Michael Green

Writer and producer

Wastewater recycling

In Greener Homes on

A new project takes the waste out of wastewater.

WHILE it may seem polite to keep the lid on toilet talk, if you’re pursuing household sustainability, you can’t ignore your sewer.

Rita Narangala, engineer at Yarra Valley Water, explains that our sewerage system not only consumes buckets of potable water, but also demands electricity for pumping and treating.

“It’s something a lot of people don’t immediately think about, but sewage is actually quite energy intensive to collect and treat,” she says. “When you install efficient fittings, it’s a real double-whammy in terms of the savings in water and in the energy for supplying the water and treating the sewage.”

In Kinglake West, Yarra Valley Water is building a research project that changes the way the company deals with our pipes. It undertook a life cycle assessment of wastewater options for the environmentally sensitive area, which is bordered by national park.

When the plumbing and infrastructure is complete, up to 90 homes will have an alternative sewerage service, comprising urine diverting toilets, greywater treatment and reuse systems, and a pressure sewer.

The measures are expected to halve wastewater discharge, slash nutrient discharge by about 80 per cent, and cut greenhouse gas emissions by one-third compared with a conventional sewer.

One element of the approach in Kinglake West is a switch from “nutrient removal” to “nutrient recovery”; that is, turning the problem into a solution.

Presently, the high-nutrient content in effluent can cause pollution in our waterways and bays. It’s a problem that must be overcome by extensive and expensive treatment. At the same time, however, our farmers buy in artificial fertilisers in a quest to boost their soil fertility.

“Urine is rich in phosphorus and nitrogen, so diverting it is an easy way to capture a small fraction of the wastewater, which is nutrient-rich and relatively low in bacteria and pathogens as well,” Ms Narangala says.

Yarra Valley Water will work with a local farmer to trial the use of urine as a fertiliser replacement (most likely on a non-food crop, such as turf). Projects of this kind are well advanced overseas, especially in Scandinavia.

“Phosphorus is an essential plant nutrient – there’s really no replacement for it,” Ms Narangala says. “But there’s a view amongst scientists that reserves could run out in the next few generations. The peak level of production, after which demand outstrips supply, could occur much sooner.

“We need to find alternative nutrient sources – human waste is one, as well as efficiency gains in the way it’s mined and the way we produce food.”

While the solutions adopted by Yarra Valley Water in its Kinglake West project are specifically designed to suit local conditions, they’re a sign of changes in the pipeline elsewhere.

In sewered suburbs it’s more difficult to retrofit large-scale greywater and nutrient recycling all at once. But as urban infill and infrastructure upgrades continue, the utilities will seek out solutions that cut water and energy use, and turn nutrient pollution into a resource.

Ms Narangala says decentralised treatment and recycling may become more common. “Our infrastructure is in the ground already, but we’re looking at alternatives to simply replacing parts when necessary. Water companies recognise that we’re in a unique position to recover and reuse nutrients. The industry is assessing the best ways to build a sustainable sewage system.”

Read this article on the Age website.

For more information on peak phosphorus, see Phosphorus Futures, founded by researchers from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. 

Pacific islands face change that’s hard to believe in

In Environment, Social justice on

As the next round of climate negotiations continue in Cancún, the future of low-lying Pacific islands looks like a matter of faith. Written with photographer Rodney Dekker.

FAAUI Siale is sitting in her open-walled home, at the northern end of Tuvalu’s atoll capital, Funafuti. Three generations live here, side-by-side on a sliver of coral sand barely 50 metres wide. Ocean waves thump the land to her left, and a lagoon laps the shore on her right.

It is Sunday morning, and Siale sings along to hymns on the radio as a heavy wind blows and coconut palms rattle and splay towards the ground. To an outsider, everything about this scene seems precarious; but not to Siale – and for that, she claims divine assurance.

Tuvalu is the world’s second least populous nation, after Vatican City. Its 12,000 residents live on several reefs and atolls located halfway between Australia and Hawaii. Nearly all the land is less than three metres above the sea.

The director of the tiny nation’s environment department, Matio Tekinene, says his people are already suffering the ill effects of climate change.

