How green is my household?

Echo versus Prius

Hi, Bruce here. Hilary and I travelled down to Melbourne recently, to visit the Australian Tennis Open and attend a celebration for an Iraqi friend on his becoming an Australian citizen. We made the trip from Canberra to Melbourne by bus, giving us time (8 hours in fact) to catch up on some reading, finish a nagging sudoku and enjoy the scenery. It was a good trip.

At the party, Deb, a friend from Canberra, asked us to drive back with her the next day to share the driving. We agreed, although I confess I would have preferred to be reading on the bus rather than sharing the driving on the busy Hume Highway. However, there was a silver lining, because Deb has a Prius, Toyota's fuel-efficient petrol-electric hybrid car. It was great to drive, but is it a good green investment?

Consider this. Hilary's Toyota Echo (admittedly a little smaller than a Prius) uses 6 litres of fuel/100 km, whereas the Prius uses 4.5 litres. Assuming both cars travel 20,000 km a year, the Echo uses 1200 litres of fuel and the Prius only 900 litres.  So, the Prius is clearly more energy efficient. Using the Australian Greenhouse Office figure of 1 litre of fuel producing 2.5 kg of CO2, then the Prius would produce 2.5 tonnes of CO2 a year, and the Echo 3 tonnes. But then there's the price. A new Prius will set you back $37,000, an Echo $16,000. So, if you bought an Echo, you'd have $21,000 spare. Imagine what you could do with this money to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions.

For $3000, you could install a solar hot water system that could reduce emissions by 5 tonnes a year, while also reducing your electricity bill (at least that's the experience in our 3-person household). This would more than make up for the extra 0.75 tonnes of CO2 emitted by the Echo each year compared to the Prius, and still leave you with $18,000 in the bank. You could use that $18,000 to turn your house into a solar power station by putting photovolatic cells on the roof, reducing your CO2 emissions and power bills even further. As you can also sell excess energy back to the grid, there's potential to be making money from the cells in the long term.

There is no doubt that the Prius is energy efficient compared to other cars of its size, but if you have $37,000 to spend and want to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, buying a Prius is probably not the best option.

Not so resolved

Hi Hilary here. It seems I spoke too soon in my previous blog about our resolution to buy only food and drink that originated from Australia or New Zealand. It turns out this was my resolution, not ours, and Bruce just couldn't do without little curly pasta from Italy, licorice and fennel tea from who-knows-where but packed in the UK, and nutty chocolate. At least the last two items were fairly traded, so a poor farmer somewhere benefited from the purchase. I also have to admit to cheating - I'm still drinking hot chocolate at work, even tho' I've given up buying it for home. 

What has been encouraging is the range of local foods that I've found since I started taking this seriously (and I'm particularly pleased to see from Rebecca's comment that truly Australian chocolate will be available soon). I've discovered several brands of locally made pasta, the cheese-seller at our local farmers' market has Australian-made red and white wine vinegar at a very reasonable price, and our health-food shop has a wide range of Australian herbal teas.

Buying locally

Hi, Hilary here, with news of my New Year's resolution, which was to buy only food that is produced in Australia or New Zealand (I included NZ because it's closer to us here in Canberra than some parts of Australia). I took this decision, and dragged the rest of the family along with me, because at the end of 2007 I was horrified to find that some fairly traded rice I bought - thinking I was doing a good thing - had gone from Thailand to San Francisco before finally arriving on the shelf of the Oxfam shop here in Canberra. I didn't think that any amount of fair trade or supporting good causes like Oxfam warranted that enormous amount of travel. I also checked out the pantry and realised how many things were labelled 'Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients'. 

Of course, only buying local stuff made from only local ingredients does limit what we can eat to some extent. For example, chocolate is out, and we haven't been able to find an Australian brand of coconut milk. Otherwise, we have been able to find most things locally. It helps that we buy a lot of our food from the farmers' market and don't eat much processed stuff. We did hit a crisis this week when Bruce requested spiral pasta shapes and the only local pasta I could find was Beltana Gold fettucine (we're not good at cooking fettucine, it tends to clump together). We're also working our way through local teas (another thing we used to get from Oxfam) to try to find one that we like.

