40,000 olive trees were planted, whose growth has been accelerated by days like this one.

The Simunoviches have so far invested $13 million in the venture and employ 43 people. The property is now the biggest privately owned olive estate in New Zealand, exports to Australia and has its sights firmly set on the markets further afield. Olives from here have figured in the New Zealand Olive Association Awards every year since they started. This year they reckon on producing 70,000-80,000 litres of oil, up 250% from last year. The company now creates more than 30 different olive oil and cosmetic products, and is working hard to develop more.

Branka Simunovich tells me her husband “doesn’t understand small numbers”, and a glance at the family history shows why. About 40 years ago Ivan Simunovich opened a small fish and chip shop in Glen Innes. He then set up a fishing business to keep the fryers stocked. In October 2004, the family sold Simunovich Fisheries for a reported $137 million.

So you could see the whole estate as an exercise in recycling. Money earned trawling the seabed for scampi is now being turned into a model of sustainable business and environmental care. For Branka, the environmental considerations are an integral part of the economics of her operation.

“The most economical way of doing things is the sustainable way,” she says. “You don’t plant a grove only for yourself. It will be available for generations and generations, otherwise what’s the point of planting it?”

So it surprises me that the site is not certified organic. It’s partly because of the need to treat occasional fungal infections on the trees, caused by a wetter climate than olives developed in. Simunovich says she could probably find legitimate ways of obtaining certification, but would see this as cheating. She stands by the way the estate operates and wants to be as open about it as possible.

She certainly isn’t averse to the paperwork. As well as going through the extremely lengthy monitoring and evaluation processes necessary to export to the UK, US and Japan, the estate is now in the second stage of a full carbon-use audit. This looks likely to give it the status of not merely a ‘carbon neutral’ enterprise, but a ‘carbon positive’ one. While not formally required by any of the countries, it has also allowed the company to quash any concerns from overseas distributors that ‘olive miles’ might threaten the environment.

This is because the growth of the trees is helping to combat climate change to such an extent that it not only offsets the estate’s other activities, it actually exceeds them. In theory, this could be another potential earner: selling carbon credits on to more polluting operations.

It also opens the doors to the potential for ‘green’ exporting, not just for the estate, but for eco-savvy NZ companies which follow their lead—offsetting the food miles inherent in sending these goods overseas with the good the estate is doing here.

Entering the processing plant generating all this potential is like going into a miniaturised and modernised Willy Wonka’s olive oil factory. The eco-logic behind the business is evident from the outset. The plant is located in the centre of the property, with the terracing scheme designed to minimise the distance from the trees to the factory. Simunovich says they even tried running sheep through the groves to mow the grass. “But we aren’t sheep farmers. I ended up with about seven lambs following me everywhere I went, and then I couldn’t eat lamb anymore.”

The picking is done in large boxes, to reduce return trips to the plantation. The olives come in straight from the surrounding trees and are mashed, emulsified, washed and stored. It’s a continuous process that maintains the oil’s natural preservatives and means the oil can be stored for an extra two years, remaining edible for up to five.

The plant uses state-of-the-art machinery from Italian company Pieralisi. Branka runs seminars and workshops on their use, hoping to help create a truly world-class olive industry in New Zealand.

There are no piles of olives on the floor, no bags to split, and almost no waste. Every batch is monitored during the process and tested after. Pips, pulp, leaves and any other additional material are composted, mulched back to the trees or used to feed local cows. “We are always looking for ways to put everything through the full cycle,” says Simunovich.

Water use is a particular example, for reasons that go back to Branka’s past. Maybe olive trees and New Zealand’s emigrant population recognise something of themselves in each other, as they have both tended to be pioneers of marginal land.

Simunovich left her homeland on the island of Brač in Croatia in the early 1990s, to escape the country’s civil war. Brač is a place without running streams. Traditionally each family grows its own small grove of olive trees on its rocky slopes, as well as cultivating grapes and its own food animals and vegetables. As a child she learned the crafts of making olive oils and various creams.

“Where I come from water is a very valuable resource,” she says. “When I saw water running through every gully here I thought I’d found gold!”

On the estate there is no mains sewage or piped water supply from outside. The water comes from within the boundary, and the waste is processed on-site. So, for example, the machine that washes the olives filters and recycles its water, requiring one-fifth the water of a conventional system.

Next door, in the skin care section, the jaws of a machine that seals 40 tubes of cosmetics a minute require water-cooling. This is normally just flushed straight through and out of the system. But here a separate machine recycles the water. The process would have required 1,000 litres a year; it now uses just 15. There is another closed water system for the air conditioning.

The skin care production line, which is in its third year, uses exactly the same olive oil, and the same high standards. The company even cleans the place with a detergent made on-site from a recipe derived from its own range of soaps.

