Michael Green

Writer and producer

Global cooling

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

A new project is turning our old white fridges green.

At the Phoenix Fridges warehouse in East Brunswick, two long rows of fridges face-off like football teams before a big game. On the left, a refurbished line-up is clean, efficient and ready to run. On the right, the dusty, sticker-covered new recruits will soon face their ultimate test.

But unlike a footy game, this eco-friendly scheme always returns a win-win result.

Phoenix Fridges, co-run by the Brotherhood of St Lawrence and Moreland Energy Foundation Limited, aims to curb the appetite of our power-hungry refrigerators. To do it, they collect unwanted appliances and retrofit them to improve efficiency. Then, the recycled goods are resold in the Brotherhood’s opshops.

The scheme is not only a plus for the environment, but also lends a helping hand in the community. Last year, while learning how to fix the whitegoods on the job, three refugees completed six-month traineeships and TAFE certificates in electrotechnology services. This year, the number of traineeships is set to double. The program’s other important social benefit is that low-income families gain access to cheap second-hand fridges with lower running costs.

Bruce Thompson, Business Program Coordinator at MEFL, says Phoenix Fridges offers a strong practical step for cutting electricity use. The fridge devours more energy than any other appliance. “It is responsible for about ten or 15 per cent of a household’s greenhouse emissions,” he says.

Thompson encourages people to buy a new fridge if they can afford it. “From a greenhouse policy perspective, it is really good to buy a new one. They are about 70 per cent more efficient than a fridge you would buy 15 years ago.” But there’s a catch. Over a third of Victorian homes have a second fridge: people tend to put their old unit in the garage and use it to store drinks. “So instead of saving 70 per cent, they’ve increased their energy consumption,” he says.

That’s where Phoenix Fridges comes in. The project has been in full swing for over a year. In that time, it has collected more than 5000 old refrigerators – almost one hundred per week – across metropolitan Melbourne. The free pick-up zone now stretches as far as Mt Eliza.

When the chunky donations arrive at the workshop, electrical engineer Noe Cuellar and his trainees assess the efficiency and quality of each one. They send approximately half the machines to be scrapped.

According to Thompson, this is a crucial part of the process. “We want to manage the project so that we are returning good fridges back into circulation to make them affordable for low-income households,” he says. “But we don’t want to send the energy hungry ones back,” he says.

Before the cast-offs are sent for metal recycling, their dangerous refrigerant gas is captured from the pipes. “A kilogram of the old CFCs in a fridge… is equivalent to 8000 kilograms of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in terms of its global warming equivalent,” Thompson says. If you put your old fridge out for hard rubbish collection, he says, the pipes are likely to break along the way and release the harmful gas.

For those fridges that make the cut, where necessary, Cuellar and his team replace seals, thermostats, filters and compressors, and add insulation. He says that, on average, they cut energy use by between five and ten per cent.

Each unit is fitted with a sticker listing the appliance’s energy consumption, carbon emissions and running cost per year. Cuellar says that customers appreciate this extra information, as well as the improved performance. “We’ve found that people love the fridges,” he says. “They find them really cost effective.”

Thompson acknowledges that Phoenix Fridges doesn’t create five-star efficiency in the old units. “We can’t do that,” he says. “But we are improving them or rejecting all of the bad fridges that are in that second-hand market.”

With climate change upon us, and so many energy-gobbling fridges still clogging our homes, we all need to get in on the action. It’s a perfect match.

To organise a donation and collection, call 1300 366 283. 

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.

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.

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.”

 

No work and no play

In Social justice on

First published on New Matilda

Unemployment is the lowest it’s been since the mid-70s, but there are people living in our community with no right to work. Michael Green investigates the realities of life for asylum seekers on Bridging Visa E

Paul (not his real name) wants to work. ‘Any sort of work.’ Although he is skilled, he doesn’t mind what he does. ‘Even the cleaning,’ he says. But Paul is an asylum seeker on Bridging Visa E  and the Federal Government doesn’t allow him to work, not even voluntarily.

‘I like to work, but nowadays someone said I can’t work. I’m at home, thinking too much on my problems, on my family and everything,’ he says.

Paul is also refused access to Medicare, or any other Government support services. ‘Surviving is a little bit hard,’ he says stoically. Paul is legally residing in the community, but Government policy has rendered him destitute; he must rely on private charity for the bare essentials of life.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) doesn’t release the figures, but charities estimate that there are between 2000-4000 people across the country in the same situation, often for years.

‘The consequences for those people are extreme,’ says Tamara Domicelj, Director of the Asylum Seekers Centre (ASC) in Sydney. ‘We are talking about people that are lawfully residing in the community while they wait for a final decision. If you’re not allowed to work and you can’t access mainstream welfare entitlements, it literally is enforced destitution.’

It’s Refugee Week and community groups around the country have held barbeques, concerts, fairs and forums. From Sale to Darwin to Fremantle, there have been over 100 different events  reflecting public goodwill and support for the refugees who are a part of our community.

But for those few thousand asylum seekers like Paul, community support can only go so far to make up for a Government policy that takes away their ability to fend for themselves.

