Little Things We Can All Do To Reduce Our Ecological Footprint

Greets to you all, oh Rambling Masses,

I am in a didactic mood this morning, so I thought that I would write a little post describing the oh so simple little things we can all do in our lives to reduce our ecological footprint, giving this great world of ours a little bit of breathing space.

Now, I would like to point out that I am practising what I preach - these are all things that are not majorly inconvenient, and they do indeed help to minimise the wasteful existence that is modern suburbia.

I have broken it into sections, to make it an easier read.

Water Smart

Saving water and using your waste water around the house is a very easy thing to do. Our household currently uses 97 litres of water per day, as per our last water bill. This is waaaay below the average household water usage, but is still too high in my opinion, so I am working on ways to reduce this further.

Just for the record, the Sydney Water website states that for the February-April period, a water efficient household on a medium sized property with two occupants should use an average of 375 litres per day. Really, that is an obscene amount of water.

I believe that we should be paying a base rate per litre for, say, 150 litres per day based on the above-mentioned statistics, and then pay a much higher rate for usage above and beyond this. It seems to make sense to me that most people won't bother being water smart unless you hit them in the hip pocket. Then, all of a sudden, it becomes a priority (as it should be in all our lives without the financial incentive).

Here are my tips for being water smart:

The Garden:

• Don't water the garden more than you have to.
• Spread mulch to retain soil moisture.
• Plant as much drought tolerant Australian native flora as you can. As a rate payer in your local council area, you are entitled to a number of native trees, shrubs and ornamental grasses. Find out when these pickup days are organised, and avail yourself of that service.
• Use grey water to water the plants.
• Install a rain water tank.
• I have not used a motor/petrol-powered lawnmower in over 10 years. I do it the good old-fashioned way with a rotating-blade push mower. It's quieter, it's cleaner, and it gives you a bit more exercise.
  

The Taps:

• Don't waste the water when you are waiting for your hot water tap to get hot. We have a couple of 2 litre plastic drink containers that we fill up with water until it heats up. This water can then be used to water the garden, to fill up your pot when you are boiling water for pasta, etc. Most houses will waste about 3 litres of water each time they wait for the water to warm up out of the tap.
• Don't keep the taps running when you are brushing your teeth.
• Don't keep the taps running when you are shaving the old-fashioned non-electric way. Fill the sink with hot water, and use that.
• We are lucky enough to be blessed with a gravity fed hot water tank in the ceiling. This means that our hot water comes out at quite low pressure. This makes it easy for us to save water when showering, as you can't blast the water out at a high wasteful pressure. For people who don't have this mixed blessing, install water-saving shower heads.
• Replace tap seals in leaking taps. Even a slow leak can waste 10-20 litres per day.
  

Washing Machines:

• Our washing machine is an ancient and small unit which, thankfully, has a drip dry setting. This allows us to pump the final rinse grey water into watering cans for use in the garden. When this washing machine eventually carks it, we will get a water efficient one with a drip dry setting. Check the labels when you have to go shopping for a new washing machine.
  

The Toilet:

• Ahhh, all of that good clean potable water, being used just to flush our waste away. It makes you cry, doesn't it? I (being a guy and built in such a manner as to allow it) wizz in the garden. This saves 10-15 litres per tinkle, and is good for the garden.
• When alone at home so that peoples' sensibilities won't be offended, my good lady wife and I don't flush every time, if it's just wee. We probably save 30-50 litres per day doing this.
• Get a smaller cistern with a half-flush button.
  

Electricity Smart

I am currently researching the option of going solar. This involves putting solar panels on the roof to generate electricity through the photovoltaic effect. It is expensive, but I am of the opinion that we are going to get into trouble with our electricity supply in the not too distant future. The government has a rebate scheme in place to help take a little bit of the sting out of the installation costs. I'll let you know how I get on as I find out more.

Here are my tips for being electricity smart:

• Use energy-saving light bulbs.
• Don't stand in front of the open fridge door for 5 minutes trying to work out what you want to get from the fridge.
• If you're not in a room, turn the light off.
• Turn off all "standby" appliances like TVs when you aren't using them. Standby mode consumes power.
• Use rechargeable batteries instead of disposables. You can get a solar-panel-powered battery charger and be even more green.
• Do you really need to turn the heater on? Put on a jumper or do some exercise instead.
  

Shopping Smart

Stop shopping! It is our heavy-handed consumption ways that are screwing this planet up. If you don't need it (or really, really want it) don't buy it. Stop the cycle.

