Michael Green

Writer and producer

Sustainable House Day

In Architecture and building, Environment, The Age on

On Sustainable House Day, Sunday September 13, eco-conscious stickybeaks can learn from the people who know best. Visit two Melbourne homes open for inspection.

Lorraine Hughes has shown over 1300 people through her two-bedroom sustainable home in Knoxfield. “I’m into education,” she explains. “I just invite people, left, right and centre.”

She’s got it down to a well-practiced art, complete with information boards and pamphlets. The diminutive and dedicated 73-year-old begins her tour across the road, looking back at her home. “The house says ‘Solar, solar, solar, solar’, right?”

Right. The cream-coloured house has a long north-facing aspect, and it’s sprouting solar power. There are thickets of photovoltaic panels on the roof – some gathered towards the back and others standing proudly at the front like sails in the wind. There’s also a solar hot water system and two solar ventilation units.

“I’ve got a 4.5 kilowatt (solar PV) system and it will be providing clean green energy long after I’m dead and buried,” Ms Hughes says.

She built the house – designed by Andreas Sederof from Sunpower Design – for her retirement in 2001. “I wanted to downsize, stay local and build a house in suburbia,” she says. “My aim was to be as sustainable as possible on a small block that looked the same as everybody else’s.”

The home is self-sufficient in water and, over the course of a year, produces electricity well in excess of its needs. The building materials and finishes were chosen for their low embodied energy, wherever possible.

After discussing the technical details of solar power, Ms Hughes heads back over the road, around the front fence – made from radial cut timber, to minimise waste – and through her gate to the waterworks.

She has an enormous 27,240-litre rainwater tank, which captures the runoff from all her gutters. Further around the back, past the citrus trees, her greywater treatment system collects wastewater from the washing machine, showers and bathroom basins. The peat-treated outflow is used in the garden and toilets.

Ms Hughes’s interest in sustainable living began in her childhood – her parents planted veggie patches and fruit trees and kept farmyard animals wherever they lived. “I travelled in my youth too,” she says. “I worked in third world countries, so I’ve seen life from a different perspective. There’s nothing new about living sustainably.”

She also has a full grasp of the latest technology. After years of going to talks and short courses, she studied energy auditing and sustainable building design for a year at Swinburne TAFE. “I enjoyed it up to the hilt. I hadn’t been back to school for over 50 years,” she says.

Inside her home, there are all kinds of details to take in, from the smart solar passive design, cross-ventilation, double glazed windows, clever blinds, and eco-friendly fittings and finishes.

Ms Hughes has spent years attending to every detail, but she wants to illuminate, not intimidate, her visitors.  “You don’t have to do what I’ve done. I always tell people: if you’ve got an existing house, concentrate on one room at a time. Do the things that you can – insulate, seal your gaps,” she says. “And the most important part of all is the person living in the house.”

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A tour of Cameron and Karin Munro’s house in Malvern begins in the small front yard. Mr Monro scratches at a patch of red stones to reveal a shiny metal plate. “The downpipes all feed into a stormwater exit that just runs underneath our feet,” he says.

From there, the water is diverted and pumped to a tank at the back of the house, which feeds the laundry and toilets. The saving has helped the Monros cut their consumption down to just 45 litres each per day, less than a third of the state government target.

The couple bought their neat, late 19th century weatherboard cottage in 2007, after moving to Australia from Europe. Ms Monro, from Sweden, had shivery memories of accommodation down under. “I spent a year in South Australia as an exchange student,” she says. “Temperature-wise, the winter was nowhere near northern Europe, but I’ve never been as cold as I was then, because there was no heating except a wood stove at one end of the house.”

Mr Monro, an Australian engineer and transport planner, had also become accustomed to smarter housing design. “Sweden has an extreme climate and they’ve built houses to match it,” he says. “The Australian climate is also extreme, but I think we’ve lost our way in building for it.”

So the couple decided to blanket their house in insulation – they doubled the batts in the roof and injected expanding foam in their walls. The tour’s next stop, at the weatherboard side wall, provides the evidence. It’s dotted with patched-up holes where the foam was squirted in between studs.

It’s slightly spotty inside too, on the ceiling, where the Monros have removed 21 power-hungry halogen downlights. In their lounge area alone, their lighting energy use has tumbled from 250 to 15 watts.

The extra efficiency has helped them to consume only about as much electricity as they generate with their 1 kilowatt solar photovoltaic system. “I think solar PV is brilliant,” Mr Monro says. “You just get it installed and do nothing – that can’t be beat. There’s no greasing, noise or any ongoing maintenance costs. It just sits there and ticks away.”

Double-glazing proved the biggest expense. They replaced nearly all the window units in the house. “The new windows are incredibly expensive but incredibly good,” he says. “They cut down the noise as well as improve the thermal performance. You feel it walking around the house.”

