Michael Green

Writer and producer

Cafe Nostalgia

In Culture, Social justice, The Big Issue on

Published in The Big Issue, with a beautiful illustration by Lisa Engelhardt.

Michael Green sips a bittersweet cup in Buenos Aires, a city that has survived the best and worst of times.

On my first day in Buenos Aires I caught the trail of lost love: a friend’s love, not mine. But then the sultry city lured me in.

Not long ago, my friend lived here with his Argentine girl. They had an apartment in Palermo, just north of the centre. A wrought-iron balcony over a shady street. His favourite café, Café Nostalgia, on the corner. ‘They make the only decent coffee in Buenos Aires’, he told me, but he mustn’t have minded the bad coffee. He lounged for days on end in cafés and cantinas, watching the old couples leaning close, listening to the secret card games in the corner.

That was after they broke up. Immersed in the city and lost in confusion, he delayed his return for months. Finally, he went home, for good, and one morning soon after, my plane landed.

That afternoon I walked past his two apartments, the one he shared with the girl and the one where later, he lived alone. As the sun shuffled through the leaves of the knobbly-trunked trees I imagined my friend’s memories. I imagined being in love with the girl and the city. I felt his exhilaration at carving a new, unusual life and felt his uncertainty at its end. I arrived at Café Nostalgia with a list of his old haunts in my hand: travelling alone, with a bittersweet trail to follow.

Bittersweet suits Buenos Aires. Porteños, the people of Buenos Aires, are famously haughty and brooding. Thirteen million live in the city at the mouth of Río de la Plata and history lingers and threatens them like a heavy cloud in the distance. In the last sixty years they have seen dictatorship and despair, war and torture, poverty and economic collapse. But they are famous too, for their reputation as lovers.

At the turn of the 20th century Argentina was rich. It sat among the ten richest countries of the world, and it’s capital bears the marks of wealth: boulevards, parks, plazas and opulent French architecture; tall, carved doors that lead to marble staircases; a blue art-deco spire growing between plain apartments.

But it isn’t so rich anymore. Another night, as I drank my coffee, a small boy hunched in the opposite gutter, ripping open garbage bags and pulling out plastic bottles under the yellow streetlights. In the café, the ceiling fans swirled, the football was on the television and no one paid the boy any attention.

After the peso crashed in 2001, the city changed. A new phenomenon emerged: Los Cartoneros. They are the ghosts pushing trolleys, scavenging the city’s rubbish from sundown, extracting anything recyclable and scattering the rest. It’s hard, long, degrading work for little return. My friend had told me about them before I came. ‘The city doesn’t quite know what to do with them’, he said.

In 2003, the government registered 10,000 cartoneros, but now no one knows the exact numbers. They come from the provinces and spread through the streets every night, catching the city in a great web of poverty, and maybe even sobering the rich and the tourists as they look out from their bars.

Tango, the tourist icon of Buenos Aires, was once the music of the poor. On Sundays, struggling Spanish and Italian immigrants dressed up and danced while the rich turned up their noses. Now, nightly tango spectaculars have become slick foreign money-spinners. At many community dance halls, though, young porteños are claiming it back.

‘On a Thursday night at Cochabamba 444,’ my friend said, ‘you can drink a few beers and watch the people dance tango.’ The doorway opened from a dark street to a narrow dance floor surrounded by simple tables and chairs. The crowd brought a change of shoes for dancing and hung their small bags from hooks on the wall.

With a flick of the eyes, the men asked the women to dance and the floor filled: firm bodies gliding, pausing, leaning; interlocking, kicking legs. They moved with eyes closed and impassioned faces, as though savouring the flavour of a fine wine.

The tango is heartbreak to a tune. Another night, in a small old bar called ‘El Boliche de Roberto’, two silver-haired tango singers played as a storm came down heavily outside. High up on the walls, the wooden shelves were stocked with antique liquor bottles now black and dusty. The young, fashionable crowd shared the anguished lyrics, mouthing the words and staring into their drinks. Then for one song, almost everyone in the bar sang along, and the sadness changed to joy.

Now I am back at Café Nostalgia, on my last afternoon in Argentina, already reminiscing. My plane leaves tonight. Here I am, looking out at the flower stall beneath the trees, daydreaming of the city. I followed my friend’s bittersweet trail, and I too, have fallen for his lost love – Buenos Aires. I never did meet the girl.

Waste not

In Environment, The Age on

Recycling is more than the weekly trudge to the nature strip: it’s the alternative resource boom. Meet Melbournians who are turning rubbish into a recycling revival.

ART

Ash Keating has taken in the trash. Truckloads of it. The 27-year-old artist wants to shock with the sheer bulk of waste going into landfill everyday. And for his Next Wave Festival show, 2020?, he’s putting it to better use.

Keating had five trucks of industrial waste dumped at the Arts House Meat Market in North Melbourne and asked more than 20 artists to shift through it to create sculptures and installations.

“We’ve got a connection with waste in our family,” says Keating. His grandfather ran a rubbish-removal service and his mother started a waste-management business.

The concept for 2020? came years ago, while Keating was working for Waste Audit. He saw potential art supplies squandered: “Being a visual artist and understanding how expensive materials are to get a hold of, it became really obvious to me that there was a huge gap in terms of the value of resources. I really dreamed about being able to intercept these trucks and take them elsewhere.”

Melanie Upton is also gripped by garbage. “I often turn up at home with rubbish,” the artist admits. “I have piles of rubbish in my house that I’ve collected.”

Her installation in the city, Beautiful Trash, features dozens of small sculptures – replicas of discarded drink bottles, cast in aluminium, plaster or concrete. A shiny silver milk carton stands next to a gold, deflated water bottle. Logos and colour schemes may have disappeared, but the brands are easy to pick by their distinctive shapes.

Upton believes there’s a message in her bottles. “I think this work definitely speaks strongly about the sort of consuming society that produces this waste and then people’s relationship to that.”

CRAFT

On the first weekend of every month, Sam McKean opens her colourful Fitzroy North store, Aprilmay. Betty Jo bird-shaped brooches, crafted from discarded lino and buttons, rest on an old, white shelf. Made By Maude ducks, hatched from reclaimed fabrics, perch on top of a wardrobe. McKean makes cushions and bags from 1970s furnishing fabrics and stretchy bangles from rolled-up tights. She thinks that demand for recycled things is growing as people are becoming more environmentally aware. But that’s not the only benefit of her stock. “There’s always a story behind every product,” she says.

Former history student Dan Vaughan is also captivated by the stories behind his Nearly Roadkill bags, wallets and belts. The 29-year-old makes his wares with car upholstery gleaned from motor trimmers. Years ago, while travelling in Europe and the US, Vaughan saw people making new goods from waste.

“I was attracted to it not just because it was recycling, but because there was a history embedded in the materials already,” he says.

Vaughan began Nearly Roadkill in 2006, using a “mega-industrial sewing machine that can go through anything”. He savours the thrill of the hunt for materials. “(The motor trimmers) don’t know what they are going to be throwing out every week. It’s always a surprise. When you find gold it’s really like, ‘This is going to be so much fun’.”