Here are my tips for being shopping smart:

• Buy fresh produce.
• If you have to buy processed foods, make sure the packaging is as recyclable as possible.
• As Tim Minchin says - Take your canvas bags to the supermarket. Don't use plastic bags.
• At the chemist, stop them from automatically wrapping everything in a paper bag. You don't need it.
• Buy non-bleached recycled-paper toilet paper. It is just as good at wiping your bum as the triple-ply specially-dimpled pristine-white-because-of-polluting-bleach aloe-vera-impregnated paper.
  
• If your sofa doesn't quite match your decor anymore, get over it. If it is still comfortable and doesn't have gaping holes in it, keep using it.
• Try to discourage the chuck-it-out culture that is part and parcel of the modern age. One of the biggest problems with modern consumerism is that we no longer make quality products that last, as it's much cheaper just to chuck the cheap crap out and buy another cheap crap replacement. Don't fall into this trap. It's wasteful and destructive on a planetary scale.
  

Recycling Smart

It's funny, you know. I couldn't fill our half-size garbage bin that gets collected by council if you gave me 2 months. However our large size recycling bin is full almost every fortnightly collection time, as is our green waste bin. Don't forget that things like aluminium foil can also be recycled.

Glass Re-use instead of Recycling:

One thing that I would like to see introduced in Australia is something that they have had in Denmark for about 20 years. Instead of recycling their plastic soft drink bottles and glass beer bottles, they clean them and reuse them. This is much more energy efficient and less polluting than remelting the glass every time you want to reuse it.

You pay a deposit on all bottles, which you get refunded when you bring them back. Most supermarkets have a bottle processing station near the entrance, where automated machines count the bottles that you return, and give you a receipt redeemable at any supermarket.

The bottles are then cleaned and sent to bottling centres, where they are relabelled and filled with whatever they get filled with. It makes so much more sense to me than re-melting them every time.


Hopefully I haven't bored you with all of these thoughts on reducing our ecological footprint. This is important shit, oh Rambling Masses, and your children will thank you for it.

A Message To Religious Fundamentalists

Hello Rambling Masses,

Just thought I'd send a little message to all monotheistic religious fundamentalists, whether you be jewish, islamic or christian -

Here's some twin towers for you to fly your planes in to.

Wake up. Your God is all about love, hope and tolerance. Get a grip. There are no virgins waiting for you in heaven if you take infidels with you when you kill yourself. Do everyone a favour and pop yourself in a quiet corner somewhere.

Keep the faith, oh Rambling Masses. The real faith, that is, not that anachronistic pseudo-faith that belongs back in the dark ages when religious powers were trying to control the barbarous hordes...

The Father Of Our Modern Evils (And How I Hate Him)

Hello Rambling Masses,

Rant warning - yes, this is another post where I am having a good hard serious go at something. Read on, and you will see how this particularly odious miscreant has ruined everything.

I often think that if I could travel back in time and assassinate just one person for the greater good, it wouldn't be Hitler or Stalin, or even the guy who came up with the reality television concept. No, it would be Henry Ford.

But why, Pete, I hear you ask. Because he was the father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. However, his evil ways go much further than that. He came up with a concept now quaintly called "Fordism". A simple economic philosophy that states widespread prosperity and high (read obscene) corporate profits can be achieved by high wages, thus allowing said highly paid workers to go on a big spending spree and buy all of the wasteful destructive crap that they produce. I don't think he put it quite like that himself - he may have put a bit more of a positive spin on things...

What makes Fordism (and Capitalism in general) even more insidious is that, except for a few blessed madmen like myself, we all seem to think that it's a good thing. Wow, we get paid more, so we can go and spend our money on stuff we want. Surely that's a good thing. Hey, look at what a great time we are all having. Our standard of living is so much higher than any generations preceding us. We've got luxury goods coming out of our arses. We've got rolling suburbs of McMansions with double garages. We've got two big petrol-guzzling four-wheel drives (to make sure that the wife can negotiate all of those rough and rugged city streets to do their shopping and drop the kids off at school). We've all got reverse cycle air conditioning, because it's just too hard to wave a leaf in front of our sweaty faces during summer or put on a jumper (or heaven forbid, do some exercise) in winter. We've got home cinema systems to enrich our lives with all of the wisdom and true information that gets beamed into our homes by our cable provider of choice. We've got iPods and MP3 players galore, so that we don't have to listen to our thoughts for one second more than we have to. Hell, we've even got smart lawnmowers and vacuum cleaners that learn how to avoid obstacles and do the work for us.

Oh the orgasmic and never-ending stream of things that we have, giving us the luxury living that we all aspire to. And to think that all of this was made possible by just one little concept - Fordism.

