To market: the benefits of buying locally

Most Melburnians like a trip to their local market. For me it’s the South Melbourne Market. When I go there on a Saturday or Sunday morning I feel like I’ve stepped into a microcosm of the outside world. You’ve got your super hipster people buying their ‘superfoods’ like kale and quinoa that they’ll make into some flourless, sugarless quinoa loaf. Then you’ve got the little old ladies (and men) with their trollies, hunting the best bargain on every vegetable and fruit possible. I fall into the second category, minus the trolley (for now).

Aside from being an experience of a lifetime, shopping at your local market has many positives for you and the environment. 

South Melbourne Market 

It’s cheaper. 

Buying your fruit and vegetables at markets is often a lot cheaper than buying it at a big supermarket. This is because there are very few ‘extra’ costs involved in market shopping. For example, a big supermarket has the pay their supplier (the farmers), has to pay for transporting the products across the country (or the world) and they want to make some profits for themselves. However, the fruit and vegetables found at the market usually come straight from the farmer to you. Less people involved generally means it’s cheaper for us!

It’s local.
One of the best perks of market shopping is that the food is local. Local means that you are helping the local economy and putting money straight back into the pockets of the farmers rather than big multinational companies! Local also means that the food hasn’t had to travel hundreds of kilometres to get to your table. This means that less fuel has been used and there’s less greenhouse gases going into our atmosphere. The orange that you had for lunch hasn’t travelled all the way from California but is in fact from a farm in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Win!

Anyone want a banana? 

It’s fresh.
Food from markets is so much fresher than the stuff found at the supermarket.  Fruit and vegetables in supermarkets can often spend several days being shipped in refrigerated trucks heading to their final destinations. Those bananas at Coles didn’t get on the shelves magically from Queensland, they spend days on trucks. On the other hand, the fruit and vegetables at the market have been picked that morning or in the last day or so. That means they are fresh and you know exactly where they’ve come from.

It’s seasonal.
Eating seasonal fruits is better for you and better for the environment. Buying seasonal fruits means that you are only buying what’s available in that season. This means that as a consumer you’re not demanding strawberries in the middle of winter when they are actually a summer fruit. You’ll not only save money but you’ll help the environment. Out-of-season foods come from all over the world, which takes a hell of a lot of effort to get to you. At the market, only seasonal fruits and vegetables will be there because you guessed it, that’s all that can grow in Victoria in winter. That’s why you’re seeing all the pumpkins, potatoes and sweet potatoes at the market. They’re winter fruits. So make sure you’re only getting seasonal foods, and consider whether you really need those strawberries!

Look at all our yummy fruit and vegetables!

It’s fun.
Let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a trip to the market. There’s so much to see whether it’s the people or the food. I’ve seen fruit there that I never knew existed! So take time out of your weekend and head down to your local market. I promise it’ll be a lot better than getting your fruit and vegetables from your supermarket, not only for you but for the environment! 

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!

Into the bowl: an exploration

It’s something you use every day, hopefully. When you wake up you’ll use it. After drinking or eating you’ll use it, and right before you go to bed you’re going to want to use it.

What am I talking about? You guessed it, or maybe you didn’t but I’m talking about toilet paper. If you think about it, we use it daily and on a very regular basis.

Until a couple of years ago I never really took an interest in the kind of toilet paper I was using. I’m sure Mum just got the cheapest one available because in a family of 6 we went through a lot of toilet paper. But that’s the thing, everyone goes through a lot of toilet paper. It’s just the way our bodies function. We use the bathroom and we use toilet paper. Well that’s what I do in the toilet anyway, I’m not sure about you!

What do you reckon would happen if the toilet paper people used was not from a sustainable or recycled source?

Guess what? It’s not good news. Worldwide, the equivalent of almost 270,000 trees is either flushed or dumped in landfills every day and roughly 10 percent of that total is attributable to toilet paper. That’s every day!!

So we’re talking about 27,000 perfectly lovely trees literally going straight down the toilet bowl and into landfill. That’s obviously not good for the environment, nor is it good for the carbon dioxide floating around in our atmosphere. Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and give us nice fresh oxygen to breathe. Thank you trees, we love you.

But according to the Australian Conservation Foundation, only 5% of the toilet paper we flush away in Australia is made from recycled paper. Only 5%, you’ve got to be joking!! The rest is thought to be from plantations or native-forest trees.