So what’s the message behind all these artisans’ thrifty flair? “The resources are non-renewable, unless we do it ourselves,” Vaughan says.

FASHION

“When you have limited resources,” says Ellie Mucke, “you’re pushed to come up with better designs.” In her hands, a man’s business shirt, nipped, tucked and turned back-to-front becomes a halter-neck dress.

The 28-year-old designer makes clothes from discarded shirts and slacks. “People buy them without actually knowing that they’re recycled,” she says. Fashion can be frivolous. Take this: according to a 2005 estimate by the Australia Institute, we spend $1.56 billion every year on clothes and accessories we don’t wear. Thankfully, a slew of local designers such as Mucke are making good from our mistakes. For their A Name Is A Label brand, Nicole Fausten and Lina Didzys make one-off clothes and jewellery. “(We use) any sort of materials we come across: anything from old clothing to tablecloths and curtains, pillow cases, ribbons or stockings,” Fausten says. “We believe in trying to utilise resources around us rather than going out to buy new things.”

Bird Girl – Sophie McAlpin and Anita King – share the lost-and-found ethos. They sew outfits on the spot in their Fitzroy store. McAlpin hails from a family of recyclers. “My grandmother was a dressmaker so, to pass time, she’d say, ‘Oh take these scraps and there’s a needle’. When I was really young I used to do lots of costumes. I’d be like, ‘Mum, can I have an old sheet? Dad, some fencing wire?’.”

Where the art is

In Architecture and building, Culture, The Age on

Two exhibitions are giving new meaning to the tag ‘artist-in-residence’.

Phip Murray sits in the cluttered lounge of her Collingwood house. “I’m one of those people who drags stuff home from markets or street corners,” she says. Two stuffed squirrels crouch in a small cabinet. The walls are a patchwork of paintings. “And I’m looking forward to more artwork coming in. It’s going to be great.”

Her small home is one-seventh of House Proud, a Next Wave Festival show constructed by artist and festival assistant producer Tai Snaith. Every second day from 17-29 May a different house will open for a one-off viewing, each with artwork specially made for the occasion.

Visual artist Rowan McNaught is working at Murray’s home. “I’m just going to fill it with even more stuff,” he says, looking around with a shy smile. “Just to exacerbate the situation.” With cardboard and scotch tape, the 23-year-old artist is building a colourful range of sculptures, including a microwave, an anvil and a full-sized rickshaw.

To mimic an open-inspection, Snaith has made flyers and flags (with the help of real estate company Hocking Stewart). “The artists are responding to what they see in the space but also to the person that lives there,” she says. Audiences will be invited into each house and given a floor plan and an artist statement.

But you won’t see musty rooms and peeling paint. House Proud features an eye-catching range of artists and mediums, from video work to a food-infused project. Two illustrators have created a giant octopus-like toy slithering down a spiral staircase. Elsewhere, a sculptor is working with thousands of bouncy balls and helium balloons.

The concept for the show came from Snaith’s interest in creating art outside the galleries and also her fascination with the line between public and private life. “People have this bizarre, morbid fascination with personal spaces that they don’t know,” she says, counting herself among those who fancy a sticky-beak over the neighbour’s fence. “So I thought, why not explore that and put some artists into personal spaces and encourage people to look at the stuff rather than just the real estate?”

Surprisingly, Snaith had no problem finding homeowners willing to bare their walls. Initially, she contacted friends and soon found too many takers. “I ended up calling the project House Proud because I realised that there is this group of people who are really proud of their houses, almost like it’s their baby,” she says.

Jeff Khan, Next Wave’s artistic director, is excited about the exhibition. “It’s a wonderful idea. It’s really playful and brings down the austerity of a gallery environment,” he says. “Even though it’s an unusual context for art to be found, audiences might feel less intimidated about going into someone’s home than going into a gallery.”

That’s one reason House Proud rests snugly under the festival theme, ‘Closer Together’. Khan also believes the show breaks down “the barriers between art and everyday life” and twists the way audiences experience art and interact with artists.

He’s attracted too by the closeness of the artists and homeowners. “Some people are getting along better than others…but that is all part of the process. It shouldn’t necessarily be smooth sailing. Sometimes the best dialogue comes out of the awkwardness of that interaction and…might lead to a result that neither the artist nor the homeowner would have anticipated – strange and wonderful things,” Khan says.

At her Wellington Street cottage, Phip Murray is happy to let McNaught do as he pleases. “That’s how it will work,” she tells him. “You’ll get the key, make some tea, put on some music and get to work.”

McNaught thinks it will take about a week to install his creations. To begin with, he was nervous about intruding on someone else’s space, but now that idea is framing his show. “It’s about making things that invade a house but are necessary to keep the house going,” he says.

Murray is curious to see the new additions to her collection and to think about the way, in this project, art responds to life. As for hundreds of people crashing her home, she’s relaxed. “It’s like having a party,” she says. “And house parties are the best parties.”

Groundhog Day

A university student is challenging our notions of land values.

“The saying ‘Dirt is cheap’ doesn’t hold anymore,” says David Short. The 25-year-old artist speaks with authority. He knows the city’s soil like the back of his dusty hand.

For his exhibition, Land Inspection Now Open, the RMIT Media/Arts student ploughed the earth of 99 suburbs, plucking 10cm-cubed samples from the yards of surprised homeowners right across Melbourne. The show is “a massive reaction to my generation…not being able to buy our own property,” he says.

During the Next Wave Festival, from 20-31 May, Short will bring the samples together as a grid at Seventh Gallery on Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. Every petite plot will carry a price tag based on median land values for each suburb. The Epping cube costs only $4.94 while South Melbourne makes the bank manager happier at $17.12.

“You can’t distinguish between each suburb,” Short says. “The only distinguishing thing is the price claimed on it.” During the exhibition, he will set the gallery up like a real estate agency, complete with leaflets and A-frame signage out the front. A performance artist-cum-settlement agent will even be on hand to assist interested buyers.

Short gathered his lumpy harvest by door-knocking residents at random. In return for their earth, he invited the land donors to the exhibition. As an upshot, Land Inspection Now Open is set to bring people together from all parts of the city.

The lean-framed artist, who sports a pierced nose and scruffy stubble, was pleasantly surprised with the supportive response to his unusual request. “Everybody’s been great,” he says, grinning as he recalls his only chastisement. “A really nice Italian lady told me ‘You should take this [nose ring] out’”.

The exhibition will culminate in a closing night faux-auction. But there’s bad news for anyone hoping to buy a tract of Toorak. “The samples deteriorate over time,” says Short. By the end, they will crumble together. “We’ll auction off one pile of dirt.”

According to Jeff Khan, the festival’s artistic director, it will be a fitting finish. “The idea of putting a value on a neighbourhood or a suburb is so arbitrary and will probably be completely different in another two years time.”

