The Greening of Gavin

TGoG Podcast 051 – An Interview with Tanya Ha

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TGOG+podcast+logo+new+1400+v2This weeks special guest is none other than Tanya Ha.

Tanya is an award-winning environmentalist, best-selling author, science journalist, television presenter and sustainable living advocate.

Listen to the Episode Below (01:07:36)
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I first met Tanya at the Sustainable Living Festival in 2007.  It was quite surreal actually.  I had just listened to her speak, and lined up to get a copy of her latest book at the time, signed.  I was quite nervous because Kim used to joke and rib me about having crush on her (not really, I just admired her work).

Anyway, when I got to the front of the line, I was running off at the mouth about how I enjoyed her TV show Eco House Challenge, and how I had read her book cover to cover and babbled on about some of the green things I had done at home.  She must have thought I was a bit of an eco fanboy, but she just smiled, said well done, and signed the cover of the book for me.  Goodness I was excited.

So fast forward seven years, and I plucked up enough greenness to ask her onto the podcast as a guest.  The great thing was that she said yes!  I was chuffed, and here we are.

On with the show.  We talk about she decided to pursue a career as a sustainable living educator.  We even touch on early childhood influences, and mindful consumerism as opposed to conspicuous out-of-control consumption.

You can find out more about Tanya at her website www.tanyaha.com or follow her on twitter @ha_tanya.

She also has a green living blog called Mama Green, which is pretty cool, however I did tell her that she was a naughty blogger for not updating it since August 2013!  She promised to fix that.

Thanks to Tanya for coming on the show.

Green Meme #1

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Julie over at Towards Sustainability has tagged me for a meme. I have never done a meme before, but I figure that it is just like an interview for a green magazine, but kind of local (and not in a magazine!).

Here are the Guidelines:
1. Link to Green Meme Bloggers (click on the pic above).
2. Link to whoever tagged you.
3. Include meme number.
4. Include these guidelines in your post.
5. Tag 3 other green bloggers.

Anyway, here goes.

1) Name two motivations for being green?

A well documented motivation of mine was attending a screening of An Inconvenient Truth back in September 2006. Before that date, I was just as ordinary as everyone else. I experienced many emotions after that movie, and went about changing my ways towards a sustainable lifestyle.

The second motivation is my family, and the future unborn generations to come. I want them to have a nice planet to live on, and not the trashed one we are creating at the moment.

2) Name 2 eco-UNfriendly items you refuse to give up?

I am not sure I have any left, maybe the PC, but it doesn’t draw much power. But seeing that I make my own, it is then not very eco-unfriendly. When I dispose of it, it will be recycled via a reputable e-waste processor.

Maybe my big screen rear projection TV, but once again, it draws much less power than an LCD or Plasma, so it is a vice I can live with.

3) Are you at peace with or do you feel guilty about number 2?

No, I am totally at peace with these two items. They are the greenest I can make them. I switch both off at the wall at night to avoid standby power.

4) What are you willing to change but feel unable to/stuck with/unsure how to go about it?

Greywater recycling is my biggest hurdle at the moment. I recycle the washing machine water onto the ornamental garden and fruit trees, but I would love to capture all of the waste water from the shower and bath. Unfortunately the outlet pipes are at ground level, and I would have to cut through 15 cm of concrete to install a decent system. Maybe sometime down the track, when I have run out of other projects and when we go to stage 4 water restrictions.

5) Do you know your carbon footprint for your home? If so, is it larger/smaller than your national average? (http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx)

Yes, it is about 3.5 tonnes of CO2e per year, according to the calculator above. I buy GreenPower and GreenGas and Honda paid for carbon offsets for my car when I bought it. The big ticket items are food and clothing for us. We try and buy local food if we can’t grow or bake it ourselves, but it is so hard to get bread flour around here, so I get it from Adelaide. We still shop at Aldi for essentials , but only buy their Australian produce. The National average carbon footprint for Australia is 16.3 tonnes.

6) What’s eco-frustrating and/or eco-fantastic about where you live?

The eco-frustrating thing is that our local council has done the bare minimum to promote any type of climate change action besides the standard curb side recycling collection. They are improving, but not fast enough for me.

The eco-fantastic thing is there is actually an environment team employed by the council to heighten local awareness, but I don’t think they received much funding. The other thing is that I live here, so it can only get better. 😉

7) Do you eat local/organic/vegetarian/forage/grow your own?

We grow most of our own vegetables, but not enough to be self sufficient like in the Good Life. We do our best with the land we have, and practice organic gardening techniques. It is very hard to buy local in Melton, except if we make a special trip to Bacchus Marsh where there are large market gardens. It is about 15km away, so not too bad.

8) What do you personally find the most challenging in being green?

Watering the garden at 6am on a Sunday morning! No, really it is the frustration that I feel when I meet ignorant people who don’t care about our future. Unfortunately, I meet a lot of these types of people, but it is improving. However since the financial crisis, Climate change and the environment have taken a back seat, and that needs to change quickly. The Financial crisis will only last for a few years, but Climate Change will be with us for a very long time if we don’t change our ways soon.