Thankfully using recycled paper can help. Every tonne of paper recycled saves 13 trees, 2.5 barrels of oil, 4100 kilowatts of electricity, four cubic metres of landfill and 31,380 litres of water. Boom, go recycled paper, you’re the best. So what can you do?

Now that you’ve realised maybe your toilet paper isn’t the most sustainable option around, you’re probably thinking, which one should I get? Just as we discovered with tuna, packaging and labelling can be very misleading, so friends you’ve got to read before you buy!

What’s the best kind of toilet paper?

Personally I buy toilet paper that is 100% recycled paper and is owned and made in Australia. There’s a couple of brands that fit the bill. Lucky for us, the guys at Shop Ethical have done the hard work for us and have figured out the good and the bad brands.

Up the top is Earthwise, a brand from Encore Tissue. They use 100% post-consumer recycled waste paper. This means that the materials used in this toilet paper are onto their second life! Yay! 

Some of their packaging is also recycled paper which is even better! Usually Earthwise is used in workplaces and businesses. Check out what your workplace uses. See if they can change to recycled toilet paper! Next up is Safe toilet paper which is also owned by Encore Tissue and has the Planet Ark seal of approval.

The one that I’ve been able to find at my nearest Coles is Naturale toilet paper, which is made by ABC Tissue. It’s 100% recycled, made from used office paper. They’ve even told us how they’re helping the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland on the back. It’s also got little frogs on the toilet paper to make you feel happy when you go to the bathroom.

Naturale toilet paper

But the toilet paper that’s been getting all the attention lately, and the one people have been telling me to buy is the WhoGives A Crap toilet paper. It looks super fancy, can also be used as an art piece in your bathroom and helps more than just your bum. 

The main reason my friends tell me to buy it is because Who Gives A Crap gives 50% of their profits to WaterAid to build toilets and improve sanitation in developing countries. They say that 40% of the world’s population don’t have access to a toilet and by building them, they’re helping to stop potentially deadly diseases like diarrhoea. This is great news and such a unique idea. You’re not only buying toilet paper that’s 100% post-consumer (remember the second life!) recycled waste, but you’re helping the lives of people who are in need of it.

Who Gives A  Crap?

The only downfall is the cost. In comparison to other sustainable papers, you’re going to pay about 3 times more. We’re hoping that most of this extra cost goes straight into building toilets for people that need them! But if you’re willing to fork out a bit extra for a very worthy cause, then Who Gives A Crap is definitely your bathroom buddy! 

Things to remember when buying toilet paper: 

• Always read the labelling. Although the packaging looks super green and sustainable it might not be.
• Read the back, find out if it’s 100% recycled and whether it’s been imported. Less carbon miles the better!
• Don’t be fooled if it says ‘made from 100% renewable sources’. Anything that grows out of the ground is technically a renewable source. But we don’t really need to get it out of the ground, do we?

Recycled toilet paper!

What's up with tuna?

I was recently in the supermarket doing my weekly shop when I stopped in front of the tuna. Jen and I like to have those little 95g tuna cans for lunch to pop in our sandwiches. Now I must admit that eating tuna is probably not sustainable in itself but I’m working on finding an alternative. For the time being, I want to be able to buy the most sustainable tuna I can and not feel like I’m eating the last tuna in the ocean when I bite into my sandwich.

So, there I was standing in front of all the tuna, scanning for the most sustainable one I could find. But here’s the trouble, I have no idea which one I needed to buy. The cans say stuff like, “future friendly sourcing”, “dolphin friendly” and “sustainably caught”.

My personal favourite is the Coles brand of tuna that says, “Our skipjack tuna is caught by a select fleet of fishing vessels using fishing methods that reduce by-catch and therefore help safeguard the environment”. In other words, blah blah, your label is bullshit and means absolutely nothing.

Does anyone else feel me here? So many products out there just say the buzz words of sustainability and think they’re actually being sustainable. No sir, you are not! I know your tricks and will not fall for them! 

The Checkout knows that I'm talking about

I decided to take the matter into my own hands as I stood in the middle of the shopping isle. I picked up a can of John West tuna and dialled their customer hotline. A lovely gentlemen answered the phone and I proceeded to ask him what the labelling meant on the tuna and whether it was actually ‘sustainably caught’. To cut a long story short, this guy had no idea. He said that I should look for John West’s pole and line range but that was nowhere to be found in Coles. He also said that they’re trying to make all their ranges pole and line. I said they really should do that, and soon. 

The best and worst tuna to buy. Fish4Ever wins!