Khan says Short’s concept highlights the social and financial differences that separate the city, leading to lopsided property prices. But it “strips that idea back to its most basic element, in that the object of all this economic and cultural discourse is actually dirt.” Short agrees. “It’s just dirt we are sitting on.”

Tour of duty

In Environment, Social justice, The Age on

Want to shop with a conscience? Learn how to check out the ethics of the checkout.

In a fluorescent-lit side room of the Footscray Baptist Church, a dozen people are plotting to change the world. They’re going to start with their shopping habits. Already there are complications. “So you can’t assume it’s organic if it says organic?” asks Trudy, a community sector worker from Williamstown, looking perplexed.

“Definitely don’t make that assumption” answers Nick Ray, the leader of today’s ethical supermarket shopping tour, explaining that it’s best to look for logos that show the product is ‘certified’ organic. Gathered around Ray and his whiteboard, the audience nods and murmurs in agreement. 

Ray, 37, looks bookish in his glasses, black t-shirt and slacks. Along with cofounder Clint Healy, he began the Ethical Consumer Group (ECG) in 2004, aiming to compile a broad product list that would help people shop in a way that reflects their values. “I’d found that people with their everyday purchases were actually endorsing the things that they were protesting against,” he says.

Last year, Ray started running ‘Shopping with a Conscience’ tours. Tonight, he begins with a pep talk. “We can make a huge difference. It’s about empowering ourselves. It’s about reclaiming choices. Food is what gives us life, so this is part of a bigger journey of getting back to understanding the things that sustain us.”

Before braving the aisles, Ray holds a chat about the issues behind our shopping habits. Talk goes straight to the nitty gritty: Chocolate. Alas, the news isn’t good. One by one, each person brings up a new concern: food miles, fair trade, third world slavery, excess packaging, water wastage, overseas production.

There’s a lot to keep in mind. To help bridge the information gap, ECG recently published the pocket-sized ‘Guide to Ethical Supermarket Shopping’. The guide, available on ECG’s website, lists products in categories, from baking and cooking through to snacks. It rates the goods on environmental and social impact, treatment of animals and business practices.

Trudy, with her chin in her hand, is looking despondent. But Ray chimes in as gloom begins to take hold. “I hear you say, ‘Oh my goodness, there are so many issues in one block of chocolate. How can I do this without being overwhelmed?’”

He offers a helping hand, in the form of five guiding principles to think about as you load your weekly basket [see box]. Nods reverberate throughout the room. People are taking notes. Discussion continues and more concerns bubble to the surface – genetic engineering, embodied energy, home brand products. What is the right choice?

There are no absolute rights and wrongs, Ray says. Choices are all about priorities. For Alberta, a teacher from Geelong, priorities lie in social justice. “For me, fair trade is the most important,” she says. A self-confessed “big chocolate fan,” she has recently switched brands over concerns about one company’s alleged unethical practices in developing countries.

The supermarkets agree that customer preferences have been changing. Coles spokesman Jim Cooper says the chain’s product mix reflects “increasing customer interest in products claiming environmental benefits, or products promoting ethical considerations.” Woolworths too says it wants to meet customers’ needs and, according to spokesperson Benedict Brook, expects that its organic range “will expand in correspondence with demand and product availability”.

With the pocket guides and calico bags in hand, it is finally time to go shopping. People shuffle to the bright lights of the Footscray Coles in four groups, each one charged with buying different supper goodies: drinks, breads and bikkies, dips and toppings, and desert.

The toppings team strikes trouble, unable to find a dip that fits their organic wish list. Meanwhile, the bikkie trio struggle in their search for minimal packaging and appear trapped wandering back and forth between aisles. The desert squad opts for fruit salad in a bid to cut down on plastic.

The drinks buyers are first through the checkout, after choosing locally made thirst-quenchers. But distracted by their success, they forget about their reusable bag and have to ask the attendant to take back the plastic one.

Together again after the expedition, each group explains their choices while the listeners munch on the newly gathered harvest. Seasonal fruit and veggies and Australian products were popular, but it was difficult to find organic options or information on genetically engineered ingredients.

When the food is finished, the tour party lingers to talk more, with satisfied stomachs and whirring heads. Katherine, a botanist from West Footscray, is upbeat about her new shopping duties. “The prioritised approach was the best thing about tonight. We’re not living in a perfect world,” she says. 

Ray says he isn’t trying to tell people what to do. “Everyone has wisdom and sharing it will be the thing that moves us forward over the hurdles, whether it be climate change or whether it be fair working conditions in other places.” Everybody must take their own steps. “It’s all about drawing a line in the sand, but making it your line.”

The ECG runs ‘Shopping with a Conscience’ tours on the last Thursday of the month.

Five tips for sustainable shopping

Ask yourself: “Do I need it?” We often buy things we don’t need. According to Nick Ray, of the Ethical Consumer Group, 80% of consumable products end up in the bin within six months.

Remember: Every choice makes a difference. You may only be one out of 6.7 billion people on the earth, but your decisions count. Your dollar is your vote.

Don’t be overwhelmed. Learn about the issues behind your shopping, but just take on one issue at a time.

Go for the best buy. You won’t find the right product all the time. Choose as best you can, based on your values and availability.

Make new habits. Once you learn about a product, put your decision into action every time. Give feedback to the shop or manufacturer – let them know what you want.

Powering down

In Architecture and building, Environment, The Age on

A colourful new Geelong house opens the door on sustainable design.

“You can live well and you can live consciously,” Anne Wissfeld says. “It isn’t an either-or choice.” From high across the Barwon River, a red streak on her new home stands out like a crimson bolt of lightning. But don’t mistake the Queens Park House for a power-guzzling eyesore.

“For me, this house really connects you with nature,” says the architect, Mark Sanders. The corrugated iron roof is slightly twisted, matching the contour of the sharp hill leading to the riverbank. It looks sleek and unobtrusive among a flock of pitched-roof homes.

A combination of hard-nosed eco commitment and eye-catching design, this 200m2, three-bedroom house won the 2007 Housing Industry Association GreenSmart Building of the Year. It is also in the running for this year’s Royal Australian Institute of Architecture awards, to be announced in July.

As you approach the house, down the steep road towards the river, your gaze strikes the solar panels and solar hot water system on the roof. Then you absorb the vivid colours: window frames and doors painted in green, yellow, blue and red.

The walls are clad in sustainable plantation timber and there’s a patchwork fence made from cut off second-hand palings. A crushed, recycled concrete and brick path leads past the veggie garden to the red front door and north-facing sunroom. This is no ordinary abode.

“The brief was for a deep green level of sustainability in terms of aiming for 100% [renewable] electricity coverage and water consumption, as well as wastewater reuse and really sustainable materials,” Sanders says.

It’s a cool and bleak autumn day, but the temperature in the sunroom is well into the 20s. Sanders’s eyes light up below his short, greying hair. “Imagine this in winter?” he enthuses. Warm air can flow from here into the living area to keep the temperature comfortable without extra heating.

