Little Things - A case study in sustainable living: June 2008

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Tackling this issue at scale

Newtown Cottage is a site designed to share a few ideas that renters can do to reduce, reuse, recycle etc.

I've now embarked on a much more ambitious undertaking which looks at giving people tools and thinking models to be resilient and lead resilient organisations. If you're conciencious and looking for something meaty to sink your teeth into, I'd recommend having a look: http://www.resilientfutures.org

I've also set up a feed in the right hand column of this site to pull recent stories out.

The story of stuff

An incredible useful video which explains a range of things which get people thinking more deeply about sustainability. It's about 20 minutes of short segments, and well worth the time and effort to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqZMTY4V7Ts

A case study in sustainability 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.