Michael Green

Writer and producer

Cooling your home

In Greener Homes on

Choose cooling that won’t break the bank.

SUMMER hot spells not only induce BBQs and beach holidays, but also snap decisions to shell out for expensive air conditioners. Christopher Zinn from Choice argues that air con should be the last option, not the first. “People can – like lambs to the slaughter – be taken to very high energy use air conditioning systems. There are better, lower cost, lower impact options.”

In its ‘Your cooling options buying guide’ (available free online), Choice details a number of ways you can keep your home comfortable without purchasing a machine. The cheapest tactic is ventilation. Each evening, once the weather has cooled, open your windows to allow a cool cross breeze through your home.

To stop the heat entering to begin with, existing homes can be retrofitted with ceiling insulation, draught-stoppers and shading for north and west-facing windows. “Even if you have air conditioning, these things can substantially reduce your running costs,” Mr Zinn says.

For mechanical cooling, fans should be your first option. Phil Wilkinson, technical manager of the Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air conditioning and Heating, says they’re a cheap and low-maintenance solution on days that aren’t super hot. “Fans create a draught that helps you feel comfortable as it moves across your skin, but they don’t lower the temperature.” Desk and pedestal fans start from about $20; ceiling fans, from $50.

Evaporative coolers are another lower-energy choice. They cool by drawing air through wet filters and then blowing it out. “The running costs are minimal because they only need to power a fan and a small water pump,” Mr Wilkinson says. They work best in warm, dry climates, so they’re well suited to Victorian summers.

Evaporative coolers come in portable, fixed or ducted systems and range in cost accordingly, from around $100 to over $2000. Be wary of their extra water use – the bigger the unit the more it will slurp. Portables can suck up four litres per hour and central units more than 25 litres.

Well-designed Australian homes shouldn’t require air conditioning, but if you can’t do without, be careful about what you buy. “Choose the smallest, most efficient unit to suit your day to day needs,” says Mr Wilkinson. Residential models are labelled with an energy efficiency rating. “Our advice is to look for as many stars as you can afford – the more stars, the less it costs to run.”

The institute has created Fair Air, an online guide to choosing the air conditioner that best suits you. Portable and fixed wall models begin at about $500; split systems, about $1000; and ducted systems, about $5000. Make sure you use a qualified installer (visit the ARCtick website for more information).

As with heating, it’s wise to zone your cooling to where you spend time, rather than chilling the whole home. Dress down and try setting the thermostat to between 25 and 27 degrees: each extra degree of cooling will increase energy consumption by up to 10 per cent.

Mr Wilkinson says regular maintenance is required to keep both air conditioners and evaporative coolers running well. “You have to clean the filters and heat exchange services and check anything that’s getting noisy. It’s the same as a car, you have to maintain them to keep their efficiency to a maximum, so refer to the manufacturer’s or the installer’s advice.”

New parents and babies

In Greener Homes on

First-time parents must prepare themselves to stay green.

New mother Gabrielle Breen is very conscious of her environmental footprint – in the latter stages of her pregnancy, she spent time draught-proofing her house. But after her daughter was born, her priorities changed for a while. “In the beginning, I didn’t care if I used energy,” she says. “It was the last thing on my mind.”

She found out she wasn’t alone. “I’ve heard stories of parents who discover that flushing the toilet calms their baby, and so one parent holds the baby and the other flushes the toilet over and over again.”

In hindsight, Ms Breen says that with careful planning, new parents’ resource thriftiness need not go down the drain. “If you’re prepared beforehand it makes things easier. And over time, as you get on top of parenting, you can improve things even more,” she says, suggesting that over-zealous flushers try downloading a recording of ‘white noise’ from the internet instead.

New parents spend much more time at home so sealed gaps and boosted insulation will mean lower heating and cooling bills. “Keeping your home cool during summer is an energy efficiency thing, but it will also increase your comfort and your baby’s comfort,” she says.

The Moreland Energy Foundation (MEFL) runs short energy-smart sessions for new parents through Maternal and Child Heath Centres in the area. “We give information about what you can do to minimise your bills and ensure you’re comfortable without costing the earth,” the foundation’s Jessica Steinborner says.

A comprehensive information booklet is free to download from the MEFL website. The Energy for Babies Kit discusses common infant issues such as heating, cooling and washing. It also outlines a number of standard eco-wise measures, from low-energy lighting to water saving.

Ms Steinborner says that while anyone can make those changes, the message is particularly relevant for new parents. “Bringing a baby home is a life changing moment. Often people are planning a renovation or considering big purchases, like new fridges, cars or heating and cooling systems. New parents can either wed themselves to very expensive bills and a bigger carbon footprint, or they can make a clear step towards reducing their impact.”

When her old washing machine conked out, Ms Breen and her husband bought an efficient front loader, which uses much less water, and they’re thankful for their choice. “Babies are so small, I couldn’t believe how much washing you end up doing.”