The block’s orientation made passive solar design a challenge. “We’re on a goat hill here basically,” Sanders says, eyeing the slope. “If we can get to clients to assist them in choosing sites, that’s always a great help.”

But for the Queens Park House, Anne and her German husband Jan had their hearts set on this south-facing site leading to the river. “We chose the wrong block,” Anne admits, a light brown bob framing her face. To maximise sunlight, the house is set well back from the street.

The sunroom opens onto a large, bright living area with white walls, featuring a polished concrete floor and a high, slanting ceiling. Next to the door, toy cars and trucks are strewn around a wooden railway track.

The Wissfelds and their two-year-old son moved in over a year ago. “We don’t have air conditioning and the house doesn’t overheat,” says Jan. A stay-at-home father, he enjoys the perks of the smart design. “The passive solar works extremely well in winter…it’s always very comfortable.”

Eco-friendly elements include double-glazed windows with external shading for summer, as well as insulation in the walls, floor and roof. The exposed concrete slab provides ‘thermal mass’. A heavyweight material, it absorbs and stores heat, helping balance out the room temperature between night and day.

Two skinny, horizontal windows look out over the river, keeping the gumtree view but cutting the amount of glass facing south. According to Sanders, this is a must. Even double-glazed windows still let out heat at between five to seven times the rate of an insulated wall.

The 39 year-old has focussed on sustainable design since graduating from Deakin University’s School of Architecture in Geelong in the mid-1990s. He started Third Ecology Architects with co-director Glen Rodgers six years ago, and staff numbers have now grown to ten. As specialists in sustainable construction, demand is high. “We’re just flat out,” he says. “Certainly there’s more consumer interest and more business interest. I think it’s the real deal, not a kind of fad.”

Tucked along one wall of the main room, the narrow kitchen is fitted with bench tops made from solid, recycled Victorian hardwood. At the end is a walk-in pantry, stocked high with jars and spices. Placed in the southeast corner, it stays cool year round. “Instead of having these bigger fridges, there’s a lot of things we keep in the pantry,” says Jan. “It’s more of an old style larder,” Sanders adds. A wicker basket brimming with tomatoes sits next to a small flour grinder full of grain.

The fridge and dishwasher are both highly energy efficient, like all the appliances and lighting throughout the house. In summer, the 2040-watt solar system installed on the roof generates more electricity than they need. The excess is fed into the grid, and the credits they receive balance out their higher energy use during winter. “We didn’t have a power bill for the first year,” Jan says, proudly.

In the garage the inverter shows that right now, under cloudy skies, the panels are putting out about 240 watts. Jan thinks it is more than the house is using.

Planning the house was an arduous process, but including a solar power system was non-negotiable. Inspired by eclectic Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the couple’s initial plans were, according to Sanders, for “a pretty crazy building”. “The whole house was curved.” Anne explains. “We had a stream running through the house. It would have been utterly amazing. And totally impossible to do.”

A soaring construction estimate forced them to cut some of the more unusual design features. “The essence of the house is the same…but the structure has been so simplified,” Jan says. “When we had to reduce costs we always looked at how [to do it] without compromising on the environmental issue.” In the end, including the garage and workshop space, building costs came in at around $2500 per square metre. Sanders says that’s about normal for a custom built home, and is quick to point out the house’s very low ongoing bills.

From the living area, a light green door leads into the bedrooms, bathroom and laundry on the west side of the house, each with a different coloured entrance. Sanders recommends low Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) paints and joinery finishes, as well as water-based coatings on all timberwork. As a result, the Wissfelds say the Queens Park House never had a noxious new home smell.

Sanders leads on to the laundry. Here, instead of a dryer, the home has an innovative drying cupboard. White doors slide open to reveal a deeper than normal space, with a duct for air circulation and a gunmetal grey ladder-like frame on the wall: a hydronic heating panel. Instead of a standard ducted system, the house warms up with hot water pumped through these pipes. “It’s the most efficient form of heating,” Sanders says. “It’s a little more expensive to put in, but the running costs are better than half. It’s quiet and a lot healthier too. There’s no air movement blowing dust around.”

In the bathroom, the heating pipe-ladder works as a warm towel rack. Nearby, next to a narrow window, is a short, deep Japanese-style bathtub. Rather than lie down, you sit in it, and plunge yourself past the shoulders. Sanders says it uses less water than a standard tub, but that doesn’t matter, because the house runs entirely on rainwater harvested on the roof. “It’s a very efficient water collector,” Anne says. Despite Geelong’s low rainfall, she says they haven’t used any mains water since they moved in.

Two 9600-litre tanks are parked side-by-side below the house. After rain, Jan dumps the first flush in a separate 700-litre tank to use on the garden. A filter and steriliser cleans the rest before it is put to use inside. “The water quality is better than what comes out of the tap, by a long shot,” Sanders says.

A yellow rubber ducky perches by the bath. But there’s no risk Anne and Jan will throw their baby out with the bath water: all wastewater stays on-site. Outside, a black tank pokes out from the earth. It is a vermiculture treatment system. Worms chomp through all the grey and blackwater before it’s filtered and pumped to the top of the block and for irrigation underneath the garden.

There’s no smell and no chemicals breaking it down. Sanders adds another benefit. “You’re not swimming amongst it,” he says. Normally, Geelong’s sewerage is treated at Barwon Water’s Black Rock plant and then pumped into the ocean. He believes the Queens Park House could be the first in Geelong or Melbourne to use a system where all wastewater is processed and reused on-site.

For Sanders, sustainable design is the future for his industry and he’s excited about leading the change. “The sort of technologies here are at the forefront, but in five years time, they will be the standard,” he says. Right now, energy smart designs are not beyond anyone’s reach. With good advice, he says, “you can halve energy and water consumption and still be cost neutral with whatever plan you have.”

The Wissfelds are delighted with their new house and glad that its sustainability can be used as an example for others to follow. “It’s about stretching the boundaries. Here’s a house right out to the extreme. What are the things we can learn from it and apply more generally?” Anne asks. But Jan, a keen wood worker, has one minor complaint. With a wry grin, he waves towards the back of the house. “There’s a little workshop down there. That’s the only problem. Don’t mention it. It could be bigger.”

Sustainable Design: the golden rules

Is small is good. Big houses use more of everything. ‘Honey, do we really need a three-tier home cinema?’

Face north. Plan living areas for the north side, to make the most of winter sun.

Reflect on windows. Go for double-glazing to cut down heat loss. North-facing windows are best, but shade them in summer. Keep east and west windows small – the lower sun is tricky to shade. Minimise windows on the sunless south.

Insulate. Good insulation can cut heat loss by up to 70%. Put it in ceilings, walls and floors.

Make it massive. Thermal mass, that is. Heavy building materials like concrete, brick and stone absorb and store heat, curbing the extremes of winter and summer.

Close the gaps. Be sure to seal all external doors, windows and exhausts. According to eco-architect Mark Sanders, gaps in leaky houses can add up to “having a one metre by one metre window permanently open.”

Use efficient appliances and fittings. Cut down on electricity, gas and water use. Choosing one extra star rating can mean savings of between 10-30% on running costs.