Rising sea levels and more frequent king tides are causing coastal erosion and salinating the groundwater, making it hard to grow the traditional subsistence root crop, pulaka. The fresh water supply is now restricted to rainfall, which arrives in unfamiliar patterns at unfamiliar times. Coral bleaching is reducing fish stocks close to shore.

“Food security related to climate change is a very important issue for us,” he says. “Tuvaluan people, we live very much on our limited crops and marine resources. Nowadays there is a great change, because we have difficulty to grow these natural foods.”

But Faaui Siale, 60, is unconcerned. She does not accept that the sea level is rising. “I believe there won’t be any more floods, because of the covenant between Noah and the Lord God,” she says, with her daughter-in-law interpreting. “They made a promise during those days that there won’t be another flood in the world.”

It’s a belief shared by many of her compatriots. Recently, a survey conducted by the Tuvalu Christian Church found that nearly one-third of the population does not believe in climate change, based on their interpretation of the Old Testament.

In Genesis, Chapter 9, after the great flood subsides, God tells Noah there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth, and chooses the rainbow as the symbol of that promise.

Earlier in the morning, Siale and her family gathered next door to worship with their neighbour, Reverend Tafue Lusama, a minister in the Tuvalu Christian Church. The church is the country’s dominant religious organisation, with a membership comprising nine out of ten Tuvaluans.

Reverend Lusama, however, prefers an alternative interpretation of God’s pledge to Noah. “God is faithful to his covenant and He is not causing climate change and sea level rise,” he says. “It is human-induced, not divinely induced.”

The minister has built a low, concrete sea wall to protect his home. “Climate change is one of the church’s focal areas,” he says. “We believe that whatever impacts the lives of our people impacts the church, and climate change definitely affects the lives and the spirituality of our people.”

For the past five years, Reverend Lusama has been the chair of the Tuvalu Climate Action Network. The group coordinates the various NGOs who provide climate programs within the country, and also sends delegates to international forums, advocating for strong international action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“We’ve been raising our voices to be heard by the industrialised countries and the international community and still we are being ignored,” he says. “Land is equivalent to life in our culture. If your land has been gradually eroded by the sea, you are looking at your life being eaten away.

“Put simply, why should I die for the sake of luxury for others? That is injustice.”

Tuvalu is not alone among island nations crying out for deep emissions cuts by major polluters. At last year’s UN Copenhagen conference, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) argued for a legally binding agreement consistent with a global temperature rise of less than 1.5 degrees Celsius – a level that would give their nations a chance of survival.

They will take a similar case to this year’s UN negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, which run from November 29 to December 10.

Early this month, Kiribati – Tuvalu’s near neighbour in the Pacific – hosted its own meeting, the Tarawa Climate Change Conference. The President of Kiribati, Anote Tong, says the discussions sought to establish a more conciliatory atmosphere before the resumption of UN-sponsored talks.

“Some countries are more vulnerable now, but every country is vulnerable in one form or another – I believe the international community is in agreement on that issue. We should start by identifying the points of agreement and move on. Let’s not begin with the most contentious issues. Let’s work those out over time,” he says.

At the Tarawa conference, a dozen countries, including China, Japan, Australia and Brazil, signed the Ambo Declaration, affirming the “urgent need for more and immediate action” and calling for “concrete decisions” in Mexico. The United States, the United Kingdom and Canada attended the daylong meeting, but only as observers.

Kelly Dent, climate change policy advisor for Oxfam, says that while the significance of the declaration shouldn’t be overstated, it may be useful as a reference point for the coming negotiations. “Any conference that brings together these developing and developed countries, including China, is significant.”

She says that although the Pacific island nations will call for a legally binding agreement to be signed this week, they will settle for less, especially if there’s a push to fast track adaptation finance.

“If they see strong signals towards a legally binding agreement next year in South Africa, then I think that may be enough to satisfy them that significant progress is being made,” she says.

“People from these countries need reduced emissions but they also need to see well-targeted money to adapt to the impacts they’re seeing now, and they need to have a say in where that money goes.”

