How green is my household?

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.

Electricity bill - winter

Hi, Bruce here again. Our power bill for winter, the biggest of the four seasons, arrived this week. At first glance it seemed disappointing because our daily consumption, at 14.71 units/day, had hardly dropped from last winter. However, I realised that last year we spent four weeks in the UK for Hilary’s dad’s 80th birthday, whereas this year, only Hilary and Becky did the annual family visit.

I continued weekly monitoring the electricity use during the four weeks on my own, and used 237 kWh of electricity over that time. About 2 kWh per day is needed for the fridge, fish tank, etc, even if the house is vacant, so the use that could be attributed to my activities came to about 181 kWh. For a fair comparison between the two winters, I simply subtracted that figure from this year’s account, and ended up with a daily usage of 12.7 kWh, a reduction of 14.0% compared with last year. This is consistent with savings over the previous three accounts of 15%, 15% and 14%.

Cutting back on power use has not been hard. It’s mainly about eliminating waste; for example by turning off standby lights, using long-life bulbs and, of course, having a solar hot water system. The fact that we don’t have energy hungry items such as dishwashers, air-conditioners, clothes dryer or a plasma TV, helps to keep our power usage low.

It will be interesting to see what additional efficiencies we can introduce for our second carbon-neutral year.