Go renewable. Super size your sustainability with solar panels and hot water, water tanks and wastewater treatment systems. Remember to cash in on hefty government rebates.

Picking up the pieces

In Community development, Environment, Social justice, The Age on

A Melbourne organisation is offering a second chance for people and products.

Every Tuesday morning at 9.00 o’clock, Nathaniel Davies goes walking. With his curly brown hair poking out from beneath his ‘Green Collect’ cap, he wheels an old Australia Post trolley onto Little Collins Street. He’s glad to be at work. “It gives me a chance to meet people, get some exercise and get out in the sun. But I even enjoy it when it’s raining,” he says with a smile.

Green Collect is a social enterprise: a not-for-profit organisation that provides recycling collection and other environmental office services to businesses in the city. To do it, it hires and trains people who have previously faced barriers to getting work.

The trolley wheels rattle as Davies weaves through pedestrians on the way to his first stop, TRUenergy, on the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth streets. Today, his route will lead down as far as King Street and then back via Little Bourke Street and Melbourne Central, stopping in at 23 bars, restaurants and offices along the way.

The softly spoken 32 year-old began working for Green Collect in 2004. Before that, he had been unemployed for three years. “I’m happier now. I’ve grown in confidence and I’m more comfortable with people. And I like that we’re doing good stuff for the environment,” he says, as he rolls up at Melbourne Central tower, to visit the offices of BP Australia.

This is where Green Collect began, back in 2002. “Someone at BP had a concept of employing people on the margins through some kind of recycling enterprise,” says the organisation’s cofounder and CEO Darren Andrews. “So we put together a team to run a pilot…and at the end we were able to show that the collections can subsidise someone’s wages and provide meaningful work.”

Green Collect now collects recyclables from over 200 businesses across the city, from cafés to corporates. For an annual membership fee, it picks up corks, bottle tops and aluminium, as well as e-waste like computers, mobile phones, printer cartridges, batteries and CDs. Altogether, eight people work on the collection, sorting and delivery to recycling plants.

The Green Collect office, off Little Collins Street, is small and cluttered with papers and gathered recyclables. Andrews, 36, waves his hands excitedly as he talks.

“We’ve had some staff who’ve come in and rebuilt their confidence and then gone onto full-time work. We see it as offering pathways to sustainability, creating employment for people and also making it easy for businesses and staff to take the environmentally friendly option.”

Andrews is tall and fit, and used to be a landscape gardener. “For a really long time I had a sense of connection between the community and the environment,” he says. But he “wanted to do more” and returned to study a Bachelor of Social Science-Environment at RMIT. He and his partner, Sally Quinn, run the organisation together, sharing the work so they can spend time with their two young children. “We try to maintain that ethos to balance work and life and our community connections,” he says.

Back outside, Davies is pushing his trolley along Swanston Street. One basket is brimming with corks. He parks under a tree on the footpath and heads upstairs to The Lounge. After starting the job, he changed his household habits and now always recycles. “I even have a little Green Collect bin which I take in every so often, with corks and printer cartridges and things I use at home,” he says.

A funky young waitress with an angular haircut calls out hello as she charges past on the stairs. Davies moved to Melbourne from Wangaratta only six years ago and he’s made some good friends through the collection rounds. He claims he’s still no man about town, but grins as he says, “I know a lot of people in the city now, from all different walks of life.”

The collections are having an impact around the offices too. Early last year, Clayton Utz became Green Collect’s first corporate member (now there are 22). According to the law firm’s Operations Manager, Jason Molin, it was a popular decision. “It’s been well received that they’re not just another mob out there pushing sustainability but they’re looking at long term unemployment and social benefits as well.” He believes the law firm’s involvement with Green Collect will not only change habits from nine to five, but also “beyond the four walls of Clayton Utz”.

That’s just as well, because climate change is promising a long list of challenges. Luckily, Green Collect isn’t short on ideas. It also runs green office audits that help businesses reduce their energy, waste and paper use. Next, together with Baptcare, Andrews and his team are set to launch “an ethical and environmentally kind op-shop” in Brunswick, and they’ve even got funding to develop a small-scale biodiesel plant.

Andrews laughs off the idea that he’s building an empire. “We’ve got grand visions of doing something simple. We’re about creating sustainable options and we invite people to be involved. It’s for the good of each other, for community and for the planet.”

Just before lunchtime, Davies rattles back towards the office to drop off his loot. Ever vigilant, he stoops and picks up a discarded soft drink can from the footpath. He’s more a listener than a talker, but he’s keen to find the right words to describe Green Collect. “I don’t know how to make it sound important, but it is. It’s totally changed my life.”

 

Pooling resources for a green future

In Architecture and building, Environment, The Age on

Many of us barely know who lives next door, but could sharing with our neighbours be the green future for our cities? Meets the Melbournians who want to change the way we live.

Giselle Wilkinson is dreaming of giving up her idyllic backyard. She lives on a leafy property in Heidelberg; a big block adorned with veggies, fruit trees, chooks and ducks.

Wilkinson is slim and fit, bearing a healthy glow from regular gardening and bike riding. The 54-year-old co-founder of the Sustainable Living Foundation has been walking the green talk for most of her life.

But now she hopes to take her commitment even further. She is working on a development that will put her land where her mouth is. “I’m only going to give this up for something better. Better for me means as sustainable and affordable as we can possibly make it,” she says.

‘Cohousing’ is a type of a residential development where your home is one of about 16 to 30 clustered around a common house and open space.

Picture this: just home from work, you lock your bike on the racks then walk to your door, chatting pleasantly with Mrs Jones on the way. Then you check on the kids, playing with their friends in the shared recreation room of the common house. A mouth-watering aroma wafts in from the common kitchen nearby. Tonight is shared meal night. Your dinner, cooked by your neighbour, is almost ready. You pour yourself a glass of white and put your feet up.

“I reckon you do it better when you do it together,” Wilkinson says. Cohousing residents own separate, self-contained homes, but regularly share meals and some facilities like a common garden, laundry, workshop and recreation rooms. But there are no hard and fast rules. Each project is different because the residents themselves drive the planning process.

Andrew Partos spent three weeks last year touring cohousing developments in Europe and North America. “These are not communes, gated-communities or religious sects,” he says, mindful of stereotypes.

With close-cropped hair and modern black-rimmed glasses, Partos is no alternative guru. He is a senior urban designer at VicUrban, the Victorian state land development agency and is keen to stress that cohousing can fit into mainstream city life. “In Denmark ten percent of new residential development is cohousing” he says. “People buy, sell or rent like anywhere else. They retain their independence but collaborate in the running of their community.”

Denmark is the cradle of cohousing. The movement began there in the 1970s and spread through Europe and then to the USA by the 1990s, taking root in California. According to Partos, there are 80 completed cohousing communities in the USA and over 100 more under construction.

In the developments he visited, Partos found that the supportive lifestyle attracted particular people. “There is a wide range, but…they are generally well educated, with professional careers ranging from childcare and teaching to engineers, architects, lawyers and doctors.”

