Citizenship Day (?!?)

I discovered this week on my Yankee Magazine calendar (thanks mum) that the 17th of September is Citizenship Day. There was no further clarification as to whether this citizenship extends beyond New England, or the USA, but I will assume that this is a global event. And so I'll write about being a global citizen.

When thinking about what it means to be a global citizen, I submit that the permaculture ethics are a good place to start: earth care, people care, fair share. As a matter of fact, that may even be a good place to end. Through this lens, let's look at an example of poor citizenship.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eco-nomics/2011/09/13/wasting-away-our-garbage-by-the-numbers/

This data comes from a recent article in Forbes: Wasting Away: Our Garbage by the Numbers. One of the saddest bits about this is that I recall numbers like this when I started my career as an environmental educator 20 years ago. But back then the amount of garbage the average American produced was "only" 4 pounds. It is interesting that the current number is 4.4 pounds, because that is 2 kilograms. I have not seen the number for New Zealand, but I suspect it would be similar.

The three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) are so fundamental that I won't write extensively on them except to say that global citizens would take them into account with every purchasing decision they make. During our renovation and in our domestic life we produce next to no rubbish: about one bag every two months.

I'd like to challenge global citizens to raise the bar for global citizenship beyond the 3 Rs by taking serious steps at energy conservation. We have had great success with our passive solar redesign and are using less than 10% of the electricity of even what is considered a "low user" (8000 kWh/year) in New Zealand.

This is the power bill that came this morning, after a month that included the coldest week in New Zealand recorded history. During this record cold spell, with no supplemental heating except electric, we averaged just over 2 kWh per day.

Even a "low user" can average over 21 kWh per day year round. Presumably, that may vary from 15 kWh per day in summer and 25 kWh per day in winter. By comparison, our 2 kWh appears to fall into the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction category. But its true. You can see the bill above. That is the power of sunlight, thermal mass and insulation.

Indoor/Outdoor Temperatures in C and F at 6 pm, Sept. 4th.

Indoor/Outdoor Temperatures in C and F at 6:30 pm, Sept. 6th.

And we're not even done insulating and draft-proofing yet.

Global citizens who are concerned about drought in East Africa, flooding in Pakistan and Bangladesh (formerly "East Pakistan"), and rising sea level in Tuvalu should feel an obligation to cut their energy use even if much of it comes from renewables like here in NZ. Even renewables have "side effects."

Our friends in Raglan are fighting the wind mills proposed for the coastline to the north. I'll be there a week from today helping them start that fight from home one kWh at a time.

Peace, Estwing

Perfection

I appears that many global forces of unsustainability have been swirling of late. The synergy with which these forces interact, and the non-linear effects make predictions near impossible. Most economists and politicians appear to be in utter denial of anything other than a return to "growth" and "business as usual." (I'd say that is the one place we are not headed.) But one economist in particular seems to be able to recognize potential problems better than others.

You may recall that Roubini was the one who accurately predicted the financial crisis of 2008. Are you going to believe him, or someone like Greenspan or Bernanke or Geitner who had no clue?

While the right mixture of forces can, indeed, make storms perfect, the right combination of design, communication and education can make solutions perfect. For example, this weekend the ECO School helped the YMCA manage the waste stream for the Connecting Families Day.

No, not that YMCA, this YMCA.

With over 20 years of experience in award-winning resource recovery programs, we felt confident about working with the Y with the goal of a zero waste event. I'll write more about the mechanical details in another post, but the guiding principles for success when managing events such as this are:

1) Plan ahead. Sometimes called "pre-cycling," this means thinking about the entire waste stream of the event and planning accordingly. For example, we ordered compostable cups for both hot and cold drinks. Zero waste.

2) Design. ("Failure to design is to design to fail.") The physical lay out of collection containers is important. They must be clustered together. For example, we had bins for compost, paper recycling, drinks bottles recycling, and miscelaneous rubbish all together at one station.

3) Communication. This comes in a couple of forms. A) Signage must be brief, clear, colorful and at eye-level for both children and adults. B) Announcements can be used to remind attendees that this is a zero waste event and their efforts are crucial for success.