I associate all of the evils of modern capitalism with mass production and mass consumption. These are the two things that, whilst sounding very economically viable, are counter-productive to the continued existence of not just the human race, but all life on the planet. How can we ever reach an equilibrium with our environment when there is the constant dangle of the carrot on a stick in front of us, leading us ever onwards to commit untold acts of rape and pillage on the environment around us? How can we be happy when the modern media continuously bombards us, telling us that we must consume, consume, consume to satisfy our sense of self-worth?

I find it an interesting commentary on our modern society that one of the first things George Bush said after the 9/11 terrorist attack was for the people of America to go out and spend - don't let those nasty terrorists win. That's right, continue to prop up the ongoing fallacy of modern economics - we have to keep growing to keep going. Without that 3% growth per year, we will never be able to afford the living-beyond-our-means lifestyles to which we have become accustomed. Without our continued confusion, chasing quantity instead of quality, we will not be able to give meaning to our existence.

Taken in that context, we seem to be defining ourselves as consumers, eating up all of the resources that our planet is struggling to supply us with. We are what we eat, and our appetite is insatiable.

So now I return to Henry Ford, that cloven-hoofed progenitor of the monied powers, and I think about killing him for the greater good. However, I know that some other opportunistic bastard would have just taken his place, and then I'd have to go back and kill him too, on and on, ad infinitum. And I know that eventually, even though I have Viking blood in my veins, I would grow sick of all the killing.

Thankfully, I see a great solution on the horizon. In fact, it is even closer than the horizon. I don't know how many of you amongst the Rambling Masses have heard of the concept of Peak Oil, so I'll give a brief definition.

Peak Oil is the point at which the world's oil reserves reach their absolute maximum production levels ever. There will be no more increases in world oil production after that point. We may plateau for a while, but then the gradual slide downwards will begin. You see, there's no gloom and doom yet, right? We won't run out of oil for at least another hundred years, so why worry, right?

See, the thing is, even a plateau will have untold cataclysmic ramifications for the very fabric of our society. We won't be able to continue that glorious 3% growth that Beige Howard, George Dubya, Blair Witch and all of the other world power cronies rabbit on about.

Oil is not just used to lubricate our machines and make petrol and diesel for our four wheel drives. Oil touches every part of our modern lives. We make plastic, fertilisers and herbicides from oil, along with a million other things too numerous to mention here (without the post getting annoyingly long). Every manufacturing process and transportation process relies on oil. Alternative energy sources will never be able to fill the void, since they cannot provide the same levels of cheap and available energy as oil can.

Ah, but bio-diesel and hydrogen cells will save us. Do me a favour. The process of manufacturing hydrogen requires more power to be put in than you can get from it. Bio-fuel would require an arable area greater than the size of all of the agricultural land in Australia currently being used, just to fuel Sydney's requirements. And where are we going to get the fertilisers and herbicides from when the oil dries up?

Things will, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, grind to an inevitable halt. And oh, how I will enjoy the silence. I for one welcome the end of the Oil Age, for it has meant nothing but rampant destruction and pollution on a grand scale. All of that cheap energy got to our heads, and we just went ahead and went crazy, leaving (to use a soon-to-be-anachronistic term) nothing in the tank for our future generations.

Yet one more evil perpetrated by Henry Ford was the industry that he chose to apply his oh-so-sensible economic rationalism to - the motor industry. Cars are responsible for vast amounts of oil consumption, giving us an easy way of getting from point A to point B, whilst at the same time fouling the air all around. You need only look at that glorious brown haze in major urban areas, take a deep breath, and enjoy the smell of sweet success.

And I laugh mightily at all of this, because we are not looking at the Peak Oil event happening in 50 years, or even 10 years. Future records will probably show that the world Peak Oil event has already happened, or is about to happen in the next year or two at the very latest. Ghawar, the largest conventional oil field ever discovered, accounted for about two thirds of Saudi oil production over the past half century. It supplied five million barrels of oil per day, which amounts to about 6.5% of the world's daily production of 84 million barrels. Well, advanced oil extraction techniques have been employed there for a while, to wring the last few drops from the rag, and it's well and truly on it's last legs. Peak Oil is here, and if you think that $1.40 per litre for petrol is a bit steep, just wait, oh Rambling Masses, just wait...

Bring it on, I say! I can't wait for our destructive society to crash and burn in the flames that have been waiting so long to engulf it. Finally, the demon spawn of Henry Ford will die a deserving and eternal death. Hopefully, we will have the resilience and resourcefulness as a species to bounce back and continue our existence. I only hope that we do not continue our destructive ways. I hear people talking about a revival of the Coal Age after the Oil Age fades into fond memories of glory days, of private jets, of golf courses, of 1o-cylinder luxury cars...