Partos is confident the trend will catch on in Australia, pointing to its success in North America, where people also value the privacy and independence of their homes. He says VicUrban is keen to add cohousing to its development projects. “We see it as meeting many of our sustainability objectives. We’re currently researching and finding out where it might get some good support in Melbourne.”

For now, our suburbs look very different. We are building bigger houses for fewer people; half our homes now have only one or two occupants. On the fringes of our cities we have sown rows of costly, energy intensive McMansions. Stocked with appliances and poorly serviced by public transport, our houses are taking a growing toll on the earth’s fragile resources.

But our eco-footprint is not the only concern. We are also reaping a difficult social bounty from our building habits. Our suburbs cannot help but fashion our community life. “We shape our dwellings and afterwards, our dwellings shape us,” Winston Churchill said, wisely, in 1943.

Social researcher Hugh MacKay has tracked Australians’ belief that society is deteriorating. In his latest book, Advance Australia…Where?, MacKay says we tend to blame materialism, selfishness and a lack of connectedness for our social problems. But amongst this anxiety, MacKay senses a desire for change. “Many of the changes to our way of life have had the effect of fragmenting and isolating us and, in response, there’s a new craving for a sense of belonging. We like the idea of a small village, urban or otherwise. We want to reconnect; we want to feel part of an identifiable community.”

Cohousing offers reconnection. Residents usually try to establish a vibrant neighbourhood spirit. “The greatest benefit from a community point of view that you are creating a place where everyone knows each other,” Partos says. “If there is someone sick or elderly there are always people that will look out for them. The same with children, it creates a really safe environment.”

Housing affordability is also a thorny concern across the nation, but building smaller homes and sharing resources, like the laundry, tools and gardening equipment, can significantly cut costs. Crucially, this economisation is also a big plus for the environment. Partos found “universally high” eco-standards across the estates he visited. Typically, they had low energy, water and waste needs and encouraged alternative transport, recycling and homegrown veggies. “When you have a number of houses working together you can actually do things that individually would be very difficult and expensive. You can have very efficient central heating systems, or solar hot water systems, and the cost per dwelling is significantly less,” he says.

Ian Higginbottom, founder of Cascade Cohousing, in South Hobart, knows these benefits first-hand. Begun in 1991, Cascade was the first development of its kind in Australia. Within a short bike ride of downtown Hobart, they used passive solar design techniques to build ecologically sound homes.

But it wasn’t always easy. “We were held together by a common vision to build something,” Higginbottom says. When they finally finished their arduous owner-builder creations, old clashes surfaced from unresolved conflicts years before. “I could have rung people’s necks multiple times over,” he admits. “Any time you get a group of people together, that happens, it’s a part of being human beings.

“We were very lucky that we didn’t self-destruct about five years ago,” he says. Then, about a third of the residents decided to work hard at resolving the accumulated grudges and resentments within the group. The change was overwhelming. “All the tension went out of our meetings,” he says. “People who weren’t talking to each other started talking again.”

Higginbotham is now adamant that learning how to resolve conflict and deal with people is a crucial part of living in the community. “We’ve been through a learning curve and that’s incredibly fulfilling,” he says. “If we can’t make a community work with a set of neighbours, how do we expect our governments to resolve conflict and at a national and international scale?”

Despite Cascade’s success, there are still only two others like it in Australian cities – Cohousing Cooperative in Hobart and Pinakarri in Perth. With a red-hot real estate market, financing is usually the showstopper for new developments.

Adam Tiller, from Merri Cohousing in Melbourne’s inner north, says his group has been trying to secure land for six years. “We can get the money we need, but not quickly enough.” Despite its setbacks, they still have over 300 people on their mailing list and Tiller hopes that interest from Partos and VicUrban will boost their chances of success.

Back in Heidelberg, Giselle Wilkinson surveys her flourishing veggie patch, knowing it will soon disappear – albeit temporarily – to make way for the 16 units in the plans. With the backing of the not-for-profit organisation Common Equity Housing, she and a team of friends and volunteers have secured the two blocks adjoining her house.

They hope to begin the development within six months and she understands it won’t be all smiles and group hugs. “Sometimes even living with yourself can be hard. But this is about building our community and the resilience we need to face a very uncertain future.” She dreams that her blocks will become a “little haven on the planet” with links stretching far out into the community.

One thing for certain is that Wilkinson will build a future surrounded by people. She recently heard a story from another cohousing development. “Someone said it once took them 40 minutes to get to their front door from their push bike, just saying hello to everybody. I like that, because I think slowing down is a difficult thing to do these days.”

Having your own community, and independence too

Each cohousing development is different, but the blueprint looks like this: 16 to 30 self-contained houses are clustered around a common house and garden. Residents are independent. They own their own homes and buy and sell like anywhere else, but work together to run their small community.

Sharing – things like tools, a laundry and regular common meals – cuts costs, eco footprints and the isolation of suburban living.

Cohousing kicked off in Denmark in 1972, when the doors opened at Saettedammen, the first development of its kind. For the 27 families who built it, the goal was to create a greater sense of community than they found in normal subdivisions or apartment complexes. From then on, bofaellesskaber (literally, “living communities”) sprung up throughout the country.

Inspired by what they saw in Denmark, American architects Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett coined the term ‘cohousing’. Their 1988 book, Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, spawned communities across North America. Now, there are 80 completed projects in the USA and over 100 more under construction.

In Australia, although cohousing organisations exist in almost every state, only a few developments are up and running. But that is set to change.

Around the world … and closer to home

Pinakarri Community – Perth

The first residents moved into Pinakarri in 1999 and now there are almost 40 people across 12 passive solar designed houses in Hamilton Hill, a suburb just south of Fremantle. They eat three shared meals a week in the common house and work together to care for their permaculture garden. If you want to know more, why not front up for some food? They host open community dinners on the first Friday of every month. Bring a plate.

N Street Cohousing – Davis, California

Think cohousing couldn’t happen in your street? N Street is a suburban street like any other. But over the last two decades, 17 houses have knocked down their fences and begun to share their gardens and meals – they call it ‘retrofit’ cohousing. Someone even donated their home for the group to use as a common house.

Cohousing is coming to Melbourne

The Heidelberg team is on the lookout for people interested in their cohousing community. Plans are well advanced for a ‘dark green’ development: there will be 16 units ranging between two and four bedrooms, as well as a common house and veggie garden. www.slf.org.au/communities

VicUrban

The state land agency wants to put a cohousing development on one of its sites. For more information – or to say you might be interested – contact VicUrban.

 

Distance education

In Environment, The Age on

Food miles has become an eco buzz term, but what does it really mean for consumers and the environment?

Here’s some food for thought: your beef has itchy feet and your white bread has the wanderlust. According to new research by Melbourne environmental organisation CERES, your pantry has seen far more of Australia, and the world, than you have.

