No Impact Week: Day One - Consumption

The first challenge dished up to participants in the world wide No Impact Week was Consumption. Essentially, we buy a lot of stuff, and although it may take a lot of resources to get to you, an amazing amount of what we buy is discarded within six months.

If you want to take a roller-coaster of how our society consumes, watch The Story of Stuff.

So my challenge for the week is to try and not buy new stuff, except for food. The hope is that instead of using shopping as an activity, I can spend time with friends and family and socialising or giving back to my community. I wouldn't say I consider shopping a pleasurable experience, a "hobby". However, I do occassionally shop so it still applies to me.

The task I was given: write all the items I am planning on buying this week, apart from food. Then I was asked to cross off whatever I could live without for the week. Third, I had to creatively think how else I could get these items without buying new. This might be borrowing, buying second hand, swapping or making second hand. Here are my potential items and what I can do instead of buying new (keep in mind I'm organising a permaculture conference):

• texters - swap via Freecycle or zillch
• Blu-tac - borrow
• butchers paper - swap via Freecycle or zillch
• Decor plastic containers - buy 2nd hand on eBay, swap via Freecycle or zillch
• a top - can live without for a week
• casual shoes - can live without for a week
• eucalyptus oil - swap via Freecycle or zillch
• garden stakes - swap via Freecycle or zillch
• dish cloth - buy 2nd hand facewasher at the Salvos or Vinnies
• scourer - can't think of another option but new. Could wait

I need garden stakes because I potted up my fruit trees. I thought I had 12. I have 16. And an obsession with buying fruit trees. An investment in the future, I say!

Heritage apple, persimmon, cherry, peach, almond...

Monday's focus is Waste, so I had to collect all my garbage and recycling from Sunday. The food waste will be a bit high, as because I am trying to reduce over-processed foods, I decided to make chicken stock to freeze. Only $2 for a bag of bones, and I get a stock that is only real ingredients, no numbers (you know, the number codes on ingredient lists) and no salt.

Stock pot and finished chicken stock

I made pumpkin chutney so added pumpkin skin, pith and seeds. Hence it has a slightly orange tinge.

Pumpkin chutney

The pumpkin is homegrown!

I'll let you know how I went with Day Two-Waste.

No Impact Week: 18-25 Sept

Tomorrow is the first day of No Impact Week. I've signed up for an eight day "carbon cleanse".

My life is pretty busy right now, organising the 2011 South East Australian Bioregional Permaculture Conference which is only two weeks away (starts with a party on Friday 30 September). After I watched the documentary, No Impact Man, I felt compelled to check out their website. I discovered I was right in time for the third annual No Impact Week: open to participants all over the world (want to join me?).

I was both interested in challenging myself to go one step more, as well as doubted I had the time or energy to participate. Then I thought, if not now, when? Enough excuses, just do it! What's the worst that can happen? I participate partly rather than fully? That's still a good outcome: at least I will have partly challenged myself and my way of living on this earth and in this society.

So I am signed up and ready to go. Each day has a theme. Sunday 18 September is Consumption. I hope to share some of my experiences with you.

I already know what I'm doing part of Sunday: finishing making chicken stock and pumpkin chutney. This is my second batch of making chicken stock instead of buying stock powder (in my attempt not to eat ingredients of "numbers" and varying levels of salt, plus using the waste of a carcass as a resource). It really is just boiling up a $2 bag of chicken bones for hours, I discovered while reading Arabella Forge's Frugavore. Why make chutney? Because it is yummy! This time, I even grew the pumpkin myself!

I didn't finish making the stock and chutney on Saturday as I also have a social life: dinner down at the pub with friends was calling me. A lovely night it was, too!

No Impact Man

Last night I watched the film No Impact Man, at home. A good time to reflect on my life and my impact. It was a one year experiment of a man and his family to live with no environmental impact in New York City. It wasn't billed as a scientific experiment: they did what they thought was the best option to reduce their impact. So it was also a social experiment. They wanted to see how they would deal with the challenge.

The challenge progressed in stages. By the end,  they produced no garbage, bought nothing except local food, turned off from mains electricity and only rode a bike or walked. This wasn't an environmental activist family: the wife at least had a typical life and so had a high consumerist lifestyle. It was hard. Many families say that having a child increases waste generation: they had a toddler to contend with!

The more you get into such a challenge, the more you realise the impact of your life. Producing no waste meant buying food free of packaging, so mainly possible at farmers' markets and bulk supplies stores for dry goods. Only local food meant no coffee, which was very hard for the wife. Only walking or cycling meant they didn't even use the subway and they took the stairs instead of elevators & escalators.

By the end, they had definitely reduced their environmental impact. But they felt the wonderful extra benefits were that the simpler lifestyle meant the family was healthier, happier and had formed better relationships with each other and those around them. They were richer by being free of the excess. After the year, they kept some actions and let some go.