All up, Mr Monro estimates they’ve spent between $35,000 and $40,000, of which the windows took up about two-thirds. “It’s not a financial thing because the economics currently just don’t stack up,” Mr Monro says. “It’s really an ethical thing about our futures and that of our baby, Sophia.”

“And also about the quality of living and comfort,” Ms Monro adds. “The house is so much nicer now.”

She’s got a cosy message for people who visit their home. “It is possible to retrofit an existing house. You don’t have to buy a new house or demolish and build again. You can reduce what you’ve got and make a big difference.”

Sustainable House Day will be held on September 13, 2009, from 10am to 4pm. Across the country, 170 homeowners are participating. In Victoria, there will be 45 homes open to visitors, all for free.

Primate fear

In Environment, Social justice on

 

The orangutan population may be dangerously low, but conservationist Dr Willie Smits has made a place for hope.

What should you do if an army colonel comes home while you’re confiscating his orangutan? For Dr Willie Smits, the Dutch-born founder of Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS), the unexpected clash became a near-death experience.

“He pulled his gun, chk chk, on my chest…‘I’m going to kill you here and now’.” Smits recalls as he jabs at the spot the weapon hit him. “But you still have to be able to remain quiet, look him in the eyes and say ‘Colonel, you know the punishment for having an orangutan and…for shooting a man. You take your pick’.”

This frightening encounter is just a glimpse of the 52-year-old’s intense commitment to the survival of the orangutans, our closest and most intelligent primate relatives.

Smits visited Australia in 2008 to promote his co-authored book, Thinkers of the Jungle. His dedication to the red apes vibrates through every sentence he utters. “I want to show what marvellous beings orangutans are,” he says. “They are so altruistic and really, they are the better humans. So it’s a genocide that is taking place.”

With over 200 staff across four different sites in Borneo, BOS is the world’s largest primate protection organisation. Smits, who holds a doctorate in forestry, works “20 hours a day, seven days a week,” nurturing those in his rescue centres and campaigning against the illegal logging and animal traders that threaten them.

There are only about 57,000 wild orangutans left in Indonesia and Malaysia. At the current rate of decline, BOS believes that the primates could be wiped out by 2015. “If we cannot even save orangutans, then what hope is there left for the rest of the world?” Smits asks.

Smits is tall and broad. His brown eyes flare and his voice simmers with rage as he speaks about the clearing of forests to satisfy overseas demand for timber and palm oil – now an ingredient in everything from ice cream and chocolate, to toothpaste and pet food. He’s outraged and bewildered by consumer apathy in western countries. “I don’t think anyone who understands the injustice that is happening to the orangutans and the local people could sit still and do nothing. I cannot imagine that.”

His own path to action came by chance. One evening in 1989, while working as an advisor to the Indonesian forestry minister, he saw a sick orangutan baby thrown on a rubbish heap in Balikpapan, a coastal town on Borneo. He decided to look after it and from that moment on, more and more red apes were delivered into his care. Two years later, running out of room at his home, he established BOS.

Despite the passing years, the first orangutan remains the most special to him. He called the baby Uce, after the sound of her heavy, strained breathing. When it came time for her release in 1992, she refused to go. Smits consoled the ape and offered her a leaf as a parting gift.

In 1998, he saw Uce again. “I really thought I’d lost her in the forest fires, but then we found her and she had a baby,” he says, his anger vanishing as he recalls their reunion. “She took me to a Licuala palm and she bit off a leaf and gave that to me. That was the same leaf, the same species I gave to her. She knew I would understand that she was saying thank you after all these years,” he says.

That’s just one example of the intelligence and culture that Smits says he sees everyday, from fishing and tool use, to self-absorbed preening before a mirror. As he flicks through the photos in his book, he points with pride at his primate friends, his voice now brimming with care and admiration. “Orangutans put flowers in the edges of their nest. They have aesthetic feelings. And how they love to look at themselves in pictures,” he says, laughing. “They start posing.

Despite the dire outlook for the species’ survival, Smits still has room for optimism. He is inspired by the early success of BOS’s nature park, Samboja Lestari. There, the organisation is re-vegetating cleared land to provide a habitat for 2000 orangutans.

Local families farm sugar palms in the land surrounding the reserve. They earn a sustainable income and protect the inner ring from fire and illegal forestry. “You can actually do something that creates jobs and still creates safe havens for nature. So it doesn’t need to be all gloom and doom,” he says.

Besides, Smits says, what makes it all worthwhile is that his favourite ape, Uce, is now pregnant for the third time and her first baby is “a truly wild-born, independent orangutan”. He only sees her every few years. “I’m waiting for the next chance to go see her, but the love will still be there.”

The biggest catch

In Culture, Environment, The Big Issue on

Every year, fishermen and worshippers flood a faraway island in Bangladesh. Photographer Rodney Dekker went there to record traditions that may soon go under.