On the way to your waistline, a typical Australian food basket pounds the highway for over 21 000 kilometres, the equivalent of nearly twice around our coast. And that’s just road transport. Including travel by sea and air, your dinner covers over 70 000 clicks: almost twice around the globe.

We’re talking about food miles, a concept that has become entrenched in the minds of environmentally conscious consumers in Europe, North America, and increasingly, Australia.

The argument goes like this: if you eat food grown closer to where you live, it needs less transportation and therefore, causes fewer greenhouse gas emissions. The twin threats of climate change and peak oil are looming large on our horizon, but buying low-energy local food can help stave off the disaster. Sounds straight forward, right?

Unfortunately not. Even Sophie Gaballa, the co-author of the CERES research, isn’t sold on the idea. “Food miles is only one part of the full life cycle assessment of food. It isn’t everything; there’s also lot of energy going into production”, she says.

But Gaballa believes that despite this criticism, being aware of the food we buy is an important part of an environmentally friendly lifestyle. “Waste, water and energy issues are pretty well established [in the public mindset] and food miles is linked with all those things. It’s a good next step in looking at sustainability.”

Among the products she surveyed, the worst offender was Danish pork sausages clocking in at over 25 000 kilometres. Chocoholics despair, your guilty pleasure weighs in at a chunky 14 500 kilometres. In the fresh fruit and veggie aisle, lettuces were the best at only 54 kilometres and bananas the worst, notching up 2746 long kilometres in the journey south from North Queensland.

If you’re looking for a low carbon diet, there’s now even a restaurant that can help you shed those excess kilos – kilometres, that is. The 100 Mile Café, in Melbourne Central, sources nine out of ten products from within 100 miles (160 kilometres) of the CBD. Ballarat is in but Ararat is out, Euroa yes but Echuca no.

The café’s ingredients list makes quirky reading: blueberries from Foster, rabbit from Lara, horseradish from Alexandra, eel from Skipton and walnuts from Bannockburn, just to name a few. According to restaurateur Paul Mathis, the closest product they source right now is spinach from Werribee South, just 30 kilometres away.

The ‘Locavores’, four women from San Francisco, coined the 100-mile slogan when they brought food miles issues to the table in 2005. They attracted media coverage in spades by challenging their bay-area neighbours to only eat food from within a 100-mile radius for the whole month of August that year. The movement’s popularity has grown and last year’s challenge, held in September, had thousands of participants from all over the USA.

For the Locavores, eating locally is not just about reducing our impact on the environment; it’s also about “our health, our communities and our tastebuds”. They believe local food tastes better and contains more nutrients. Your local dollar will also help revive the sagging fortunes of smaller farms and stimulate a sense of connectedness with your surroundings.

Across the Atlantic, UK retailers are leading the food miles race. Supermarket chain Tesco has begun work on a product labelling system to inform customers about the carbon footprint of each purchase. In March last year, the department store Marks and Spencer began special labelling for food imported by air. The company has also committed itself to sourcing as much food as possible from within the UK and Ireland.

This is when things start to get a little tricky. Australia is a significant agricultural producer: grain, beef and wine are our top three agricultural exports. In the year ending July 2007, these exports were worth a staggering $12.7 billion – more than triple our international aid contribution. Our farmers and our economy have a lot to lose if the Brits take exclusively to local fare.

Chief executive of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia, Stephen Strachan, says that although there hasn’t been any impact on Australian wine exports to the UK just yet, “it’s pretty obvious it’s coming”. Strachan says he completely supports people’s desire to purchase eco-friendly products, but he argues that while carbon emissions are important, “so are issues like water use, efficiency and biodiversity…yet food miles doesn’t recognise the initiatives we’ve undertaken in those areas”.

For now, the Australian retailers are not pushing the same barrow as their UK counterparts. Coles spokesman, Jim Cooper, says that the supermarket chain is aware of the debate and also conscious of the “differing views of food miles as an environmental impact measure”. He says that “food labelling issues such as food miles are best addressed at an industry and government level, with representatives from all interested parties”. As it stands, Australian consumers are unlikely to see the miles on our aisles any time soon.

According to Steve Dowrick, Head of Economics at the Australian National University, our economy and the environment are not the only things to consider. “The other issue, which I think this type of debate seems to forget about, is what the impact would be on the producers of foodstuffs in developing countries,” he says.

“I’m concerned about carbon emissions, but I’m also concerned about the hundreds of millions of people in the world living in absolute abject poverty and with very low life expectancy and very high rates of illness and infant mortality”.  Dowrick says that while trade isn’t a panacea for global poverty, it is a key part of the solution.  “To cut down trade with the people who are already in hopelessly miserable poverty would make them even worse off”, he argues.

Dowrick is not saying it is wrong to buy local food, but suggests that if you are concerned about poverty as well as the environment you should consider the impact of not buying products from the third world. “People have to make their own minds up”, he says. “We would like them to have adequate information so they can come to the right judgement about what is most important to them.”

With such complex and conflicting priorities, finding the right information is a hard road to hoe. So what’s an eco-friendly consumer to do?

Tim Grant is working on the answers. He’s the manager of life cycle assessment at RMIT University’s Centre for Design. His team looks at the environmental impact of products all the way from the paddock to the plate. They don’t just assess transport emissions, but also the effects of production, processing and packaging.

Grant doesn’t think consumers should ignore the food miles debate altogether. “Food miles are a great way to begin a conversation,” he says. “We find out transport is maybe five or ten percent of the environmental impact. Then what’s all the other stuff? In food, it’s the use of land and fertilizer. Well, what are those things connected to? How can we reduce those?” he asks.

Grant says we need to compare the energy used to transport fresh produce against the energy eaten up by packaged goods and products grown products locally in unsuitable climates. His advice is that “your first priority would be to eat seasonal foods and then to work down from there. It’s a really ripe area for some research, excuse the pun.”

Gaballa also has some tips for the consumer who wants to make a difference. “Perhaps try to buy local food, eat in season or grow food in your own backyard if can. You could look at joining a food-co-op or visiting farmers markets. If there are organic options available and it’s affordable then that is ideal.”

Community education is a major goal at CERES; every year, over 60 000 students visit its site on the Merri Creek in East Brunswick. Gaballa has now added food miles issues to its education programmes. She hopes that her research will prompt people to consider where their food is coming from. “How is it grown? Is it something you want to know more about?” she says.

“I was teaching about organic farming and a student was looking at our carrot beds quite intently and said ‘How long before you start to see the carrots hanging off the branches?’ And it just hit me that we don’t know what food looks like when it grows”, Gaballa says. “But how would you know how a carrot grows? Because as far as the kids are concerned, carrots come from the supermarket.”

Seasonal fruit and veggies in Melbourne

Spring: asparagus, broad beans, chives, broccoli, parsnip, rhubarb, shallots, strawberries.

Summer: apricots, beans, beetroot, capsicum, cherries, chives, chillies, corn, cucumbers, eggplants, garlic, grapes, leeks, melons, peaches, plums, potatoes, raspberries, rhubarbs, shallots, squash, strawberries, tomatoes, zucchinis, basil.

