The tale of 15 Haywood St: How to demolish a house sustainably

This post has been written by my Mum, Suzy Toovey. She expertly tells the tale of trying to demolish our family house in a sustainable manner. It's a story full of high and lows, but it's also one of perseverance. Read on and enjoy. Thanks Mum! 
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I was driving to an appointment this afternoon and I was thinking what can inspire me to write a piece for Libby’s blog when I saw this tram go past and thought “how is that for inspiration”. Just like the tram advertising loudly Sirena Tuna’s “Sustainably Caught 100% Pole & Line One Fish At A Time”, we need to be committed to and be loud and bold about sustainability.

The Toovey family have over the last several months embarked on a huge project. This project has involved planning and organising to build 2 townhouses on the land that our home has sat on for over 50 years with it being our family home for over 30 years of those years.

Our house

However, when it came to choosing a demolisher I was determined to find one who was eco-friendly and had environmentally sustainable practices. The first demolisher recommended by the architects really didn’t fit the bill, and being the client from “hell”, I was determined to find a demolisher who cared about the environment, had sustainable practices and wouldn't just put all of our house into landfill.

Before choosing a demolisher I put out feelers to see if we could sell the house i.e the physical building of 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, family room etc.  Initially house movers responded saying it was too big and too hard to move and no one would want it, but I wouldn’t give no for answer.

Thanks to my love of Google surfing I found “Eco demolition”, a demolition company that tries to reduce landfill by recycling bricks, roof tiles, pavers and timber and turns them into “eco bricks” which are like briquettes and can be used to fuel wood burning fire places. I felt that by at least using this demolisher we were attempting to be sustainable.

But the story does not end there. I still believed that I would be able to find someone that wanted to relocate our whole house to another sire. You don’t get much money from this but it does salvage the house and it lives again. This journey led me to “Moving Views”, a family owned house removal company who were willing to try and give our home a second chance by advertising it as “The Colonial”.  We had two parties interested in our humble abode and one lady even came all the way from past Bendigo. She liked it enough to come and look at it with all her grandchildren including her grandson Elvis whose birthday they were celebrating that day.

However, it was my mistake not to list the house earlier and I would recommend anyone trying to have their house removed from their site to give at least 4 months to do this to hopefully result in a positive outcome. Unfortunately for us this journey did not have a positive outcome.

As the demolition date neared I continued to hassle the demolisher about saving our windows as they were beautiful cedar windows but this was another dead end. A lady from a company which on sells things from homes came and visited and said anything over 10 years old can’t be salvaged as people are not interested in it. This meant most of our house was ‘un-salvageable’ even though nearly everything was in good condition.

Before

In an attempt to salvage things for our own use, we took the cedar roof and the round porthole in our living room and the Oregon beams that hold it up. Nick’s friend from Somers (also called Nick) work tirelessly to do this for us. Something others had said could not be done.We plan to use all of these things in the new house, somehow (suggestions welcomed).

After: the cedar roof and porthole are gone 

Finally in desperation when the demolisher said that they were just going to knock over the house without salvaging anything from it, I searched for someone who might want our windows and take any timber from the house. There was no one in metropolitan Melbourne who was at all interested and I only found someone in Bendigo by chance. Bendigo is the place to be it seems. 

When I spoke to Christian from “Renovate, Restore, Recycle” he was extremely positive and I felt like my prayers had been answered. Christian and his team came down the following week and took out all but 2 of our windows and about half our floor boards.

Before

After, with the windows gone!

I did feel some elation that someone, somewhere would make use of the windows and the timber he salvaged. These items to Christian had real value and he had created a business around sustainability. This was certainly not the case for the other avenues I had tried.

They even took all the floor!

My final comment about being sustainable when you are demolishing a house is plan early. If you plan to try and sell things on Gumtree give yourself at least 2-3 months. If you want to see if your house can be relocated by someone who wants it give yourself 4-6 months. Also be prepared to come across the attitude that it is too hard to salvage and costs too much. The one thing that helped me keep going was that I am stubborn and believed somewhere, someone could make use of items from our house before it was demolished. I felt like the house was the equivalent of an organ donor and it was a good feeling to know someone may use the items salvaged.

There goes the front of the house!

And 15 Haywood St right now..

Bye bye house.. 

Sustainability in the shower

When I think of sustainability I think about my everyday actions, from recycling anything I can, riding my bike instead of driving a car to turning off lights and heating. These are things we do and I know I’m conscious of not emitting too much carbon when I do it. 

But what about things that we do or the stuff we use where the carbon has already been emitted for us? What I mean is, do we ever think where our stuff has come from and how much carbon, chemicals, bad stuff it took to make it? 

I don’t reckon I thought too much about it until recently. Especially not about the stuff I use in the shower. 