I've persuaded my family to agree to this for three months, which seemed less daunting than going for the whole year. Meanwhile, I haven't been able to stick to last year's resolution to buy nothing new. Already this year I've had to buy a couple of parts for my car and a new tyre for my bike, although I have continued to avoid buying new clothes or books. I've decided that maybe a more realistic approach is to try to make every purchase count. Thus, buying a new part for my car is okay because it's prolonging the life of the car, and the same for the bike tyre. I do feel that I'm at least much more aware of what I'm buying and have found that I get just as much satisfaction (if not more) from second hand things than from new ones.

Spring 2007 power bill

Hi, Bruce here, I've been comparing our power bills for spring 2007 and 2006, and found that in both years, our electricity use dropped by 15%, as did our bill. So, we're continuing the decline in household energy use. However, it isn't quite a fair comparison, because we didn't start our first carbon neutral year until part way through spring 2006. By last summer we were working hard to reduce our energy use, so it will be interesting to see if we can make further reductions this summer. I suspect we might, but only by a few percentage points, certainly not by another 15%.

As the spring bill is the last for the calendar year, I've now got all the figures for 2007, so have created a graph comparing our annual electricity use and cost for the past five years:

Click on image to enlarge

You can clearly see the effect of installing a solar hot water system in April 2004. Overall, we reduced our electricity use by 60% between 2003 and 2007, with daily use going from 25.7 kWh in 2003 to 10.8 in 2007.

The costs are harder to analyse because, since 2005, we've paid a premium to be on 100% green power; also, electricity prices have risen. Despite this, our annual bill has dropped by more than 30%, saving us about $400.

Climate scientists have warned that the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% of 1990 levels by 2050. As far as stationary energy use is concerned, one house has already achieved that goal, and it only took 5 years, not 60!

Success and more gifts

After writing my previous post about my struggles with the little mud oven, I decided to have another go at fixing it up, so I attacked it with a trowel and managed to hack out a bigger door. This made a huge difference. The fire took with one match (whereas previously I'd used two boxes of matches trying to get a blaze going), and burnt merrily. I kept it burning for about an hour, as the book instructs, then used it to cook a scone. I was amazed that it actually worked, and am now inspired to try insulating this small oven before going on to make the real thing.

Here are some photos of the oven after I'd cut out a bigger door, and the beautifully cooked (actually slightly overdone) scone.

    (click on each image to see a larger photo)

In terms of gifts, I forgot in my last post to mention some of the other interesting things we received. My boss was responsible for the most unusual gift - she gave us some condoms - well, actually she gave them to someone in South Africa on our behalf, through Oxfam Unwrapped, but we thought it was a great idea. My parents kindly gave me a wind-up torch that has no bulb (just LEDs) and no batteries, and a neat little portable solar charger that can charge up mobile phones, MP3 players and other such devices.

Interesting gifts

Hi, Hilary here, with a run down on what we received and gave for Xmas this year. Bruce had asked for a new bike (ie new to him - his present one is at least 25 years old). I found one for a very reasonable price on allclassifieds, a Canberra-based site that is great for finding stuff that it's not practical to buy on eBay. Becky (my 16-year old daughter) very thoughtfully bought Bruce a pack of brightly coloured potato plates; we ate our Christmas dinner off them, and then saved on the washing up by putting them straight into the worm farm (thus giving the worms an Xmas treat).

Becky received lots of second-hand books and some recycled jeans (as well as some less environmentally friendly gifts, such as Swiss chocolates and enormous leather boots). However, the 'greenest' present was my gift from Bruce, which came in the form of piles of sand, clayey soil, bricks and bits of wood, beautifully gift wrapped in a huge blue tarpaulin.  Luckily I'd asked for all this stuff, so I was delighted.