But hey, wait a minute! Isn't coal a finite and oh-so-polluting resource too?

I will leave you with a wonderful quote by an anonymous Saudi Arabian oil sheikh, who uttered these immortal words in 1982:

"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a plane. His son will ride a camel."

The Adventures Of Hans Malone - Private Dick

Ah, Rambling Masses,

Have I got something average in store for you today! About five years ago, I was mucking around on a local community radio station as a pretend DJ with a couple of friends of mine, and I decided to put together a rather silly weekly serial.

I recently stumbled across the end result, hiding in a dark recess of my hard drive somewhere. And so, without further ado, I give you...

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 1

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 2

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 3

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 4

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 5

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 6

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 7

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 8

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 9

• The Adventures Of Hans Malone Episode 10

I hope you enjoy wasting your time listening to it as much as I enjoyed wasting my time making it. Until next we meet, oh Rambling Masses, I remain your humble servant.

Random Thoughts

Hello, oh Rambling Masses,

I got to thinking a few random thoughts, Steven Wright style, and felt like sharing them with you. So, for better or worse, here they are:

Why do they call them Automatic Teller Machines, when you still need to manually make your way to an ATM, insert your card, key in your PIN, the amount you want, which account to get it from, whether or not you want a receipt, grab your card, grab your cash and grab your receipt? If it were truly automatic, shouldn't the money just magically appear in your wallet?

What will unlucky lovers say, now that there aren't plenty of fish left in the sea?

What if you are neither lucky at love or cards? Do you get some other kind of bonus to compensate?

Why are there approximately 25 different types of toilet paper of all different kinds of ply thickness, colours, patterns, fragances, aloe vera infusions and diverse other luxurious trappings, when ultimately, it's all really about poo, plain and simple?

Why did the descriptive moniker "Heavy Metal" never get shortened to "Lead"?

Why are our lives absolutely nothing like "reality TV"? Isn't that false advertising?

If sunflower oil comes from sunflowers, and olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?

Why did we ever stop the age-old practise of killing the bearer of ill tidings? If we reinstated it, it might mean that the TV news and newspapers would be worthwhile for a change.

Does anyone really care about consumer confidence? What is that, anyway - "Consumer Confidence"? If I walk tentatively into a chemist and purchase some condoms, would that be reducing the level of consumer confidence?

Does Baz Luhrmann do his BAS, or does his accountant do Baz's BAS for him?

What do swallows do if they have problems swallowing?

Did you know that as recently as pre-WWII, blue used to be a girl's colour, and pink used to be a boy's colour? This is because blue was considered the more delicate of the two, what with pink being associated with the strong colour, red. Apparently, the use of a pink triangle to identify homosexuals in Nazis concentration camps contributed to the gender-colour reversal, as did the post-war desire to get away from the dreary grey, navy and khaki of the wartime years.

Why don't more soldiers faint during their Passing Out Parade?

How come people get grossed out when you mention making cheese from human breast milk? We are human, and it makes more sense to eat human cheese than it does to eat cow cheese, goat cheese or sheep cheese, doesn't it? Guys would be queueing up to join the dairy industry...

The Happiness Principle

Hello Oh Rambling Masses,

What's that I hear you ask? Am I suffering from blog weariness, that great falling away after the initial flurry? It has been over a month since my last post (no pun intended for all you Anzac-ites). But here I am, back again with another collection of rambling words, vaguely attempting to reach that wonderful goal of communication.

The particular pearl of wisdom that I want to impart today is one that is very close to my heart, right next to the mass of muscles that keep my blood-pumping organ going.

What is it that we all seek in life? A simple question, with a surprisingly simple answer. We all want to be happy, don't we? Yes we do. I've now used up my quota of rhetorical questions, so I will refrain from using them further throughout the rest of this post... that would be a good idea, wouldn't it now?

Happiness is the one goal above all else that we aspire to. We can become confused at times, and identify such things as material possessions, the quest for power, and other ephemeral pursuits as the raison d'etre of life that drives us. But this all comes to naught unless it gives us happiness, that deep sense of well-being and satisfaction that warms our souls and makes the day-to-day troubles seem so trivial.

Ah, happiness - such a simple concept, but at times so hard to grasp. The biggest problem I have in my life is an ongoing internal struggle between my emotional optimism and my intellectual pessimism. I have a vast amount of emotional optimism, a belief that all will work out right in the end, a naive core that is proud to be so.