9) Do you have a green confession?

I have a crush on Tanya Ha. I think she is a very cool lady. Don’t tell Kim or my green thumbs will be in a vice!

10) Do you have the support of family and/or friends?

Always, even most of my siblings and both parents are fairly green. Kim is my biggest fan, but the kids think that their dad is a middle aged hippy, but still pretty cool! They even go to rally’s with me.

So, now I get to tag three more green bloggers. So here are the lucky recipients.

Teena @ Green Lettuce Soup (welcome back Sis)

Kate @ Inner City Garden

Deb @ Footprint Reduction in the ‘burbs

Enjoy.

Green Cleaning

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Since our family started the journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle, our cleaning methods have changed towards more non-toxic products, that do less harm to us when we clean, and less harm to the environment as run-off.

We started using grey water at the very beginning of the journey, so we needed to change our laundry powder to one that had no Phosphorous and no Sodium so that we could use the water neat in the garden. The phosphorous would have damaged the native Australian plants, and the sodium tends to make the soil repel water, and increases the salinity. Also any run-off that the plants don’t use, does not contaminate the ground water. We found, after trying a couple of NP brands, that the Planet Ark Aware laundry powder worked the best, and after reading an article in Choice, it was not made from any petrochemicals. Kim raves about it to anyone who will listen, because a 1 Kg box lasts her approximately 5 weeks for 6 peoples clothes as you only use 3 tablespoons per wash. It will probably last longer now that Adam has moved out. We also use a NP fabric softener, but don’t use it very much. When washing towels, Kim pops in a few drops of eucalyptus oil to kill of any bacteria. It makes them smell nice too.

With the laundry sorted, we looked to the kitchen. We buy an earth friendly washing up liquid for the kitchen dishes that is also low in phosphates and sodium. We stopped using the dishwasher two weeks ago and gave it a thorough clean with vinegar and bi-carb soda, then put it through a cycle. So we are not only saving water, about 8 Kwh of power a week, and caustic dish washing tablets, but we have also realised something profound. When you wash dishes by hand, and you have someone drying them with you, you actually talk to each other and everything is cleaned far better than it would have in a dishwasher. Not only do you have quality control via an instant feedback loop, you can have a laugh and a joke around at the same time. There is only one rule that we stick to, and that is that the cook does not wash up. You can shotgun for the rest of the washing, drying or putting away!

Cleaning windows and mirrors is a cinch with vinegar in a spray bottle and newspaper. Not only is it cheap, but it keeps mould away, and stops mirrors from fogging up. It gives a nice clear finish without any smell. You can throw that Windex away now! I would rather have a small child accidentally swallow vinegar than some of the other nasties kept under the average Australian kitchen sink!

About a month ago we had a bad smell coming out of the kitchen sink, so it was out with the bi-carb soda, and down the drain with about 4 tablespoons. After about a minute I followed it up with a quarter of a cup of white vinegar and let it all fizzle. Let it go for about 3 minutes and then flush with some very hot water. Our drain will never have smelled so nice, and I may have gotten rid of a lot of built up grease as well.

The last cleaning thing I can think of is that Amy gives the showers a once over with some paste made up of bi-carb with an Ejoy glove and old rags, that gets rid of the soap scum that collects there. A little bit hot water afterwards washes it all away. Oh, I forgot the toilet. We use an Earth Choice toilet cleaner that works just as well as any of the more dangerous types. It is NP and its main ingredients are water, citric acid, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Glycolic Acid, eucalyptus oil, and Sodium Laureth Sulphate.
I ensured that the ingredients were only derived from plants and were fairly safe. You can use vinegar instead, but I am yet to convince Kim.

As for washing ourselves, I just use pure soap, but Kim and the kids use a liquid soap that is one of the organic brands. We use an organic shampoo, but have heard that bi-carb works just as well in very small doses. I don’t think I will stretch my greenness or luck that far with Kim :). I shave with a pigs bristle brush, having given away shaving cream in a can, but am having trouble finding an alternative to disposable razors or blades. I don’t shave very much, as I have a goatee, so I would not use as many as the average guy. I might investigate a cut throat razor in the near future, as they last for a very long time, and you sharpen (or is it blunt-en) it yourself. Sweeney Todd eat your heart out!

Well that is about all I can think that we use. We simply questioned if things were safe for us and the planet, and made the changes slowly over the course of about a year. If you have a couple of bottles of white vinegar and a big box of bi-carb soda, you have almost all you need to clean the house up. I did get most of the tips originally from reading Greeniology. Tanya Ha has a whole chapter on green cleaning. It helped finding all the good tips in the one place, and the tips a simple to implement.

To summarise, we save so much money on cleaning products (vinegar and bi-carb are cheap), feel safe when we clean, and know that it is better for the planet. Simply green, and making a difference! All we need to do now is safely get rid of the unused toxic products that are left over under the sink.