For a very long time I have used head and shoulders shampoo and conditioner. I have no idea if I have dandruff or not and I don’t have a very good reason why I used it. It was purely because my hair felt pretty damn soft after I washed it.  We all know the feeling, right? 

Well a few years ago my mum tried to get me onto a shampoo and conditioner that just didn’t seem as nice as good ol' head and shoulders. But Mum reckon this one was much better for me because it didn’t contain all those nasty chemicals that other shampoos did. Nasty chemcials? I was shocked. Why would a shampoo and conditioner contain bad things when it made my hair feel so good? Oh multinational companies and their cunning ways!

So what are these nasty chemical that my Mum was so adamantly against, I hear you ask? Well unfortunately folks, it’s kind of a long and scary list.

The chemicals in Head and Shoulders

The bad stuff and what it is
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate/Sodium Laureth Sulfate: cancer-causing agent that’s in about every shampoo and conditioner. It pretty much means “I’m bad, do not use me”.

Polysorbates: the solvent that binds water and oil together, can react badly with scalp and  disrupts the skin’s natural pH in the body.

Glycol: they’re a common ingredient and a cancer-causing agent. It’s used as a solvent to incorporate products into a formula, and they’re extremely dangerous—they’re known carcinogens. They mean bad news!

Amodimethicone: this is the chemical that leaves your hair all smooth and silky. Damn you, amodimethicone! This guy is a silicone-based polymer that’s used to seal moisture meaning that nothing can breathe. But we want the scalp to breathe. Be free and breathe scalp!

Cetrimonium Chloride: this guy is a conditioning agent with loads of preservatives in it. The experts reckon it’s no good and doesn’t actually need to be in conditioner.

What can we do? Get up right now and check our shampoo and conditioner. Go on, do it. I’ll be here when you get back.

You’re back! What’d you find? Chemicals? I thought so.

If you’re a regular to my blog then you’ll know this is where the good stuff comes in. This is where I tell you that there are alternatives, ones that are good for you and good for the environment. Let’s be honest, we don’t really want all those chemicals running down our drain and into our waterways. That just means trouble.

So what are the alternatives?

Well you know that stuff my Mum was trying to get me onto years ago, turns out it’s actually pretty great.

It’s called Sukin and it’s all Australian and all natural. That means we’re not using nasty chemicals on our heads and the environment. It’s 100% vegan, 100% carbon neutral and their tagline is, "Skincare that doesn’t cost the earth". I’ve been using their body wash for a while and it does a great job. I’ve started using the shampoo recently and although my hair doesn’t feel as silky smooth, I think that’s probably a good thing! Moisture can escape and my scalp can breathe! 

No bad stuff in Sukin!

What I love most about this product is that Sukin have actually thought about their environmental impact. They used recycled packaging, their products are grey water safe, ensuring that what we use is not going to damage our rivers, animals and plant life once it heads down the drain. They also use plant based ingredients rather than super nasty chemicals. Sukin formulations are also biodegradable, avoiding build up and contamination in our waterways. 

Make your own shampoo 

A dear friend of mine has stopped using shampoo and conditioner all together. She was a little freaked out at all the chemical in her shampoo and decided to switch it up. She now uses bi carb soda and apple cider vinegar in her hair.

If you want to try it, here’s what she does:
- pour 2cm of bi carb into a small jar and fill it with water
- pour bi carb into roots and scrub/massage into scalp
- rinse out thoroughly
- pour a little bit of apple cider vinegar onto the ends and rinse out
- now you’ve got nice, clean hair!

My friend says it works a treat. I’m yet to try it but I’d take her word for it. She’s been doing this for 18 months and knows her stuff.

There are also many homemade shampoo and conditioner recipes out there. Here’s a simple one a friend recommended I look at. It’s from Blah Blah Magazine.

Homemade shampoo
Makes about 250ml
Saves about $8 (based on average natural shampoo costing $10, but some are way more expensive)
Does not contain Sodium Lauryl Sulfates, Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, Mureth Sulfate, Siloxanes, Derivatives of Lauryl Alcohol, Propylene Glycol and Olefin Sulfonate
Reduces carbon emissions and water use

Ingredients:

½ cup liquid Castile soap
¼ cup boiled water, cooled
¼ cup honey (not for babies under one year old)
1 tablespoon bicarbonate soda
15 drops orange essential oil
30 drops lavender essential oil
15 drops rosemary essential oil
1 tablespoon aloe vera (optional)
Sterile or very clean squeeze lid or pump 250ml bottle
Mix all the ingredients in a bottle. Label with ingredients and date.

So if you’ve looked in your shower and thought (like I did) “oh god, what have I been doing?!” Take a deep breath and know that there is another way. Whether it’s natural or homemade, just try and make sure that you’re not putting deadly chemicals onto you, or into the environment. Oh, and enjoy your shower!

Change your shampoo, help the environment!