A Good Year

The Sunday Age

Sunday December 16, 2007

Lisa Mitchell

Can you go green without a garden? Lisa Mitchell charts 12 months of good intentions.

For an aspiring eco-warrior with a Green Shield of Honour, I'm feeling shades of yellow. Since moving out of a share-house and into my own flat a year ago, my greening has progressed sluggishly. My best excuse is the cost of eco-renovating; my worst excuse is the sewing, and all the obstacles in between.

November 2006 No more bill-sharing! I can invest in renewable energy. It takes hours to sort through offers, but I choose Origin's 100% GreenEarth Wind electricity supply and GreenEarth Gas because it is pushing a subscription to marie claire.

I price water-saving shower-heads at Bunnings ($20 to $250), but get distracted by shiny handles for a cupboard I've rejuvenated on my dishwasher-sized balcony, which is too small for a worm farm and too exposed for organic lettuce. Besides, it's my messy-projects space.

Researching water filters, in an attempt to clear my body of toxic chlorine, fluoride and metals, turns into a part-time job. I can't find a spare $500 to $1300 for below-sink options. There's no room for ceramic benchtop models ($190 to $275); that space has already been snaffled by telecommunications ware and herbal teas. I buy a Brita water filter jug and two filters for $66.

December 2007 The council newsletter arrives offering a water-saving shower-head exchange program. It's a DIY offer, so I need a wrench, which you can hardly expect a flat-dweller to own outright. No toolbox gets to lounge about my cupboard space.

Trooper Mum and I spend the sleepy patch after Christmas painting my walls mango, arctic white and avocado until they're radiant with toxicity. I can't find a chemical-waste drop-off centre within an hour's drive of my castle, so the half-jar of used turpentine gets tipped into a construction site, under cover of twilight. Then my sister mentions her nearby "non-toxic-paint store". Four litres cost a whopping $89, compared with just $55 for five poisonous ones. "But his paint covers twice as much," she says.

Pink with shame, I retire my Shield of Honour to the cupboard.

January 2007 The ice monster suggests I reseal the fridge, but I'm too busy researching eco-friendly flooring to look into that magical, mystical world.

Instead, I keep the fridge full of empty containers because that helps to keep the cool air in.

Bamboo boards top the sustainability charts until my 100-questions game reveals that they have a five-coat aluminium-oxide finish. (I'm on the affirmative of the "aluminium causes Alzheimer's" debate.) I buy a large, acrylic rug from Harvey Norman instead.

February 2007 The sun has bleached my faux brunette locks pale orange, but there is an organic hairdresser down the road. She offers to colour me, chemically free, for $150. I buy my usual ammonia and resourcinol-free shade (number 5N) for $19 from the health-food store.

My bathroom is a vision of freshness in lime and white, with matching towels, if I ignore the bathtub filled with grimy laundry water and the blue bucket used to scoop it out to flush the toilet, and the trail of dirty drips on the floor-that-never-gets-washed.

March 2007 I borrow a wrench from my downstairs neighbour for three weeks, but he finds a reason to use it and wants it back before I can make it to the shower-head exchange program.

A friend pops in and comments on two ancient orange juice bottles on the kitchen ledge. "What are those filthy things for?" she accuses, screwing up her freckly nose. "I capture four litres of cold tap water before it runs hot," I say in my best eco-warrior's voice. Pause for effect. "And I use it to water the pot plants." Later, while perusing the Australian Conservation Foundation website, I discover it's more energy-efficient to boil the kettle.

I retrieve my shield from the cupboard and prop it in the recycling bin.

April 2007 Unbelievably, I feel a spring-clean coming on, so whip out the bi-carb of soda to scrub the shower recess. I ponder my five microfibre cleaning cloths and wonder which colour goes with which surface. But I can't shake the feeling that my own toilet will somehow be the death of me if I don't scrub it with zingy, pine-fresh chemicals.

May 2007 The kitchen cupboard that used to spew plastic bags is almost bare since I started recycling plastic and paper bags for my organic groceries. But one of my eco-shopping bags has split at the seams, so the vegies tumble out, and I don't sew. So it goes into landfill.