The couple opted for reusable nappies. According to MEFL’s research, cloth nappies are a more sustainable choice than disposables because they reduce both landfill waste and water use – laundering a cloth nappy takes less water than manufacturing a disposable. They’re also cheaper. “Disposables cost at least $3000 per child whereas a set of cloth nappies costs up to $900 dollars, and you can use them for subsequent children,” Ms Breen says. “I thought reusables would be hard, but it’s been easier than we expected.”

She says that changing simple habits, as well as your hardware, makes a big difference. To help keep your kid cool in summer, she recommends natural air conditioning. “When you’re feeding your baby at night you can wrap them with a damp muslin cloth. During the day, wipe them with a wet facecloth, or put a damp cloth over the top of the pram.”

Book review: The Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel

In The Big Issue on

In his 2008 book, Stuffed and Starved, Raj Patel exposed the roots of a global food system that fattens one billion people while another 800 million go hungry.

This time around he’s skipped the entrée and devoured the big cheese: capitalism. Or more specifically, the idea that the price of something is a good indicator of its value (see the global financial crisis). Prices, he argues, are blind to ecological and social ills and “at best, only give a blurry sense of priorities and possibilities”.

Patel, an academic, activist and former employee of the World Bank, offers up a lively, easy-to-read critique of free market economics and corporate power. And where other recent critics failed to promote meaningful change (ahem, Kevin Rudd), he doesn’t shy away from the radical consequences of acknowledging that markets don’t sell magic happiness beans.

With examples drawn from Chile to Pakistan, Patel promotes a society sweetened by small-scale cooperation and infused with active local democracy. Whether you’re puzzled by economics or worried about the future, The Value of Nothing makes bracing and inspiring reading.

Four-and-a-half stars

Q & A with Michael Shuman

In Community development, Social justice on

Earlier this year I interviewed American economist, lawyer and writer Michael Shuman. He’s the author of two books on re-localisation, Going local and The small-mart revolution and a founder of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.

Shuman writes about the economic benefits of buying from locally owned businesses, arguing that the money you spend has a much bigger economic multiplier effect. That is, it circulates more quickly and more often, and in doing so, it creates more jobs, income and wealth.

As an example, he refers to a 2003 study in Austin, Texas, where economists analysed the impact of a proposed Borders bookstore against two local bookstores. They found that $100 spent at Borders would circulate $13 in the local community, while $100 at the local stores would circulate $45.

When we spoke, he began by telling me that the localisation message is spreading fast.

MS: I’m very struck by the similarity of the consciousness about various crises that are hitting the world – in finance, peak oil and climate change – and equally struck by the similarity of the solutions that people are developing at the community level. Frankly, everywhere I go there are profound and growing localisation movements.

MG: What’s the main thrust of your message?

MS: First of all, every time you spend your money you are voting for the kind of economic future you want. And if you vote with your money more conscientiously for local businesses with high quality local goods and services, there are a whole bunch of wonderful things that can happen to your economy. If you don’t vote that way, you’re economy is going to become hollower and shallower, and your prosperity is going to be imperilled. And I think it’s even truer for investment, because right now we have an investment system where everyone under-invests in local business. I think if we can change that, we can dramatically increase the number of local businesses and prosperity will flow from that. The two critically important decisions to think about are your purchasing and how you invest your super.

MG: What do you mean by ‘local’?

MS: I define local as the smallest jurisdiction in which you live that has real political, economic or legal power. So if you live in Melbourne, the city would be the relevant area. If you lived in a remote rural region, you might think of a larger area. It’s necessarily a flexible term, but the point that I like to emphasise is that local ownership means that the people who own the business live in the immediate jurisdiction in which it operates.

MG: You wrote The small-mart revolution in 2007, arguing that small, local businesses contribute more to long-term economic prosperity and community wellbeing. The world seems to have changed a lot since then – has your thinking changed?

MS: In the book I lay out a dozen trends in the global economy that were accelerating localisation. All of the trends have moved faster than I anticipated. For example, I never expected oil to hit $150 a barrel so quickly. It didn’t stay there very long, but it won’t before we get there again. Also, when I wrote the book, I felt that the conventional understanding about the financial system would make it very difficult to convince people to move into local stock quickly. But the financial crisis has so changed people’s perceptions about the risks inherent in the current system that it has really opened their minds to localisation in a huge way. I think the shift in global consciousness is profound and has moved much more quickly than I thought it would.

MG: You write that smart localisation is about being self-reliant and exporting – not about limiting global trade. So are you saying the ideas we have about scarcity aren’t accurate, and there’s actually great scope for growth?

MS: That’s right. It’s not a new argument – for example, look at the writing of Frances Moore Lappé with Food First, thirty years ago. She made the argument that the planet has more than enough food to feed people, but our distribution systems are corrupt. As the years have gone by she has increasingly talked about the importance of local food systems that feed populations first and foremost, and then we build trading systems for more exotic foods on top of that. And I think that’s true in all kinds of goods out there.