So what’s the best tuna to buy?
My sources and research tells me that Pole and Line is the best method of fishing. It means literally what it says, a fisherman has a pole and a line and is trying to catch some tuna. Each tuna is individually caught which means that other marine life dooesn’t get caught up. The best type of tuna that you can be is Skipjack as its numbers are healthy. The worst is Bluefin and yellowfin as they are being critically overfished and nearing extinction. Bluefin is the one you find in sushi so stay away if you can!

What the worst tuna to buy?
Well, pretty much any tuna that isn’t caught by pole and line is pretty disastrous for the environment.  There’s longliners (massive lines stretching hundreds of kilometres), fish aggregating devices (FADs) and purse seines (big F-off nets). All of these methods aim to get as many tuna (and other whatever else might be around) into their massive nets/lines the size and length of football fields, all the while destroying the marine environment around them. These nets and lines scrap the bottom of the ocean, not giving two hoots about any living thing out there.

Imagine that scene in Finding Nemo when Nemo gets caught up in the net and tells all the fish to swim down. Well that’s the nets, but a whole lot bigger and no one is telling the fish to swim down.


But it’s not all bad news. There are more and more companies using Pole and Line methods because customers are asking for it and caring about where and how their tuna is caught. And in this age of technology, there are apps that help us distinguish between the good tuna and the dodgey tuna. I’d recommend getting the Sustainable Seafood Guide app as it tells you what’s ok to eat and what’s not.

Greenpeace have also developed the Canned Tuna guide which tells you which tuna to buy and which one to avoid. They've even given us 6 reasons why we should be pole and line! Check it out here. 

There are lots of people out there who care about eating sustainably and I'm sure you're one of them. You just need to make sure you're a conscious shopper. Take a second to find out if your tuna is sustainable. If it's not, find one that is! 

I think it's the label..

The Checkout on ABC looked closer into the whole tuna debate. If you've got a minute or two I'd check it out. Start watching from about 17.44 to learn about tuna! 

Sustainable who?

The idea to start this blog came from conversations I’ve been having with friends and family. Most of these conversations followed a similar trend:

“How messed up is the world?!” “Pretty messed up. Our government is doing nothing! We’re doing nothing about climate change and people are already feeling the effects of it!” “It’s so frustrating, I feel hopeless, it’s hopeless, let’s just watch Broad City.”
Very few of these conversations about sustainability, the environment and the future were positive. They all had an over-arching sense of doom and gloom. And let’s face it, we are pretty screwed, and we’ve messed up big time. Probably not us personally, but we’re people and we all have brains and we’ve let it happen. We’ve demanded things, companies have produced them, and torn down half the Amazon to make them and now we’re in this position. Pretty f*ked.

But here’s where I want us to stop, and I want to think. How do we un-do, or at least try and change the situation we’re in? How can I, as one solitary human being change my lifestyle to be more sustainable, and to try and influence others to do the same?

I would say I’m pretty sustainable and environmentally conscious. I would say my family and my friends feel the same way. We care about the environment and we’re not going to go out and destroy it just cos we can. I’m a self-proclaimed greenie but not the devoted type who tie themselves to trees and live in the forest for years on end (that would be the dream!). I care about the world around me, and want to make sure it’s still here and kicking when my kids have kids and their kids have kids.

I recycle everything I can, I buy from the op-shop when I can, I ride my bike everywhere, I attend climate change rallies, I turn off lights and I turn the tap off when I’m brushing my teeth (who really still does that?). That would make me pretty sustainable, right?

Probably not.

That's where this blog comes in. 
If you choose to accept, you are going to follow my journey as I try and make my life, and its style a little more sustainable, both environmentally and ethically. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to pack my bags, sell everything I own and live in the bush for the rest of my life. It means I’m going to try and participate fully as a member of society, still going about my daily business but do it in consciously sustainable way. And I mean truly sustainable. None of this half-ass biz of “but I used my keep-cup yesterday, I can use a non-recyclable styrofoam cup today, it’ll be ok. What’s one more to landfill anyway..?” No thank-you.
I’m going to try and be sustainable in what I eat, what I wear, what I do and where my money goes. So many of us out there want to do the right thing for the world but just don’t know how. We want to make the world a greener, fairer and a more prosperous place but we don’t know where to start. 
I don’t know where to start and I certainly don't know all the answers but I’m going to find out. There’s gotta be an app, or two for it and I’m going to find it. 

We can try though..