In Kiribati and Tuvalu, adaptation projects are already underway – from building sea walls and planting mangroves to prevent coastal erosion, to installing water tanks to supply drinking water and promoting home gardening as a means of strengthening food security and halting declining health standards.

But these measures are just the beginning. President Tong says his country cannot afford to cover its adaptation needs without significant international assistance. “With the resource constraints that we have as a developing country it’s not easy for us to address these challenges,” he says.

“The full impact of climate change is a tide we cannot stem. We keep moving back from the shoreline. In a country like Kiribati, with very narrow islands, the room to move back is very limited.”

Back on Funafuti, Reverend Lusama maintains hope. “We are optimistic about Cancún and what is going to happen there and the reason is that we cannot afford to doubt,” he says. “We believe in humanity and its ability to do the right thing at the right time.”

As the winds blow and the tides change by Faaui Siale’s simple home, it’s clear that she and her family are at the mercy of forces far larger than themselves, no matter her beliefs. The people of Kiribati and Tuvalu must hope their prayers do not go unanswered.

Read this article, and see Rodney Dekker’s multimedia show, on the Sydney Morning Herald website.

See the article as it was published in WA News:

WA News article 1

WA News article 2

Transition Towns

In Greener Homes on

Transition initiatives are spreading throughout our cities and regions.

IN Northcote, by the railway line, there’s a grand old apple tree. It had long since been neglected, until local artist Cat Wilson began photographing it through the seasons, and volunteers from Transition Darebin held working bees to clean up the site.

“Now we’ve put seats there and had lots of picnics,” says Sally MacAdams from Transition Darebin. “It’s become a lovely community area.”

It might not sound like much, but this small act of civic engagement is part of a big movement buzzing through the western world and beyond.

Transition Darebin is a member of the thriving international Transition Network. The first transition town – Totnes, in Devon, England – was launched in late 2006. Now there are over 600 active groups around the world, 60 of which are in Australia.

“We want to prepare our community for a turbulent time ahead,” Ms MacAdams says. “The government is talking about climate change, but not doing much, and it doesn’t seem like they’re considering it together with the prospect of rising oil prices.”

She says that as oil becomes more difficult to extract, the cost of food and transport could climb steeply. “We have to change the way we live. The approach transition towns takes is that we can change in a way that makes our lives better. We can improve the connectedness and resilience of our communities, mostly through doing and making things more locally,” she says.

The details change from place to place, but broadly, transition groups seek to remake their streets into food producing, low-energy, low-emission, tight-knit neighbourhoods.

In Darebin, which traverses suburbs from Alphington to Reservoir, the residents have turned their minds to their pantries. Among other things, they’ve formed a vegie and dry goods co-op, visited local growers and sellers, held a forum on food security in Preston and begun planning urban orchards with the council.

Australia’s first transition town was the Sunshine Coast. This year, residents there presented an Energy Descent Action Plan to their council. The plan sketches the region in an energy-constrained future, spanning issues from household efficiency through to transportation and the economy.

That kind of preparation is also being championed by the Municipal Association of Victoria. The association has created a program for local governments, called ‘Councils And Communities in Transition’, which includes energy descent planning. So far, 20 Victorian councils are taking part; the association is aiming for every council to be inducted by 2012.

Janet Millington, from Transition Sunshine Coast, says that while councils have a role to play in educating and supporting their residents, it’s important that local people fast track change themselves.

“We can’t wait for government – it’s going to be too slow,” she says. “We can’t do it individually – it’s not going to be enough. But if we work together in communities, it might be enough and it might be in time.”

Ms Millington says the scale of the challenge before us depends on the speed and severity of both climate change and the decline of non-renewable resources.

“Transition initiatives are about getting people to think, ‘Hey, what do we do when all these things hit?’” she says. “We’re all living on the same finite, self-regulating system. If we push it too far, it’s going to regulate us right out of the picture.”

Read this on The Age website. 

Rhythm of the day

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I LISTENED to music while I worked on Elizabeth Fekonia’s land: bluesman Howlin‘ Wolf – picking potatoes; Cuban singer/guitarist Silvio Rodriguez – potting seeds; Paul Kelly – making sweet potato cuttings; The Faces – digging holes; and Bob Dylan – weeding.