Conservation-volunteering buddy Liz brings over her spare water-saving shower-head, and a wrench. Now I'll only use 49 litres per seven-minute shower, compared with 175 litres with the old shower-head.

June 2007 It's time to investigate heating options, as the flat has none. Because I live on the top floor, installation is tricky. It's going to cost $2000 for a split-system air-conditioner/heater or a gas wall-heater, both of which can only be positioned to heat one room, and the plumber won't guarantee a successful gas flow because of the size and distance of the gas pipes. I inherit my grandmother's oil-filled column-heater and a blow heater.

July 2007 Curtains are hideous, and rubber-backed fabric is prohibitively expensive, and I still don't sew, and I'm not buying into DIY window insulation either. According to the "destructions" on the website, you get a roll of insulation film, cut it to size, and roll it neatly onto the window panes. I have never applied my car registration sticker without getting unsightly crinkling. The venetian blinds will do.

I spend two Saturdays looking for groovy "sausage dogs" to block the Antarctic breeze skidding beneath my doors, but these are a rare breed. Only the daggiest doggies survive at South Melbourne market. I later learn that DIY rubber-stripping for doors, with sticky backs, are what all the smart people are doing.

August 2007 The thermometer tells me my home office is actually an igloo. I wear five layers of clothing, a beanie and fingerless mittens: I imagine it's not ergonomically sound to sit on the column heater while I type. I invest in a mohair rug ($45) to wrap around my legs because I can't comfortably fit two pairs of tights under my jeans.

Amazingly, I only spend $277 of GreenEarth Electricity during the winter as I turn into a heat-seeking missile and spend my nights elsewhere.

My first light globe pops. It's night time. I don't have a spare. Nor a stepladder. Sigh.

September 2007 I now own a stepladder, four energy-saving globes and a hammer, which seems to be a multipurpose device and is the only exception to the tool-kit rule.

There must be a more efficient way to shop organically. I buy my eggs from my yoga school (yes, my yoga school, and my chicken sausages, too); my groceries from Ripe at Prahran Market; my toilet paper from Evo Shop opposite Prahran Market; my "big ticket" and luxury items from Macro (turkey, olive oil and yogi cookies) Armadale or Richmond; my body products from Barretts Health Foods in St Kilda East; and the unmentionables from the supermarket (batteries, Sard Wonder Soap). At least they're all within 13 kilometres of my home. Except the organic olive oil, which is from Italy.

October 2007 I fly to Bali for 10 glorious, thought-free days and forget to pay Qantas $13.65 to carbon-neutralise my flight.

I've just graduated from my 15-month yoga teacher training course. I deserve a present. Now that I'm no longer in my 20s - just how "no longer" it's hard to say - my Body Shop jojoba leaves me less dewy fresh. Yoga gal-pals promise me Herbario's organic skin regime will work wonders so, after some research, I close my eyes, hand over $175, and unpack my boxy bag of delicately scented cleansing oil, marshmallow scrub, facial spray and teensie 15ml moisturiser. For the next month, I smell, and feel, at least a million dollars.

November 2007 My gas bill arrives and I notice that I'm using so little GreenEarth Gas that my bar graph considers me carbon-neutral anyway. Woo hoo. I still haven't received my marie claire. Boo hoo. I've begun rationing my moisturiser.

December 2007 The ACF's GreenHome Eco-calculator (acfonline/org/au) awards me an eco footprint of 4.3ha, compared with the national average of 7.7ha. And my total water bills for the year show exemplary usage: the average single person with no garden splurges 188 litres per day. I average 77 litres per day.

For Christmas, I want a Bokashi bucket ($99.95) - a compact compost solution for flat dwellers - and a kilo of micro-organism-infused sawdust and bran to sprinkle over my fermenting waste ($9.95). And a nearby garden in which to dump the six-weekly bucket load.

And gimme back my Shield!

I've begun rationing my delectable Herbario skin product, but suspect this is not what a daily organic beauty regime is all about. I'm not sure yoga teaching is going to sustain the sustainable lifestyle I aspire to. I start looking for full-time work.

© 2007 The Sunday Age

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