Sustain Myself

A lot of my time has recently been consumed by thinking of ways I can boot my fossil fuel burning Subaru (Farewell, My Subaru?) and replace it with a 100% carbon neutral alternative.

I don’t want to have an electric car, I actually think that spending silly amounts of money developing electric power systems and electric recharge stations for cars is a backwards step. They still burn fossil fuels, just not directly. I wrote about Electric cars recently.

I am worried about getting an older diesel car to do a Bio Diesel conversion to it because, although there is a fuelling station for Bio Diesel in Sydney, it is across the other side of the city and I wouldn’t be able to get there very often to fill up. I did find this post on other filling stations in Sydney, but it is from almost 3 years ago. There is also a lot of information available on making your own Bio Diesel, but I simply do not have the space required to do it.

So, when I visited a link posted to Twitter by Sighmon (the recent winner of World Visions ‘learn about poverty’ competition) it got me a little excited. Making your own Ethanol ? Great idea!

35 Gallons (or ~140 litres) of Sugar-based ethanol per week! That’s about 120 litres more than we use at the moment. But this might also be used in my bike.  Unfortunately, there seems to be a distinct lack of information relating to the use of 100% ethanol in my vehicle.

The other option is an LPG conversion for my car which is around AUD $3500. LPG is cheaper to buy and burns much cleaner than petroleum based fuels. It is, however, still based on fossil fuels.

I am at a loss. We dont use much petrol, but I’d like us to use less. There is a lot of international and local support for the use of Bio Diesel and I think this will likely be the route that we decide to take, if we can make the room somewhere.

We use a lot of power. We have lots of lights and devices as well as my fish tank which uses stupid amounts of power (1.2kW of lights alone). We have 50W down lights in every room (from the top of my head, a total of ~28). We have a big TV and entertainment devices (which we switch off at the wall every night). We use a lot of power.

Power Options

I have recently been looking into our alternative options for our power. Solar is at the top of my list but we need the cash to spend. With our power usage, to be totally covered by Solar, we’d initially be out of pocket about $22,000. While that seems like a lot, it means that we would have 0 power bills and 0 grid-based power consumption for over 20 years (and we spend more than $1000 annually now). Unfortunately, the NSW government likely to make changes to the maximum $8000 Solar rebate which would make that $22,000 figure increase substantially. Already the Victorian government has made changes to their Solar “incentive” which would mean that I’d get squat if I got this much Solar power in Victoria. Top work guys. In France, the government provides incentives to alternative energy manufacturers as well as lots of other changes towards renewable energy. Meanwhile, we continue to build brown coal power stations.

Renewable Google. Renewgle?

Google have spent a lot of time, money and effort making their own renewable energy sources for their offices and even going as far to present a $4 trillion energy plan to the US government. The have even provided a small power saving calculator and power saving tips. Strange URL and its targeted to the US (Australians don’t have thermostats). Is there anything Google can’t do?

Until Then

Until we go the Solar path (which will likely be sooner than later) we have decided to reduce our power consumption as much as possible. Sites like Neco and Todae have many power efficient products that I will be investing in over the next few months. LED down lights will take our 50W halogens and replace them with 9 or 11W varieties. We already don’t use our air conditioner, but we might have to in summer if we don’t put the DIY double glazing on the windows of our house. These are a few options available but we will continue to turn everything off at night. If we can reduce our usage sufficiently then the cost of Solar will be reduced as we wont need as many panels.

Slowly we are moving towards a non existent footprint.

For a long time I have been undecided about my stance on Hybrid vehicles. Yes, they produce considerably less CO2 and other toxins through the exhaust than conventional internal combustion powered vehicles. But, one fact that people seem to forget (or choose to ignore) is that these vehicles are powered by batteries with a max life of 10 years!

Now, putting the Prius to the side for a moment, Doug Fine (who is a bit of a hero of mine) wrote in his book ‘Farewell, my Subaru’ about how he converted a ROAT (Ridiculously Oversized American Truck – or Ford F250) to use Vegetable oil instead of Diesel and is now almost entirely carbon neutral.