Asylum seekers arrive in Australia in one of two ways by boat or by air. Despite the media attention boat arrivals receive, those who come by plane constitute the majority. Most arrive on another type of visa, such as a student or tourist visa, and lodge their application for a protection visa once here. They are then put on a bridging visa, which allows them to stay legally in Australia while they wait for a decision in their case.

Usually, asylum seekers are granted Bridging Visa A,   which permits them to work and access Medicare. Many are eligible for welfare through the Government-funded Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme administered by the Red Cross. But under three kinds of circumstances, asylum seekers are granted Bridging Visa E with conditions that deny them right to work or receive Medicare and welfare.

First, there are those who lodge their claim for a Protection Visa more than 45 days after their arrival. Secondly, are asylum seekers in detention who are released into the community due to health problems or other special circumstances, before their case is finalised.   And finally, there are asylum seekers who have had their application denied by both DIAC and the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT), and are seeking either judicial review or Ministerial intervention.

These conditions are designed to act as a deterrent for lodging protection claims and subsequent appeals. According to DIAC, ‘The 45-day rule was introduced in 1997 as part of a package of measures aimed at minimising incentives for misuse of Australia’s onshore protection process by applicants in the community.’ The Department asserted that some people with no claims to refugee status had been submitting frivolous Protection Visa applications to obtain work rights and delay their departure from Australia.

Pamela Curr, campaign co-ordinator for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) in Melbourne, argues that there has been no evidence of widespread abuse of the system. ‘I would like to see some figures showing that a large number of people were seeking asylum illegitimately,’ she says. ‘None of the community-based agencies who offer legal support, are going to help people who patently have no claim. We don’t have the resources.’

That punishment has serious human consequences, according to the ASC’s Domicelj: ‘Over the years we have seen a lot of severe depression, malnutrition, homelessness. We see situations of quite serious physical and psychological conditions that are going untreated. We have never had a huge influx of onshore asylum seekers . It makes no sense to have a set up where people are permitted to live in Australia but are denied the means to self-support. Over the last 18 months, DIAC has taken a number of positive steps but the fact remains there are still people out there who are completely reliant on charity.’

But the pursuit of asylum seeker rights by these advocacy groups has been criticised for undermining the Government’s ability to process claims efficiently. In Monash University’s People and Place journal last year, Adrienne Millbank argued that, ‘If asylum seekers are provided with a full set of social benefits, it will be difficult to persuade them to leave should their applications fail.’

Amy Camilleri, casework co-ordinator at Hotham Mission, which runs the Asylum Seeker Project in Melbourne, disagrees. She says they have found a substantial level of voluntary repatriation amongst the asylum seekers they assist through their casework program. ‘That means people don’t have to be forcibly removed by the Department.’ For the advocacy groups, the objective is not that all asylum claims be granted, but that people are permitted to support themselves while the decisions are being made.

Granting work rights may not just help these people to survive, but also add to the economy. During its time in office, the Coalition has consistently encouraged people to get into the labour force. The latest unemployment rate showed a 32-year low of 4.2 per cent, and Prime Minister John Howard commented, as he has before, that ‘the greatest human dividend out of good economic management is jobs.’ During his weekly radio message in early April, Howard stated, ‘The human value of having a job, the sense of self-worth and esteem it brings is incalculable.’

Melbourne University PhD candidate Gwilym Croucher undertook research on behalf of the Network of Asylum Seeker Agencies Victoria and the ASC in Sydney on the economic impact of allowing asylum seekers to work.

His paper, to be published this month in the Victorian Council of Social Services journal, Just Policy, finds that even taking into account costs of English classes, re-skilling and a higher than average unemployment rate, granting work rights to asylum seekers could add millions of dollars to the Australian economy.

Politically, there appears to be some pressure for change. In March 2006, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee recommended that Bridging Visa E holders be granted work rights. In relation to the current rules, it stated, ‘A policy which renders a person destitute is morally indefensible and an abrogation of responsibility by the Commonwealth.’  The Government Senators on the Committee produced a dissenting report.

At the same time, DIAC was conducting a comprehensive review of the whole bridging visa regime, consulting a wide range of stakeholders and presenting the findings and recommendations to the then Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone. Many months on, the Government is yet to release the report or a response.

A spokesperson for the new Minister, Kevin Andrews, says ‘We are considering the report and as such it would be inappropriate to make comments on the visa at this time.’

Labor is promising reform. At its National Conference earlier this year, it moved to abolish the 45-day rule and may go further to ensure work rights for all asylum seekers.

While reports are considered and discussions continue, Paul is languishing with nothing to do. But during the last two weeks he has taken a risk that could jeopardise his bridging visa. The ASRC has moved offices and Paul has spent his days volunteering to help them relocate painting the walls, steam cleaning the carpets and even demolishing a partition.

‘If they ask me to volunteer work everyday for somewhere, I like to go and do, it’s a good feeling for me. I’m not thinking about the money or anything, just I want to go on the life, I mean just not sitting at home, just go and do something. It should be benefit for someone, for me also, a good relief for my mind if I do something better for the public’.