It’s not to say there aren’t shortages or profound challenges in moving communities that are in very high levels of poverty into a place where they can be active participants in the global economy. But in my work in the US I’ve seen that the poorest economies are the ones that are most predisposed to try new approaches because they have been most readily left behind by the mainstream economy. And when you’ve got little or nothing and you change your approach, a little of something that’s better can actually generate a lot quickly.

MG: But in the short term, if I’m spending more money locally, then someone else will be missing out.

MS: I agree with that – for example, the argument is that in the US we import bananas from Guatemala so if we figure out ways of producing bananas in hydroponic greenhouses, the peasants who are producing those bananas in Guatemala are going to lose out. I think the weakness of the argument is that the peasant receives such a tiny fraction of the value-added of that banana – probably a fraction of one per cent – that it turns out to be an enormously inefficient mode of helping that peasant. And so both the promise that trade-as-usual helps the poor, and notion of the harm that comes from changing traditional trade, both of those things are a lot smaller than people assume.

But there is a short-term cost and there’s a transition in that. What I would add is that it is in the interests of communities to share their best practices for free with other communities worldwide. We should all become part of a kind of open-sourced world of information about the technology, business finance and public policies that support localisation. Every community that takes this seriously should try to share what’s working and what isn’t.

MG: But isn’t localisation a trend that will inherently disadvantage developing countries – if wealthy countries become more self-reliant, won’t that punish developing-country commodity producers?

MS: I think there is something to that argument, but again, it’s clear that the kind of development policies we’ve undertaken have been a dismal failure for most of the world. In the places where they have been successful, like the Asian tigers and China, they’ve come with grotesque costs to the environment, human rights, labour rights and equity. I just really feel that creating models of community self-reliance around basics and sharing them internationally is going to be much more important to poor communities than any of these other strategies.

MG: Is it implicit that a localised economy will produce a more egalitarian society?

MS: In the United States there is a sociology literature on this. Basically, communities that are largely made up of small businesses have higher measures of social equality and, in some cases, even lower levels of welfare dependency. I think part of the reason is that in a community of small businesses where there’s a lot of local commerce, it’s a relationship-based economy. That is, both the employer-employee and consumer-seller relationships are rooted in people who know each other. If you know each other you have to act more responsibly because you can’t just pick up leave and hide what you’ve done.

Water restrictions

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Melbourne’s tough water limits will go on through the summer.

The state government recently announced that Melbourne’s Stage 3a water restrictions would stay in force until at least the end of March. The Target 155 campaign will also continue – in the year since it was introduced, Melbournians met the challenge, consuming an average of 153 litres per person per day.

“We’re about 100 gigalitres better than we were 12 months ago, which is roughly 100 days of water,” says Pat McCafferty, spokesperson for the Target 155 campaign. “But our storages are still at the second lowest level on record.”

Thanks to good spring rainfall and infrastructure improvements, water restrictions have begun to ease in many other parts of the state – to find out the rules in your area, ask your water retailer or visit the Our Water Our Future website.

McCafferty says that although most people have changed their habits, some confusion remains about the Stage 3a restrictions. “The most common pitfall is people watering outside their allocated watering days,” he says.

If you live in an even numbered property you may water your garden on Saturdays and Tuesdays. Odd numbered households can water on Sundays and Wednesdays.

Manual dripper systems, watering cans and hand-held hoses with trigger nozzles can be used between 6 am and 8 am on the allocated days (households with a resident over 70 can choose to water between 8 am and 10 am instead). If you’ve got an automatic dripper system, you can set it for between midnight and 2 am.

It’s prohibited to water your lawns or wash your car at home. “You can spot wash the windows with a bucket, but if you want to wash your whole car you have to take it to an efficient commercial car wash,” McCafferty says.

If your consumption is high, the bathroom is the first place to look – that’s where about half the household’s water goes down the drain. “We’ve still got thousands of efficient showerheads to give away for free, so contact your water retailer to exchange your old one and to receive a four-minute shower timer,” he says.

Once you’ve changed your habits and fittings, you’ll have to splash out to cut down further. “You can hardwire things into your home to make it more sustainable,” McCafferty says. “Things like drought tolerant plants, efficient appliances, and rainwater and greywater systems that capture and reuse water.”

For city veggie gardeners, any tactic helps. The continued Stage 3a restrictions make it tricky to keep the crop from wilting between watering days. Jonathan Pipke from the Food Gardeners Alliance argues that green thumbs should be allowed to water more regularly, so long as they stay within the 155-litre target. “There are all kinds of benefits to growing your own vegetables at home. On average, you use one-ninth the water of commercial producers.”

Despite his concerns, Pipke says it’s still possible to reap a bountiful harvest under the water restrictions. “But you have to be very diligent and prepare well for hot days.” He recommends rigging shade cloth over your garden and putting pots in the shade. It’s also wise to collect and reuse clean water around house, such as the water from washing your vegetables. “Because of the heat, you want to water minimally, but more often – don’t let the soil dry out and then over soak it.”