Yes, I settled into a nice rhythm at Black Mountain. I began toiling in the fields early, usually before 7 am, and worked until lunch. Then I wrote or interviewed people for articles. By evening, I was eye-rubbingly tired.

For the first few days, my legs were sluggish, but they became stronger. Some days I bounded up the paths. My muscles were weary each night, but I noticed that I felt more at ease: with people I met, with whatever task was due.

The physical work gave me a body-confidence to which I’m not accustomed, and it changed my state of mind. I wrote in a previous post about the practice required for me to gain faith in my hands and limbs, in the way they grip and move. After my time at Elizabeth’s I felt sure that I could be useful in whatever situation I chanced upon. Writing, on the other hand, makes me feel timid. I think it’s the contrast between observing and participating, hanging back and pitching in. On this trip I’ve found a nice balance: wwoofing, hitchhiking, writing and talking. It’s got me feeling grand.

When I left Black Mountain, the seeds I potted had begun to sprout and the seedlings I planted, grow. Soon will come the veggies. I planted fruit trees too, and daydreamed about the years, even decades, when people will pluck ripe peaches and nectarines from their branches.

Dusk at Black Mountain

Cross-ventilation

In Greener Homes on

Fans and ventilation will take the heat out of your bills.

Our electricity consumption spikes on hot summer days. But with utility bills soaring and climate change pressing, it’s time to turn off the air conditioner. There are cheaper ways to keep your home cool.

Andreas Sederof, from sustainable housing design firm Sunpower Design, says carefully planned cross-ventilation is a vital part of a well functioning home. It’ll help you harness each cool change on a stifling day and every fresh breeze in the evening.

If you’re planning to build or renovate, Mr Sederof’s first tip is that all windows are not equal. “To be effective, your windows must be sufficiently openable,” he says.

For example, awning windows, which hinge at the top, don’t allow as much breeze as casement windows, which hinge at the side like a door.

“Casements expose the whole opening of the window to ventilation,” he says. “In Melbourne, most cool changes come from the south and southwest. You can get the windows to act like chutes for the cooling breezes to enter the house.”

Mr Sederof’s second principle is to give the wind a free run of your home. “The building’s spaces should be organised in such a way that it allows cross-flow ventilation. It’s best to have the ventilating doors and windows opposite one another – like a good aerodynamicist, you need the air flow to be as unrestricted as possible,” he says.

According to Sustainability Victoria’s Air Movement guide, providing an outlet for the wind, as well as an inlet, creates wind speeds up to eleven times greater than only opening an inlet window. Larger outlet spaces to the north allow a greater volume of air to enter from the south.

Even if the southerly change hasn’t yet arrived, you can still passively cool your home each evening by venting the day’s heat.

“In summertime we often get still, clammy nights,” Mr Sederof says. “That’s when openable roof glazing, highlight windows or thermal chimneys can be very effective. Hot air rises, so it’s easy to evacuate. Cooling towers like those have been around for centuries in the Middle-East.”

When you open both a low window and a roof window (once the temperature has fallen outside) hot air will flow out and cooler air will enter. “If you’ve got low windows opposite small fern gardens or vegetation, you’ll replace that hot air with slightly colder air from the plants’ transpiration,” he says.

Ceiling or roof-mounted exhaust fans work on the same principle as high windows. They’ll extract hotter air from high in the room and draw fresh air through open windows. They can be either powered or passively operated. Make sure you choose models that have covers or dampers, or seal automatically if they’re not being used, so you don’t lose warmth in winter.

If your home doesn’t have good cross-ventilation, and you can’t retrofit it, ceiling fans are the next best bet. In hot weather, fans can make you feel a few degrees cooler. Mr Sederof recommends one fan for every 10 to 12 square metres.

“Fans rely on evaporative cooling. The air moving over your skin is what makes you feel cool,” he says. “But you have to buy decent quality ones – if you’re spending less than $200, they’re probably not good enough.”