Scientist Sushma Sharma, who has a background in botany and a Masters degree in biochemistry, oversees the whole operation. She tests each product before it goes into production, working to surpass the consistency and quality standards which would otherwise became barriers to exporting the goods. This includes Tebe, their latest skin care range, which Sushma has designed as the firm’s Trojan horse for the overseas market.

But the driving force is Branka Simunovich, who was born into a tradition of growing olives and may well have olive oil in her veins. She drinks a small amount of it each morning as a health tonic. “There’s a tradition,” she says. “If you touch an olive tree each day you will feel better. It is the holy tree; it comes from heaven.”

Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

The new soap opera

February, 2009

A quick glance under the sink is usually enough to demonstrate how confused most of us are by the choice of cleaning products out there. We tend to have dozens of different bottles, sprays and jars of varying vintages secreted away, when three or four good ones could do the trick. Our guide to what to put on your sponge, what you might want be wary of, and why, should help you keep a clean home and a clean conscience.

As with most of today’s potential environmental pollutants, the direct risk from normal use of individual cleaning products is relatively minor. The amount of potentially harmful ingredient used tends to be small and the product is generally dissolved in large amounts of water in use and disposal. The main environmental concern is the indirect cumulative effect of so much of it being produced and used, considering so much of it is made of stronger chemicals than are usually required.

Millions of tonnes of cleaning product chemicals are being produced and released into the environment, largely unnecessarily, every year. Combined with other pollutants that stream out into our rivers and oceans, they are altering the chemical make-up of our soil, streams and river, which risks detrimental effects for every living thing on Earth. Add to this the effect of all the plastic packaging and the impact of transporting the goods around the world, and you begin to realise that we may be cleaning up our homes, by dirtying up our planet.

There are very good health reasons for using effective cleaning products. But ads featuring seemingly limitless and diffuse ‘risks’ posed by dirt have convinced many of us that our homes must be so clean you could serve finger food on the toilet seat. There is growing evidence that this drive towards a hermetically sealed lifestyle has actually increased some health risks, including asthma, allergies and immune system malfunctions.

Some studies have suggested links between certain conditions and prolonged exposure to some cleaning compounds. Others point to the possibility that a lack of exposure to everyday germs can lead to hypersensitivity in later life. There is also concern that indiscriminate use of antibacterial cleansers may be contributing to the rise of antibiotic-resistant germs.

In light of this, one of the greenest and most sensible things you can do is use cleaning products safely, sparingly and efficiently. There are obvious risks from powerful cleaning chemicals getting into your eyes and mouth, or even touching your skin directly. So at the very least we should read and follow the instructions on the packet, instead of just dumping a load of whatever in our bucket and hoping for the best. Using concentrates or refills cuts down the need for packaging, storage, and buying Kiwi-made brands reduces CO₂ emissions from transportation.

We should also try and avoid using overly powerful chemical cleaners as a substitute for one of the most powerful cleaning substances in known to humanity – elbow grease. It’s not really cool risking your health and polluting the local water supply just because you would rather skip the scrubbing. Even if you can’t face the thought of putting your chemical weapons out of commission, softening up your target with a damp cloth, clothes brush or duster may well reduce the payload required.

Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

The package deal

October, 2009

For millions of years, human food came in a furry skin, or a patch of dirt. Ancient people developed storage pits, jars and other means to try and keep things fresh, but commercial packaging as we know it today only dates back about 200 years. In 1810 Frenchman Nicolas Appert invented a food storage system using heating and specially sealed glass jars. Two years later England’s Dartford Iron Works began producing hand-made iron cans using this technique. Paper and cardboard cartons emerged at about the same time.

The first screw top jar was invented in 1858. By the 1880s in the United States, paper cartons were being sealed with a thin film of paraffin. The crown cap for bottles, which is still in use in some bar-room sodas, came along in 1898. And not long afterwards the creation of synthetic plastics unleashed a fresh avalanche of ‘disposable’ items onto the planet. In 1951 Ruben Rausing set up Tetrapak, which created specially lined cardboard cartons which now surrounds things like milk, juice and yoghurt all over the world. This has made his son Hans one the richest men in the world, with an estimated fortune of $13bn. And Tinplate steel and aluminium cans have been around since 1960.

Of course, people have reused old items and converted them for other purposes for eons. But the recent exponential increase in packaging production has left us with polluted air and water, and history’s biggest litter problem. Until about 1970, the cost of cleaning up the mess was simply pushed ahead of us to future generations like rubbish in front of a bulldozer. And it’s only in the last 20 years that doing anything about it has become a major mainstream concern.