But another tenant is housed within my heart, that of the intellectual pessimist. I cannot help sometimes to be carried away in streams of sadness, frustration and rage at the state of the world, unchanged for these many millennia, where we have the means to make everything right, but the will is missing. Wars, petty disputes, poverty, lack of education, destructive capitalistic opportunism, racism, sexism, religious differences, pollution, greed and ignorance, all run rampant in our world. The gift of life that we have been given is wasted on unfruitful, counter-productive toil that does not do much, if anything, to improve the lot of ourselves or those around us. By the expression "those around us" I mean every living entity on this planet.

So, what is the answer? (D'oh, there's another rhetorical - I just can't help myself). Well, you don't have to be the brightest spark in the fire to realise that the current systems we have in place the world over are not exactly delivering the goods. Communism, yeah, well, that was a failed experiment that was never going to work. Capitalism, oh my god, how I wish you would die! Autocracies, totalitarianism, fascism, dictatorships, monarchies, religious despotism, feudalism - yeah, right - they sure make everyone happier...

The basic problem with all of these systems is the same - there's a bunch of fat cats who want to lord it over everyone else. Call it basic human nature, if you want, but in my opinion it is just another cancer that needs to be excised. Why do we assume that it is the natural order of things for people to want more than their fellows? Is greed the natural order of things?

It kind of reminds me of a rather excellent movie, the message of which was very poignant. Instinct, with Anthony Hopkins, raises the concept of "Takers". Hopkins talks about the people that inhabited the world 10,000 years ago, and how a tribe of "Takers" swept all before them. His speech about modern man's presumption that he has the right to a dominion over the world is searing and brutally accurate. The idea that somewhere in the dim dark dawn of prehistory, humans used what they needed as opposed to what they wanted is a powerful and sad indictment on our modern "civilised" world.

I often have problems balancing the negative and positive sides of my personality. There are times (all too often) when I dip over into the negative, and lose my sense of balance. Depression is a close but thankfully not yet realised danger during these times. But I always manage to snap out of it, eventually.

One of the things that has helped return me to a more positive frame of mind is the concept of the Happiness Principle. Put simply, I feel that in life we should be almost constantly guided by a simple test - does what I do/say/feel/make/contribute/whatever actually increase the sum total of happiness in the world? It needn't always be your own happiness that is paramount, for we can often do things for others that may not necessarily be in our own best interests.

As per the Happiness Principle, if the answer to that question is yes, then go ahead, knock yourself out, go for broke. If the answer to that question is no, then there better be a bloody good reason for it, otherwise don't do it.

I know it's very simplistic, but I hope that in some small way it is a step in the right direction towards reclaiming our rightful place on this planet as custodians of the life that we control. With great power comes great responsibility, something that our leaders often seem to ignore (and I mean not just political leaders, but business leaders, community leaders, and all others in positions of power to affect things around them). Hey, wait a minute, that's everyone. We all have the power to affect things around us. So, what are we waiting for?

One of the most powerful books I have ever read is one called "The Alchemy Of Happiness". Written by the great Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan. I would like to reproduce just one passage from the book, for your edification:

Sin and virtue, good and bad, right and wrong, can be distinguished and determined on this principle. Virtue is what brings real happiness. What is called right is that which leads to happiness. What is good is good because it gives happiness; and if it does not do so it cannot be called good, it cannot be called virtue, it cannot be right. Whenever man has found virtue in unhappiness he has been mistaken; whenever he was wrong he has been unhappy. Happiness is the being of man; that is why he craves it.

So, I now apply this Happiness Principle to the men in power, and I see them sadly lacking. How is the "War on Terror in Oil Rich Countries" contributing to happiness? How is this dumb-ass Australian (and all other capitalist lap-dog nations) political obsession with the Economy over all else contributing to happiness? How is poisoning the rivers, chopping down the forests and killing all the fish contributing to happiness? How is causing the greatest mass extinction rate since the big rock hit 65 million years ago (scientists estimate there are 10 to 30 million plant and animal species on the planet, most of them unidentified; each year as many as 50,000 species disappear; most die off because of human activity) contributing to happiness? Taken to its logical conclusion, will we be happy when it's just us, mosquitos, flies and cockroaches left on the planet?

And so we come to one last question - how is worrying about all of this contributing to happiness? Well, on the face of it, it's not. I am not a happier man because of it. But I would much rather be unhappy at times than to stick my head in a bucket of sand and be blissfully ignorant. If in some small way I can influence the great rape and pillage of this planet for the better, then all of my unhappiness will have been worth it for the greater happiness to come.

I leave you now, oh Rambling Masses, with a complex smile on my lips that is half happy, half sad.