It was good to be personally challenged and inspired. I feel I do a fair amount to try and live sustainably. Watching the film made me reflect on how even my actions that evening required a lot of energy and produced waste. I had the heater on, was watching a DVD, had more lights on than where I was sitting, had eaten a non-vegetarian take away meal which came with two plastic bags, a plastic container and styrofoam container, to which I added a dash of Japanese made soy sauce and then I washed the dishes with store bought dishwashing liquid. The plastic bags are recyclable if I take them to a supermarket (I've never done this) and the styrofoam is headed for landfill.

It inspired me to follow Cecilia Macaulay's suggestion of getting a good set of stackable plastic containers and using them at food co-ops: decrease useless diversity in order to help you have good dinners. I searched the local supermarkets today for what the Decor range could offer.

I went online tonight to The No Impact Project. I was greeted by the offer of undertaking the No Impact Challenge, along with thousands of people around the world. The next week long challenge starts 18 September. Should I just do it? It even has the option for a group starting a challenge team. Pretty cool to get support from those around you and give it a go together! I'll ponder.

One year reflection

On Tuesday 12 July, it will be twelve months since I reached my goal date of being in the King Valley. So how has the journey of the last year been? Where am I now? Where am I headed?

The last year has been a good journey. I lived part time in the King Valley for most of it, travelling up and down to Melbourne each week. I installed an irrigation system around the house, rejuvenated most of the garden beds around the house and had a great yield of mainly tomatoes, potato and pumpkin. The broken fence over the creek meant I didn't plant more than four fruit trees on the plot, as the cattle ate the lemon leaves. I also finished Certificate IV Small Business Management. I didn't however, commence any of the three businesses I planned to: a permaculture market garden, making chutney and sauce and selling Guatemalan textiles.

Where am I now? Mainly in Melbourne, still working part time and only going to the King Valley monthly. The commute became too much, plus I realised my best network was in Melbourne and was where I get my energy from. Though I do love being up at the farm. I'm still very much involved with the local permaculture movement, plus have begun promoting Landshare in Melbourne. If any groups are interested in sharing land or a backyard for gardening, I'm happy to come and speak.

Where am I headed? Of the three parts to the plot, I've decided to not sell sauce and chutney. I just love making it for my family and friends but don't really have a great desire to make it en masse. Selling textiles is also on the back burner: I would really need to partner with someone to make it happen.

So what of the permaculture market garden? I've discovered that I really like the social connection at work, so a rather solitary job as a farmer may not give me everything. However, I also realised I would like to run workshops. Eventually teach the Permaculture Design Certificate. So I am going to learn by doing, and find myself some land or multiple plots of land (using Landshare) in Melbourne for an urban market garden. My new long term goal is to be a permaculture teacher.

It's disappointing to not have some major concrete evidence of achieving any of my three parts to the plot. But I have learnt along the way and become clearer in what I want to do in life. My permaculture future is still central.

Winter planting of garlic

This afternoon I quickly planted some garlic in my Melbourne backyard: it is now or never! Most of them could have been planted over the last three months, but I didn't get around to it. Someone else told me their rule of thumb: plant on the shortest day and harvest on the longest day (winter and summer solstice). The winter solstice was only last week, so I popped them in at sundown and I hope some of them do well. I planted both Russian garlic (large, mild) and Italian white garlic (small, white and I assume stronger flavour). I also planted some shallots: can't remember when they were supposed to go in!

I'm currently eating my way through the pumpkin harvest: got 22 pumpkins from two plants! Very happy, especially as I was given the seeds and told they were zucchini! They look like Jap pumpkins.

The unusual zucchini - a pumpkin!

I also had two Delicata pumpkins - very cute. I cooked them and put butter and honey on them for a neighbourhood Autumn harvest.

Delicata pumpkin

In preparation of many years of prolific zucchini and pumpkin harvests, I've gone and bought a book which gives me 225 recipes on how to use them! The Classic Zucchini Cookbook. I'm sure I'll need both this and other books with an ingredient specific theme as I try and best accomadate abundance. As a permaculture principle says: catch and store energy. When you have something in abundance, make best use of it at the time and even store some of this energy for future needs (pumpkins are great at keeping for months).

I was given a cutting of sage from a friend during summer and I planted it at the farm: I believe a pineapple sage. Gorgeous red flowers. Now that I have both Simpson and Day's bird book and some good binoculars, I say it is probably the Eastern Spinebill which love to eat the nectar, hanging from the thing branches. Great to watch in Autumn. Am I becoming a twitcher? I can only hope.

Pineapple sage

What relocalising looks like in Coburg

I wrote the other day about the film The Economics of Happiness, with the central theme being relocalising for a resilient community. On Friday, I had a wonderful “local” day in my Melbourne suburb of Coburg.