Moves to reduce the use of packaging are now well underway, mostly driven by sheer market economics. Packaging costs money, so companies are keen to cut down, but consumers in the industrialised countries have acquired a taste for food from all over the world, which only arrives fresh and clean because of the packaging. Packaging is also marketing tool to get your attention and your dollars, and it works, so few firms are ready to abandon it completely.

There’s only so much packaging you can reuse in your home, no matter how keen your kids are on craft, so the next best option is recycling. In 2004 the voluntary New Zealand Packaging Accord was created by The Packaging Council of New Zealand business group and the Ministry for the Environment. It brought together brand owners, retailers, importers, manufacturers, recyclers and local government to negotiate voluntary targets on packaging recovery, by weight.

While the accord’s results are encouraging, and we have used them below, they should be treated with caution. It is extremely difficult to accurately calculate recycling rates, as to do so you would need to track all the packaging materials in the country from creation to disposal. The government uses a baffling array of statistics on the waste going into landfill to try to monitor this, and these suggest that some communities have reduced their waste going to landfill by more than 60 per cent.

Focusing on the percentage of packaging being redirected from landfill or recycled can also hide the scale of the ongoing problem. We are still burying a lot of rubbish under New Zealand’s green and pleasant land. Consumer.org.nz estimates that 8.7 million tonnes of solid waste is produced each year. Of this, we recycle 2.4 million tonnes, the rest ends up buried in the ground. By weight, about 12 percent of the average rubbish bag is estimated to be packaging.

Last year the introduction of the Waste Minimisation Act put efforts to tackle this on a new legal footing. It introduced a levy on all waste disposed of in landfills to help pay for waste reduction. It also provides the means to force companies to take greater responsibility for the environmental effects of what they produce. But so far it stops short of making this mandatory for packaging; instead the plan is for this to remain voluntary for the time being.

Waste in the recycling process is not bathed in an angelic glow simply because it is not going into New Zealand’s soil. Recycling has become very big business. In New Zealand it employs more than 4,000 people. In July last year Visy Recycling spent $21.9 million on a new recycling plant in Onehunga, Auckland. Acclaimed as the most technologically advanced facility of its type in the southern hemisphere it can sort up to 120,000 tonnes of packaging a year.

Waste’s financial value, and therefore the possible profits to be made in reprocessing it, is determined by the same supply and demand market forces as every other commodity. As recycling has taken off all over the industrialised world, the supply of some of these materials has exploded, forcing prices down, sometimes to the point where there’s not enough of a margin for businesses to bother. Other times fresh technologies for using these materials (recycled clothing, road materials, fencing, you name it) have increased demand, and made previously unviable recycling a money spinner. As you can see from our examples, thousands of tonnes of waste are being shipped from place to place as part of this international trade.

Recycling can be seen as just another manufacturing process, and is not without environmental costs. Most packaging is not designed with recycling in mind. It takes energy and resources to recycle things and they can often only be used once more in their new form, and are then not recyclable again. Ex-Greenpeace chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough, authors of the revolutionary Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things call this ‘Cradle to Grave’ kind of recycling ‘down-cycling’. The process saves some resources, but creates products of less value than the original. Their vision is of a world where all products are composed of ‘technical’ recyclable or reusable materials which are simple to remove, separate and remanufacture time and time again, and ‘biological’ materials which can be safely eaten or composted. Then we can all get back to checking out the furry things and the dirt.

Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

Not dressing to kill

June, 2008

“No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.”

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or, Life in the Woods. 1854

For a long time ethical looking clothing presented a simple choice: self-righteous t-shirt slogans or rustic traveller wear which falls apart just after turning all your underwear pink. 12 years on from Naomi Klein’s No Logo, which revealed the fascism in fashion, what can we do to keep our threads clean today?

Think of your look as the package, not just the wrapping. The best way to look good is to live good. Eat well, sleep at the right times, exercise, love, meditate; let your inner beauty bloom. These are the aspirations clothing brands are trying to sell you, but you don’t need the clothes to achieve them. On the other hand new clothes are very unlikely to make being unhealthy and/or unhappy attractive or inspiring.

Choose style over fashion. The clothing industry pressures people into discarding and rebuying their clothing to match constantly changing trends it invents. Ignore this and suit yourself. Investing in a session with a professional stylist could be money well spent if it stops you splurging randomly on items you will only wear once or twice.

Buy quality, not quantity. Invest in a few high quality items that really suit and fit you, instead of collecting trash. Take the time to research before a shopping trip, talk to the shop assistants, check the materials and stitching and intersperse the mall dashes with coffee and conversation. That way you will find yourself spending less money in a longer time, having a more fulfilling day, and coming home with better goods.