Most of the year, Dublar Char is nearly uninhabited. The remote island lies at the southern end of the Sundarbans, a vast tidal mangrove forest on the Bay of Bengal. Then, from mid-October to mid-February, thousands of fishermen sweep in from around Bangladesh. Hindu pilgrims come in their thousands too, for Rash Mela, an annual three-day festival with a 200-year history.

Last year, photographer Rodney Dekker joined the influx. “There were fishing boats everywhere. They are all connected and people walk over each boat to get to the land,” he says. The fishermen dry their catch on the broad beach, then bag and ship the fish to markets in the capital, Dhaka.

With the festival on, the island was vibrant. “There was dancing and singing, and people were worshipping clustered around a little temple,” Dekker says. “There was lots of energy and atmosphere.”

Situated in the fertile Ganges Delta, Bangladesh is one of the poorest, most densely populated and lowest-lying countries on earth. Exposed to rising sea levels, melting Himalayan glaciers and increased cyclone frequency, the country’s people are critically vulnerable to the effects of climate change. A Bangladeshi rights organisation, Equity and Justice Rights Group, estimates that 30 million people on the southern coastline are already facing its consequences.

That’s the reason for Dekker’s journey. “Dublar Island will be one of the first places in Bangladesh to be affected by sea level rise and this culture will be lost as a result,” he says.

The 34-year-old photographer is a former environmental scientist. In Australia, he has shot series on droughts, floods and bushfires. “My photographic interests come from my interest in environmental problems,” he says. “Part of what I’m trying to do is to show people what is happening in the world as a result of climate change.”

In November 2007, Dublar Island was lashed by Cyclone Sidr. Development organisation Save the Children estimated that between 5,000 and 10,000 people died in the storm. “It was the most severe cyclone on record in the Bay of Bengal,” Dekker says. “Cyclones are becoming more intense and frequent and the timing is different now. One of the fishermen I interviewed and photographed on Dublar Island was wondering why cyclones are coming in winter. He doesn’t know.”

The fisherman’s prospects aren’t good. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that 22 million people in Bangladesh will become climate refugees by 2050.

But it’s industrialised countries, including Australia, who are responsible for the bulk of historical greenhouse gas emissions. “The poorer countries are the ones who will feel the effects [of climate change] the most, and we’re the cause of it,” Dekker says.

Rodney Dekker travelled to Bangladesh with the help of a grant from the SEARCH Foundation. You can view an eyewitness account of his journey on the Oxfam website.

Book review: The Riverbones, by Andrew Westoll

In The Big Issue on

After finishing university, Andrew Westoll studied monkeys in Suriname. Five years later, he returned to the tiny South American nation – this time as a writer.

In The Riverbones, the young Canadian careens from one disturbing encounter to the next, boozing his way through jungles and seedy towns on a search for personal meaning and cultural understanding. While he’s at it, he illuminates the country’s brutal colonial exploitation, as well as its ongoing crises in health, governance and environmental management.

In the book’s defining quest, Westoll seeks a glimpse of okopipi, an endangered electric-blue frog. The Suriname government, attempting to protect the frog’s fragile habitat from tourism, denies him a travel permit.

But he doesn’t give up. At best, he’s pursuing a romantic folly; at worst, he’s just another moneyed westerner extracting his bounty from the jungle (much like the multinational mining corporations he criticises).

Even still, Westoll is a rollicking storyteller who knows his subject back to front. The Riverbones is an unsettling evocation of all that’s rotting and thriving in Suriname, and it resonates far beyond the rainforest. 

Four stars

The Sharehood

In Community development on

Published in Adbusters #85, Thought Control in Economics

Debbie from two streets away is offering to teach cartwheels and handstands. She wants to plant a herb garden, starting with mint. I’m dying to cartwheel. I’ve wanted to learn for years. I imagine myself standing at the end of a clear supermarket aisle, and then cartwheeling all the way down – a life-affirming act in a lifeless store. I’m growing enough mint and other herbs to share.

Debbie and I are made to trade. But we would never have met if my next-door neighbour and I hadn’t started a Sharehood. We leafleted all the houses a few streets around ours, invited them to a community BBQ and directed them to the website, www.thesharehood.org.

The Sharehood was started by Theo Kitchener, a Melbourne web developer and activist, in 2008. “It’s all about sharing skills and resources within your neighbourhood,” he says. In his hood, neighbours are already trading garden produce for worm juice, babysitting each other’s kids, fixing cars, sharing compost heaps and chatting over tea.

The website helps neighbours meet face-to-face. It allows logged-in members to see profiles of other members who live within 400 metres. People post events, list things they can share and things they need. The site has its own trading system, a radical local currency to reward those who give to others. Everyone’s details are private.

We’re just starting out, but interest is high. There’s a supermarket not far away from where I live. Maybe when I can cartwheel and our Sharehood is strong, I’ll visit one last time and find a clear aisle.