If it is possible to make big diesel cars and trucks like this run on a freely available waste product and produce so little emissions, why is it so hard to do? Surely there is a market for this fuel source? There is definitely enough supply. I know of one Bio-Diesel fuelling station in Sydney and it is over an hours drive from my house.

So, back to the Prius. How is it that everybody has quickly jumped on the Prius bandwagon without ever questioning the use and environmental impact of all this iron and nickel and anything else toxic in the batteries? Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti Hybrid vehicles, I just think that more research is required and that a better solution can be obtained (I am a big fan of Hydrogen).

A lot of reports exist about the damage that these batteries can do to the environment. One report, aptly titled ‘Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage’ writes this;

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

That is a hardcore statement and if true, damns Hybrids of all their eco responsibility.

Another report (although considerably older) named ‘Lead-Based Battery Used in Electric Car May Pose Hazards’ quotes the following;

Exposure to low levels of lead can harm the brains of young children, reducing intelligence and impairing neurobehavioral development, studies have found. Very severe exposure can cause coma, convulsions and death.

With this in mind, it appears the manufacturers are trying to brighten their image and offer a ‘buy back scheme’ for their batteries so they can be properly recycled. Some defenders of Hybrid technology suggest that the levels of toxicity in Hybrid vehicle batteries (Nickel Metal Hydride – Or NiMH) are lower than their lead and Nickel Cadmium equivalents. I’m not too sure that any level of toxicity, especially in a car sold as the green alternative, should be acceptable

Why do manufacturers continue to push technologies that are becoming more and more obsolete? Personally, I think its because with less fuel being required, they need to ensure that they can continue selling you something after you have purchased the car. By having the batteries ‘run out’ after 10 years, they guarantee your return patronage and a cool $5000 every decade as opposed to giving you the opportunity to fill-up for next-to-nothing at your local Chinese or Fish ‘n Chip shop.

What are you opinions of this? Perhaps I have over looked something? Are you for or against the Hybrid vehicle movement?

Welcome to the first post on Sustain Myself. While I don’t for one second consider myself an environmental or ecological expert, I am passionate about it and this blog will contain my findings on my quest for sustainability.

For my whole adult life I have lived in a unit until recently when my wife and I bought a house in Sydney’s Elanora Heights. For some reason when we were in the unit, we never bought a compost bin or worm farm. Needless to say that the second that we moved into the house, a compost bin and worm farm were almost the first things I bought.

After a bit of reading and general research, I decided on a Can-O-Worms worm farm with 2000 worms to start it, and a Tumbleweed Compost bin.

The Can-O-Worms is so great and sits under our balcony so it gets a little bit of sun, but not too much. Also, the cardboard wrapper that the Can-O-Worms comes in is what they suggest you use for the damp cover inside the worm farm to keep the farm moist and cool.

After doing a fair bit of reading on the Can-O-Worms, there was a whole bunch of reading on how these worms do not like to be over-fed. So, when we noticed the worms plateau a little with their feeding, we started putting organic waste in the bin instead. (Note that it is very evident that the worms prefer some foods over others. The love avocado and corn but not so much apples).

The trick with making a good compost is to have 25% food waste and 75% grass and thin garden waste (no bark and wood as it doesn’t break down) so we put a lot of kitchen waste in the bin and then over the weekend when I mowed the lawn, we added all the cut grass to the compost bin with half a bag of cow manure. At this stage the compost will be ready in 4 weeks. I keep turning the Tumbleweed and have been watching the compost start to sweat and its very hot in there. The problem now is that we dont have enough worms to eat all our kitchen waste and we cannot add anything to the compost for another 4 weeks so we may need to buy another bin so we can cycle them.

I am very pleased to announce that at this stage, we do not throw out any organic waste. It feels really good.

Have you had compost bins or worm farms? What are you experiences with them?