I was working from home, and when feeling peckish for lunch, I went around the corner to my local Lebanese bakery, Akaar Bakery. Those who know Melbourne know Coburg is a Middle Eastern heartland. I don’t know much about Lebanese bakeries, so most of it is new to me. I picked the Lebanese omelette and the Herb Pizza (I think thyme is the main ingredient, plus sesame seeds). It’s clearly a family business with only the young man looking after the store, who quickly put them in the oven for me. Weekends mean quite a few people are behind the counter and in the kitchen.  He made small chit chat, asking if I liked the omelette (beaten egg, poured onto the pizza and baked). I admitted I’d never eaten it before, but am working my way through their menu, though the Herb Pizza is a firm favourite already. I unexpectedly got a discount!

Later in the afternoon, I headed off for the local hardware store (not Bunnings, nor Coles, who both stock what I was after but buying there means most of the price goes out of the local area). Charalambous Hardware is a small shop front. On entering, I was amazed at how much stock they had managed to have in the store. Let’s say that vertical space was well used. The dusty front window is not a reflection of the order found inside. I quickly concluded this was a store to ask for the item not self-service (half the stock seemed to be behind the counter anyway), but before I got to the counter I was distracted by the seed packets – Australian and Italian. Not the run of the mill varieties.

After the gentleman assisted me in finding a watering can and spray bottle, he began quizzing me on gardening. Do I garden? What do I grow? What specific vegetables do I grow? Do I eat salad? Increasingly getting more specific and I think I must have passed a small test, as he then offered me Japanese salad seeds. Wow! He described the vegetable, a green and brown coloured leaf with bite, the seeds of which he was given by a family member. So I’ll go back this week and pick up the seeds. How lovely! Not an offer I would have got in a chain or supermarket!

I saw across the road a shoe store, Quik Shu. I had seen their advertisement in the local paper as it had a closing down sale (closes Friday 27 May 2011, with the Moorabin store remaining). I walked in to the sound of Italian babbling away by the older ladies. As the sale was on, I decided to buy some bright blue leather shoes for a bargain price.

On the walk home, I popped in to a Lebanese sweet shop for some Turkish Delight. The family must live behind shop, as I learnt early on in my move to Coburg that with a ring of the doorbell they would open the shop (they did put this on the sign). It is a simple, small white tiled shop with quite a few platters of sweets behind a glass cabinet. Yum!

So that is what it means to have a local day in Coburg! Very satisfying.

Success at Screening of The Economics of Happiness

Andrew Lucas and Helena Norberg-Hodge

The Melbourne screening of The Economics of Happiness happened on National Permaculture Day, Sunday 1 May. I think fair to say it was a success, with around 300 people coming. The documentary showed both the negative impacts of globalisation on our culture and happiness and environmental and economical stability, plus featured many positive stories of communities who are relocalising, reconnecting with their neighbours and patronising their local businesses. 

 The Q&A Panel: Adam Grubb, Andrew Lucas and Helena Norberg-Hodge

After the screening, we had a Question and Answer session with the film maker, Helena Norberg-Hodge, and Permablitz founder, Adam Grubb, and transition initiative enthusiast and founder of Transition Bell, Andrew Lucas. Themes raised during question time included:

• how to include the older generation or ethnic groups that the sustainability/transition movement does not initially attract: pass some of your produce over your fence to your neighbour! Even if you don't share a language, you may find your neighbour starts handing you some produce of theirs. Andrew tried and succeeded
• what to do about going to a Permablitz and the first thing you do is head to Bunnings for a shovel (national hardware store that local hardware stores struggle to compete against): try your local hardware store, or Freecycle or Sharehood: not every house needs a shovel!
• how to get companies re-regulated so the people have more control: demand it from your politicians

One fact that interested people was a study on spending $100 at a bookshop. They found spending $100 at a book chain meant that only $13 stayed in the local economy, while $40-odd stayed in the economy if spent at an independent bookstore. This extra money went to management who were co-located, as well as services provided locally like accountants, lawyers and tradespeople.

My main aim for hosting the screening was to act as a catalyst for more local activity plus increase the membership of permaculture and transition initiative groups. Going by the buzz in the foyer both before and after the screening, I think the activity definitely affirmed many people were heading in the same direction together and were pleased to see they weren't alone. The groups who helped put the screening on (Permablitz, Permaculture Inner North, Sustainable Fawkner, Transition Brunswick, Transition Darebin and Transition Banyule) all had many people put their name down to find out more information. I'll admit, even though I organised the event on behalf of Permaculture Inner North, not many people put their name down for this. But it was great people connected with the other groups: there is a lot of crossover between us all. 

 The crowd

Thanks to Helena for appearing at the first Melbourne screening, to Adam Grubb, Andrew Lucas and Andrew McClelland for being on the panel, to the above mentioned community groups for spreading the word and to Moreland and Darebin City Councils who supported the screening both financially and through marketing.