Our biggest use of power is for cooking, and I've experimented over recent years with various options, including a hay box (not at all successful) and a solar cooker (great, but requires at least 5 hours of solid sunshine, and is only really useful in summer). So, inspired by the Earth Garden publication Back Yard Oven, I decided to try to build a cob oven. My parents gave me the latest edition of Build Your Own Earth Oven for my birthday back in May, but I had yet to get round to putting it into practice. Bruce's present to me was the 'ingredients' needed to get started with building the oven.

The book recommends starting with a couple of practice ovens, the first only big enough for a couple of muffins. It wasn't a success, but I learnt a lot and now feel ready to go on to oven number two. Here is an illustrated account of the building of the mini-oven (click on each image to see a larger photo):

The mound of sand (rather too high - it was meant to be 'hemispherical')

The sand covered with a layer of wet newspaper

The final product - I covered the newspaper with a thick layer of dough made from clay and sand, let that dry a bit (because I'd made it too wet), cut out a door (but made it much too small) and cleared out all the sand.

The oven alight, but smoking chokingly rather than burning merrily as it should. The problem was the door being too small, but as the mud and sand mixture had set like rock by the time I realised the error, I couldn't enlarge the door without breaking up the whole thing. I'll know better next time.

The big picture - but don't forget the little one

Hi, Bruce here. Hilary and I followed the Bali climate change conference closely and were relieved when agreement on action for the next two years was finally reached. Binding targets to reduce greenhouse emissions are essential if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. The Garnaut report, due in six months, will hopefully recommend targets similar to those outlined in Bali. Kevin Rudd’s response will be interesting.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, it’s the little things that count.

Mulch

We do heaps of mulching, both in the orchard and the veggie gardens, and buy bales of pea straw to add to our food scraps and lawn clippings. My spring grass slashing around the house has left thick piles of grass turning to hay in the paddock that we could use as mulch. We don’t have a hay baler, but we do have hand rakes, so last weekend a friend helped us rake up five trailer loads ― and there’s still plenty left to rake. By producing our own mulch, we can avoid the emissions associated with the harvesting and transporting of pea straw bales.

Chooks

One of the nice things about spring is that the hens go broody and raise new layers and roosters for the pot. After five successful hatchings last year, this year has been a disaster with not a single egg hatching from the first two broody hens. We were inclined to think the roosters had run out of puff. The third hen fared better, producing four chicks, and another two hens are now in the ‘maternity ward’, so we hope to get lots of New Year chicks.

Firewood

We use wood from our pine plantations to heat the house. It’s a sustainable system, and is the most energy efficient way to heat a house. However, it requires some forward planning and tree felling, because the wood has to cure for at least two years to burn efficiently. We used two stoves last year and burnt more wood than I had planned, so I have been splitting large logs this week, and hope they will be right for next winter.

There’s always plenty to do on the farm, especially when you’re trying to be C neutral.

A cheery cherry harvest

Hi, Bruce here. We're trying a new approach to blogging, because maintaining a weekly schedule of ‘big’ issues was proving difficult. Instead, we’re just going to talk about the day-by day-things we do to reduce our impact on the planet. It’ll be a mix of big and little issues, all of which, we hope, will eventually help us to meet our goal of being carbon neutral ― or even carbon positive!

There are hundreds of ways to reduce your carbon footprint and one of the best is to grow your own fruit and veggies. Growing your own food – organically of course –reduces greenhouse emissions associated with commercial growing, packing and transporting of produce.

This week was cherry harvest time – the first picking of the year – and what a harvest it was! We have two 15-year-old cherry trees, pruned to keep them small enough to be netted – otherwise the crimson rosellas would have a feast and we wouldn’t!

Five weeks ago, one of my sons helped me net trees when the fruit were just little green blobs. Last weekend, and again today, we reaped the benefits of looking after the trees for all those years, and picked over 40 kg of large, red, ripe, delicious cherries.

So what does one do with a personal cherry mountain? Fortunately, three of our neighbours have wineries – we live in a rural area near Canberra – and I traded several kilos in exchange for bottles of wine. So, our wine cellar expanded greatly, and of course, the wine had very low wine miles!

Freezing and bottling accounted for several more kilos, and the rest will be given to friends or enjoyed at home.