4) Education. Including the why and how of resource recovery is important to give people reason to act. Our education effort took two forms this weekend. A) I manned the resource recovery station to interact with people and monitor quality control. B) Our friend, Hadi, provided home composting advice at the Sustainable Whanganui table.

5) Quality control. Essential, essential, essential. No one wants to pick through dirty bins afterwards. Make sure everything goes in its proper place during the event. As mentioned above, quality control can and should go hand-in-hand with education.

By employing the above strategy, we were able to divert over 95% of the waste stream from landfill while role modeling positive behaviours to families. Those are world-class results. Not bad for weekend work.

More details on our composting process in a later post.

Peace, Estwing

Alternatives to wheat and potatoes?

Not to harp on this climate change thing too much, but it just does not seem to go away. Of course along with the extreme weather events predicted by climate scientists are equally dire warnings of drought. That seem to be widespread at the moment.

Well, 2011 seems to be shaping up as a poster child for climate change. Combine the extreme weather with the ongoing global financial crisis and elevated yet still volatile oil prices and you have what some call the "Toxic Trilogy"; Environment, Economy, Energy. Each of these systems is highly unsustainable at the moment with little indication of change in the near term. As permaculturists, we design to protect ourselves from these powerful outside factors beyond our control.

We have written extensively on energy savings on this blog and warned about the dangers of debt and how to hedge against energy inflation. But we have not written much about hedging against food inflation, which goes hand in hand with energy inflation and is made worse by weather extremes such a drought and floods. Of course we have a large and growing vegetable garden and burgeoning food forest, but what about starch? Like most people of European descent, we eat too much bread and pasta. As indicated in the story above, the price of wheat is near record levels with no indication of coming down. My long time strategy has been to grow potatoes as a staple crop, but here in NZ we are having trouble with an aphid that is compromising all nightshades. Both our potato and tomato crops this year were poor. So last week I planted Jerusalem artichoke.

And in the spring we'll plant kumara.

Any other suggestions?

Peace, Estwing

The good, the B.A.D. and the ugly

Just when you think there are not already enough problems in the world, something comes on the radio.

But luckily, there is resistance.

If there is anything NZ needs less than GE foods from the US, it is American-style child beauty pageants. All I can say is...I've enjoyed working with the beautiful and intelligent children at Wanganui Intermediate School to work toward a more sustainable world. We don't need no stinking pageants.

And so I turn off the radio and put on my Ipod and select something more than welcome in Aotearoa: Big Audio Dynamite.

And I cut a large hole in the floor.

Peace, Estwing

Too Hot

"Too hot, this town is too hot." - The Specials

While Aotearoa enjoyed its warmest May on record, there were a few drawbacks associated with the balmy weather.

Source: TVNZ

Source: New Zealand Herald

(Who on Earth would name their city Nelson?)

And back state-side at Ma and Pa's place.

Source: USA Today

Climate scientists have long predicted that warmer average global temperatures will lead to increases in the frequency of extreme weather events and cause increased precipitation in some areas. When scientists believe something will happen, it is sometimes called a hypothesis. When they observe that actually to be the case, its called - in the case of climate change - yikes!

Joplin, Misouri

However, it is possible for tornados to do good...almost.

If only.

We are taking advantage of our own version of the 'greenhouse effect' here on Arawa Place in the form of passive solar design. Ultraviolet sunlight comes through our northeast and northwest windows, strikes solid surfaces within the home, is converted into infrared light (heat) and that heat is held (for a while) in by the walls, windows and insulation.

Northern corner in the morning sunlight.

It has worked very well so far. And as I seal up more gaps to eliminate drafts, it works better and better. It worked so well just the other day (June 1st) that well after sunset as I was preparing my dinner it was still 24.5 degrees C (76 F) in the kitchen. Earlier it was 29 C (84 F). This, of course, is too hot. Which means our passive solar design lacks enough thermal mass to absorb the excess heat during the day and re-radiate it at night. But help is on the way.

We are in the process of pouring the concrete foundation for our multi-fuel stove. The heavy, vintage Shacklock 501 will be surrounded by brick on 3 sides. Full winter sun will strike all of this thermal mass through 3 windows during 3 parts of the day. This 'heat sink' should provide enough thermal mass (along with other strategies we've used) to moderate day/night temperature swings.

And, of course, on cloudy days we'll fire her up.

Peace, Estwing