Shrinking footprintsThe Press | Saturday, 26 January 2008The environmental challenges facing the world may seem overwhelming. JOHN McCRONE meets some people who are undaunted by the seeming hopelessness of responding as individuals.The view from inside and outside a Hummer is very different. Inside is a driver feeling pride in the "power, capability, attitude, and authenticity" of a massive, military-style, 44 Yank tank.
But outside is a public now almost universally thinking "there goes a gas guzzling dickhead" says Carlin Archer, of the Christchurch eco-living webguide, ecobob. com.
"The driver's saying, ‘look at me. Aren't I great? I can afford to waste huge amounts of fuel’."
For many Kiwis, 2007 proved to be a tipping point. At least that is what those working at the grassroots of sustainable living are saying they have seen.
"People have woken up and want to know what they can do," says Rhys Taylor, national co-ordinator of the Sustainable Living Programme. "They certainly saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. But they say it is actually something that's been nagging away at the back of their minds for a long time. Now they are ready to act."
Taylor says for an old greenie like himself, the swiftness of the mood change has been a surprise. For decades society seemed to be going only one way - houses got bigger, cars faster, the travel more exotic. For example, he can remember when a room had one plug point. A newly built home could now have six to a room. And there will be something plugged into each of them. "If we talk about our carbon footprint, we can see it has been literally expanding."
People have got used to consuming more stuff every year. And even if it is only 2 or 3 per cent extra, it adds up. Suddenly people are looking around and realising it is not just their bodies that have grown flabby, says Taylor. Their lifestyle feels bloated, heavy-footed. There is a desire to put the process in reverse and start shedding the kilos again.
The question is how to reorganise their lives? No-one wants to go back to the past, to give up on luxury and fun. So what is the mainstream response going to be? What is the blueprint for a sustainable future?
Archer seems as much as anyone the face of the new environmentalism. EcoBob stands for "best of both" - keep your lifestyle, but also keep the world.
Running a Christchurch website development company with his brother, Daniel, Archer never planned to be a sustainability activist. After returning from London four years ago, he had the dream of using family land near Woodend to build an ecologically-sound home for him and his South African girlfriend. In fact, it could become an eco-commune because his brother, sister, parents and a few friends want to build there too.
There is no intention to stint. "An eco-home doesn't have to be a hippy hovel," Archer says. It is just a matter of intelligent design - putting in all the energy-saving features, and using low-environmental-impact materials, that traditional suburban homes still ignore.
But Archer found it a struggle to gather the names of likely builders and architects, or suppliers of solar panels, energy-efficient appliances and other eco-home technology. So he set up a website to share practical information with others and found that instead of hundreds of visitors, he was getting thousands a day.
The side project has grown to the point that it pays for itself and could become a full-time business.
Archer agrees 2007 marked an attitude change. A few years back, many of his friends would rib him. "I was known as the eco man. They would joke about coming over to my place and tipping Roundup on the garden because I wasn't pulling up the weeds."
Now there is more likely to be interest than derision. People want to hear what kind of changes will be seen if sustainable thinking moves into the mainstream.
Archer details the lifestyle alterations he has made - and apologises for the fact there is a way to go.
Living and working in a rented house high on the hill in Mount Pleasant while he plans his eco-house, Archer says one of his commitments is to go zero waste.
So he now has to remember to take his cloth bags to the supermarket. He queues for meat at the counter to avoid the tray packs. He tries to side-step any packaging which cannot be recycled. "It's a bit irritating when I put my hand out for a juice I'd like, but then have to take something else in a bottle that can be recycled," Archer confesses.
Archer says none of the changes are extreme. It is simply a question of being aware there are choices and then not being too embarrassed to act upon them. Steadily you build a new set of habits into your life.
He says it does not even have to be a big-bang lifestyle conversion. The flab has built up a few per cent every year. Rather than a crash diet that is hard to stick to, it is better to start slimming down a few per cent every year. If this becomes a mainstream attitude, the impact would be significant.
A cross in Lyttelton, there is another grassroots effort to understand what sustainability will mean in practice.
Margaret Jefferies, chairwoman of Project Lyttelton, says the project started out with quite a different mission. Years ago its purpose was preserving the historic feel of the town. The group was involved in restoring the Timeball Station and creating the Torpedo Boat Museum. Then it became about community action, and now it's sustainable living.
Jefferies says people seem to have been quietly worried about rampant consumerism for years. Now they are ready to act. She says as a port with a strong artistic community, Lyttelton has always had a stroppy edge. And some locals are proposing quite radical action.
Lyttelton already has an "enviro-kindy", a community composting scheme, and a time bank for neighbourhood work. To tackle the woeful energy-efficiency of its heritage cottages, a bulk discount on home insulation has been negotiated for the town.
The community garden behind the swimming pool is a place where locals can grow their own food, sharing both effort and know-how. And the town's farmers' market has been a big hit, doing its bit for food miles by insisting all produce comes from within a 100km radius - although you see the odd bunch of bananas from stall-holders stretching the rules, Jefferies admits.
Next on the agenda is the possibility of making Lyttelton completely plastic bag free and tapping local land owners, like Lyttelton Port, for waste ground that could be cultivated.
Jefferies says experience has taught a few lessons. One of the biggest is that a community effort has to be open-minded and positive. People have to move at their own pace and not be made to feel that partial change is failure.
She says it was a mistake at one of Lyttelton's street parties to have people manning the recycling bins, telling people where they should put the rubbish. "People were in party mode. It got up their noses."
Chipping away at the problems is the pragmatic approach, Jefferies says. "It's got to be fun, not prescriptive. If worm farms are your thing, it's what you love, then you go and concentrate on that. If you don't want to be out agitating about plastic bags, that's fine."
Jefferies has also noticed a difference between those who see sustainability as about "tack on" changes and those looking for a deeper personal or spiritual change.
She says some want the same lifestyle, just with more efficient and renewable technology. Others want to get right out of the trap of working ever harder just to own more stuff.
Lyttelton is one of a number of "transition town" experiments that have sprung up around the country. Lincoln is another with its rather more academically oriented Envirotown programme.
Jefferies says while Project Lyttelton is rather homespun, Envirotown comes with a thick manual.
Rhys Taylor says hardly anything about sustainable-living practices is new. The difference is in the will to act.
Taylor says the country has problems that need to be tackled at a higher level, of course.
However, what people need most is the information. Then they will respond intelligently.
He points out that so much of our waste is hidden. We are happy to buy cheap plastic junk from China because we have no idea of the coal being burnt, the pollution being produced.
"We've managed to export the problem."
So one of the most necessary changes is to start making waste visible again. At the sustainable living evening classes he teaches, part of the homework is to carry out energy and refuse audits.
These days you can get speedometer-like devices like the Christchurch-developed Centameter which hooks up to your power meter with a radio link and sits in the kitchen telling you how many kilowatts per hour you are burning.
Taylor says once something can be measured, a target can be set to gradually reduce usage. For example, it is not hard to check your annual car mileage, then aim to cut out enough car trips to travel, say, 5% less each year.
But can society really be turned around while there are still Hummer drivers out there taking a perverse pride in their profligacy? Why should the few make sacrifices if most probably won't?
Taylor says perhaps it is rather that the wasteful are now becoming more visible to us as we become attuned to the issue of sustainability.
Surveys are showing more of the population is ready for a change than we think, Taylor says.
But right now people are still learning what it all must mean in practice: how can we go forward in a way that still gives us the best of both, a life and a world?
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