Autumn: beetroot, cauliflower, grapes, garlic, leeks, parsnip, peas, pears, potato, pumpkin, spinach, sweet potato, chestnuts, walnuts.

Winter: broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbages, cauliflower, leeks, mandarins, oranges, parsnip, peas, spinach, chestnuts.

All year round: apples, carrots celery, grapefruit, lemons, lettuce, spring onion, onion, radish, silver beet, parsley.

Globe trotter

In Environment, The Age on

A Melbourne inventor’s illuminating idea could dramatically reduce lighting energy use all over the world. But he wasn’t even trying.

“The prospects are bright,” Graeme Huon says, and the pun is intended. The 58-year-old Mt Waverley man is the inventor of an energy efficient light globe that promises to revolutionise the way we light, well, pretty much everything. “This could be the next generation of lighting,” he says.

The technology, which he calls ‘controlled plasma’, will be a godsend for the environment. “Not only is it lower energy consumption, but it’s a much longer life product,” Huon says. His globes use one tenth of the energy of a standard 50-watt downlight and with a life of 15,000 hours, they last about ten times longer than the next best offering.

Huon rattles off features with pride. The globes are very small and will come in a range of colours, including the warm white of standard bulbs. They can be individually dimmed, are fully compatible with existing wiring, and over their lifetime will cost about half what we are used to paying.

And there’s more. The lights have in-built sensors that can be set to follow you around the house and can regulate their output according to the level of natural light at any given time.

But that’s not all, “Now for the steak knives,” Huon says. Each socket has a unique code, which means that if you want, you can control any light in the house from one switch – without any rewiring. “When I show people this, they just go ahh! and suddenly they say ‘But that means I can control the front when the visitors are coming’,” he says, smiling.

How is all this possible? Right now, our standard incandescent globes, halogen downlights and fluorescent tubes all need filaments and generate heat as well as light. Even low energy compact fluorescent globes need mini-heaters in the base to make them work.

In contrast, Huon’s globe is a “totally cold operating light”. The technology is a combination of three existing lights that don’t use filaments – neon, cold cathode and high intensity discharge – along with a new controller to regulate the way it works. “You can grab hold of it and not burn yourself and that indicates that it’s very efficient,” Huon says.

In time, the technology could be used in the whole range of lighting applications, from reading lamps to night-lights on sporting fields. But for the moment, Huon and his team have fashioned his invention into a product that will directly replace the current halogen downlights. They’re the little globes that sit flush with your ceiling and usually appear in rows, especially in newer houses or renovations.

“The halogen light is one of the worst wasters of energy. It has a short life and it gets extremely hot, which means you have to use expensive materials instead of plastic fittings,” Huon says. “In countries where it’s hot, you need air conditioning just to extract the heat generated by the lights. And yet they are ubiquitous.”

Getting rid of these greenhouse guzzlers could make a significant dent in our national energy use. “If we were to replace 75% of lights in homes with these globes in the next five years, we could save building one new power station,” Huon says.

Ever since Edison saw the light, new ideas have been shown as a glowing overhead bulb. But Huon, a world-leading inventor in acoustic technology, didn’t even set out to develop an efficient light. “We weren’t in lighting, we came at it from doing a lighting package for home cinema. I just said, well we need to make a better light. And we did and somebody told Canberra and all hell broke loose.”

That’s no surprise, because this technology may be a key to Australia phasing out inefficient bulbs by 2009-10 under targets announced earlier this year by Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Huon first developed the technology three years ago and now, his business CP Envirotech is moving quickly towards full commercialisation. “We began production in January this year and we’ll be shipping to customers in April,” Huon says. “They’re coming to a lounge room near you.” And after your house, next stop the world.

With his controlled plasma globes lighting the way, Huon is upbeat about our capacity to overcome just about any hurdle. “If you clearly identify what the problem is and then have no preconceptions about what the solution is, I reckon you can solve it every time.”

Kicking the footy habit

In The Age on

First published in The Age

THERE’S a culture of abuse in AFL football. OK, so some players have white-line fever on and off the field, but that’s not what I mean. My problem’s different.

I’m a Sherrin addict. That’s it. I’ve finally said it. I just can’t stop watching my team boot that ball.

In a writing class earlier this year, our lecturer began a weekly segment in which two students would interview each other, in front of the class, on a subject of their choice. The topic, he said, should be a hobby or interest of ours. Something we were passionate about.

That was when I first realised I had the habit. It finally twigged, much to my dismay, that I have no hobbies and know nothing about anything in particular. Nothing, that is, other than the Richmond Football Club.

My fellow students are mature-age writers in an esteemed creative writing course. I couldn’t very well admit such lowbrow tastes.

Football, after all, is the very antithesis of intellect. Through an ever-expanding winter, we are subjected to pages of print and hours of meaningless monosyllabic footy banter. Commentators ceaselessly construct mountains from molehills.

Now, at the end of the regular season, the September king tide of football-fuelled folly is upon us. Waves of cross-dressing misogynistic ex-players will soon flood our screens. This is the month when our addiction really takes its toll and, with Victorian teams in the hunt for the flag, there may be no other news to report.

Imagine, for a moment, that the national football wisdom, with all its detail, nuance and historical perspective, was instead turned to art. Or better yet, to science. Imagine all the fervent debates on tactics and all the hours spent watching game upon game were turned instead to the betterment of humanity. To a cure for cancer perhaps, or the development of renewable energies. Such a civilisation we would be.

Yet every home game in this dismal black and yellow season I walked to the ground with the ceremonial beat of culture in my chest. I felt connected to the others striding through the park today and to those from years and decades gone by. I walked with the hope for a close game, or at least a flash of brilliance from a new young player.

I stood in the same place and I knew that my Tiger friends would be there. We don’t need to plan. We just front up and launch into debate about the team for the week. When the game starts we growl and gesticulate in time with the play. This season, lose, lose or lose, I walked home with my earpiece while ignorant talkback callers bagged Richo.

My weekly football ritual, like family, gives me my place. It binds me to this town, to this year and last year, and to the hope of the year to come.

In a time where the same junk food is found in every big city and where media is merging the western world into one, footy is something distinctly Australian. Like us, the game was born of the meeting of cultures, from the indigenous game Marn Grook and from Gaelic football too.

Despite the futile expansionist policy of the AFL, Aussie Rules isn’t going anywhere. The Japanese and South Africans just aren’t interested. It’s our sporting oddity, stranger even than cricket, and that’s no easy beat.

Don’t get me wrong. Following the game isn’t a citizenship test, nor a call to dreaded nationalism. No one has to like it and it’s a good thing that not everyone does.

As the finals begin, we junkies should reflect on the possibility that the advance of civilisation might be hampered by our collective Sherrin addiction. Then we’ll head off to the game, thump our bellies and revel in the eccentric passion all of our own.

The writer’s triumphant endnote: A few months into semester I came clean to one classmate about my weekly habit. My bold move paid off: he was a diehard Demon fan and the very next week the Tigers flogged them. The first win of the season.