So, why not plant a fruit tree, or better still, several trees in your backyard – we’ve had a great time with the cherries, and there are still the apples, peaches, nectarines, etc to come. Looks as if we’re going to have a very fruity summer.

Summing up our first CN year

Hi, Bruce here. Having completed our first ‘carbon neutral’ year — yes, there will be a second one! — it’s time to do some number crunching to see how we fared.

Fortunately I recently found a new online carbon calculator ( from the Department of Environment and Water Resources (DEWR). Sydney University’s Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis developed the formulas to run the calculator.

The calculator is very comprehensive, covering all personal emissions, including goods and services. This is important as these account for a large part of our emissions, but are often left out of calculators (maybe because they are difficult to measure).

To work out what I’d spent on goods and services I checked every credit card statement, every bank statement and cheque butt for the past year and allocated expenditure to categories, which was quite a process. However, the DEWR calculator works on a household basis, which requires all occupants to keep expenditure records and then pool them. It’s hard enough for one motivated person to do this; trying to get several people involved is near impossible (particularly when one of them is a teenager).

My expenditure analysis at least gave me a ballpark figure to work with, and I just estimated Hilary and Becky’s contributions. I intend to refine these figures during our second carbon neutral year.

The good thing about having a goods and services category in the DEWR calculator is that it raises our awareness of how significant this expenditure is in generating greenhouse emissions.

Here is a summary of our greenhouse emissions for the year, from the DEWR calculator.

Item	Tumbleup - tonnes CO2-e	Tumbleup – ex plane emissions	Tumbleup – ex all transport
Food	1.86	1.86	1.86
Organic waste	0.0	0.0	0.0
Other waste	0.123	0.123	0.123
Electricity and gas	0.05	0.05	0.05
Transport (non plane)	9.00	9.00	0.00
Plane	11.28	0.00	0.00
Goods - new	0.95	0.95	0.95
Clothing - new	0.19	0.19	0.19
Goods – 2nd hand	0.085	0.085	0.085
Services	1.16	1.16	1.16
Total	24.7	13.4	4.4

As you can see, we emitted 24.7 tonnes of CO2 equivalents, which is more than the NSW household average of 20 tonnes.

Transport is our problem. Plane emissions made up 46% of our greenhouse gas total, due to a one return flight to London for Hilary and Becky (on a trip to visit family, travel now referred to as ‘love miles’!).

Transport emissions as a whole account for 86% of our total — a result of the combination of love miles and the fact that we live out of town and have no access to public transport.

To be carbon neutral, we now need to offset, absorb or reduce 24.7 tonnes of CO2 equivalents. As Hilary has mentioned in previous posts, that’s a thorny issue, but I’ll grapple with that in my next post.

More on buying less

Hi, Hilary here, I'm still attempting to buy as little new stuff as possible, and to look for ethical or environmentally friendly options for the things I do have to buy. One thing I found I couldn't do without was Sellotape, so I was pleased to discover recently that there are lots more green options for office supplies - for example, Neco has things like biodegradable cornstarch pens and sticky tape.

Last week Bruce found me a second-hand (but unread) copy of Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine. The year in question was 2004, and the author and her partner decided to buy nothing but necessities for the entire year. This meant no paid entertainment (eg no movies, theatre visits, DVD rentals), no visits to restaurants or cafes, and no buying of new gifts for family or friends.

The book is an interesting read, I sympathised with many of their dilemmas - I was particularly taken with their efforts to find a suitable graduation gift for a much loved niece, they eventually gave her a piece of Judy's jewellery, after deciding that a box of homemade origami flowers and animals just wouldn't cut it. I also learnt a few things; for example, that there's a term (spaving) for the act of spending to save (eg buying a $20 DVD player even though you already have one, because it's so ludicrously cheap). Also, that there is something called the 'steady-state economy', which refers to a slow flow of well-made, energy efficient goods that are built to last, rather than the growth economy that we actually have, which relies on exactly the opposite.

In the true spirit of compacting, I'll pass this book, together with many others that I've decided I don't need to own, on to a library set up by a group of volunteers in South Canberra after the closure of their local library.