Don’t get carried away. Our wasteful consumer society works by convincing people to spend more than they have to get more than they need. You don’t really need a jacket you can climb Everest in and marathon running shoes to walk to the dairy.

Support your local tailor or dress maker. Clothing companies have not created sizing schemes which can cope with all the glorious nuances of human variety, and nobody looks good in ill-fitting clothes. So if you have a clear vision for something special, perhaps including environmentally friendly and ethical fabrics, why not get someone local to put it together? Or how about overhauling old clothes into something fresh? This also gives you a chance to build up a personal relationship with someone whose profession is to make you look good.

Look after your clothes. Buying delicately made formal wear and then treating it like combat trousers is akin to taking Britney Spears to a war zone – you can expect things to fall apart. Check out the information on how to care for clothes before buying them, and consider if you are really going to follow them. Learn to sew on a button, maybe even a patch. Try to plan what you are wearing to really match the conditions, including changing from your best stuff into old clothes to work or cook, meaning your best stay best for longer.

Clothes washing can be a dirty business, environmentally speaking. Air, fold and put away half-worn clothes which are still clean so they don’t just migrate from the floor to the laundry. Treat stains quickly with nontoxic removers, and soak sweaty garments in a salt paste for half an hour. Then wash full loads inside out on the lowest temp you can, using phosphate-free and biodegradable detergents. Use solar power where available to dry your clothes, i.e. a washing line. If you need a new washing machine, get one with an Energy Star label. Avoid dry cleaning unless your local operator can prove they have cut out potentially harmful perchloroethylene in favour of the more benign wet cleaning, liquid carbon dioxide or liquid silicone based processes.

Opportunity shops. Finding good quality second hand clothes in just the right size can be a mission, but it’s a righteous and fun one. The buzz when you find that hidden gem is awesome. Use op shops to expand what you would otherwise wear (it’s cheap, recycled and you can take it back easily whenever you want).

Go natural. Hemp, cotton and wool garments all offer ethical alternatives to petroleum derived materials like polypropylene. But it’s still important to check where these materials come from and how they are grown and manufactured. It can take almost 150 grams of pesticides and fertilizers to grow enough on-organic cotton for just one T-shirt, and clothing crops can displace food crops for local people if the money says so. Look for Fair Trade and Organic labels, as well as endorsement by environmental non-government organisations. And natural fibres still need to last you, or it’s all false green economy.

Always read the label, and ask about the gaps. If something doesn’t say where it’s from, ask the store staff, if they don’t know, maybe make flicking the odd email to clothing chains and manufacturers part of your fashion regime.

Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

Thinking and driving

April, 2008

Cars are battling it out with airplanes and cows for the title of environmental enemy number one. But the vast majority of New Zealanders still need their own vehicles. So how can you minimise the damage without resorting to a horse and cart?

Minimise the amount you drive, the size of your vehicles and their engines, and how many vehicles you own. You don’t need a 4×4 unless you regularly drive off road in wet conditions, or a powerful sports car unless you wish to look very selfish. Every time you jump in the car, look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly: do I really need to drive, or is this habit, laziness or lack of planning? Could I use this journey to do more than one thing? Do I need more than one vehicle, or better co-operation and vehicle sharing with family and friends?

Hybrids are a more eco-friendly choice than a new conventional vehicle with a similar-sized engine. But you can’t floor it up the moral high road just by joining the hybrid owners club alongside the likes of Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio. Hybrids are not made of organic hemp and fairy dust. They include lots of plastics and synthetic materials, and require a lot of energy to manufacture. Despite the development of lower polluting battery packs of lithium and nickel rather than lead, you will need to look after your eco-car and drive it efficiently to ensure the benefits of your new vehicle outweigh its environmental cost.

Downshift into the second hand recycled car market. If you sell your oversized vehicles they may stay on the road for a while with somebody else, but you will reduce your consumption of resources and help to undermine demand for brand new versions of these cars. But you need to shop around for quality and get any potential purchases thoroughly tested, as fuel efficiency and emissions can worsen over time.

Your car does not need to be a substitute lounge. Whether buying new or second hand, seal the deal with a KISS – Keep It Simple and as Small as possible. According to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, the maximum optimum engine capacity for a family of four on longer journeys is only two litres. However, fuel consumption varies widely within each engine size. For example, the most efficient three litre engine on the market uses fuel more economically than the least efficient 1.6 litre engine.

Finally, be wary of false measures of efficiency. Remember that anything measured in money is unlikely to include the full environmental costs, which motorists are not paying at the moment, despite heavy taxes. However, keeping a record of your fuel use and costs will help you weigh up your motoring options. It may also inform decisions about where you live and work. With the cash you save you can green up other areas of your life.

Andy KenworthyWriter