Friday, August 3, 2007

Little things - a case study in sustainable living for renters

About three months ago Gem and I moved into a great little house in Newtown, NSW Australia. We're on a sustainability kick, so we've been slowly changing little things about the house and how we live.

The house is a 1920's style worker's cottage which has been extended twice as far as we can tell. The place has got a lot of character and a lot to work with, but also a lot of limitations. One of those limitations is that we don't own the place, we rent, so this means that little things are within reach and big things probably aren't. But as Paul and Kev say "From little things big things grow..."

Sarah from the Watershed suggested that we'd make a good case study, so we decided to start this blog. The aim of this blog is to summarise our experiences and research on a range of topics with emphasis on little things that can be done by renters, and how we've gone about them.

Our goal is to be well under average for the carbon footprint without reverting to the stone age. This will result at times in continuing to do things which are not perfect, but our aim is not to be perfect, just to share what we've done, how we've done it and perhaps get some suggestions of other things to try.

There's also a range of things we haven't worked out yet, so suggestions most gratefully received. As we try them out I'll aim to update the blog with the results.

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