That’s right. Even before our first product leaves this place, we have chosen to use Fatcow to host this website, whose servers are wind-powered.
We’re not using GoDaddy, for instance, because we already know that they actively support trophy-hunting.
This is what it means for us to be an ethical business.
Okay, well you may or may not know that I am generally a very busy person. I run at least four websites, so I don’t always have time to update them all every single day (I’m certainly going to try to update most of them daily though– because it only takes a few minutes I suppose).
So one of the aims of this blog is to show you, the reader, how to live a zero waste lifestyle. It’s amazing what happens when you try not to throw anything in the rubbish bin for several months. You can really start to see where and how we are being so wasteful.
Today’s update concerns my daily life and how I am trying to think more ecologically in every single thing that I do. Yes, this is a picture of my very own toothbrush. Yes, complete with what looks like one of my dog’s hairs. I’ll be sure to take that off before the next use. Well, I photographed it a few days ago, but I wasn’t happy with the background and colour of the photo…
Anyway, notice that it has a bamboo handle? It’s called the “environmental toothbrush“. This is actually my second eco toothbrush. The first one I had had a thicker handle and dark bristles and is called “the eco toothbrush“. However, the bristles on that particular toothbrush turned out to be very sharp and made my gums bleed. This is by far the better eco toothbrush of the two. How about eco razor handles please?
Okay, so when this toothbrush wears out a bit more, I will use it as kindling to start our fire. That right there means no waste.
Yes that’s right — we’re selling worms of all things. These worms have been hard at work breaking down all sorts of waste organic material over the last few years. Quantities are very limited, so best to arrange a suitable pickup time/date.
Well electricity prices keep on going up and up and up here in Sydney. And my mum recently made the decision to invest in some solar panels to lower the monthly energy bill. I have attached some pics of our new solar installation. I will update the blog again with more pictures of the final setup when it is all done.
Each panel produces about 250W of power each, so that it roughly 4.75kW energy in total. They told us to wait a year or so for the price of Tesla’s lithium storage battery to come down a bit before buying that. So the idea is to go off grid.
She’s also looking at adding a small wind turbine because our house is fairly high up and exposed to quite a bit of wind. It’s always windy. It’s windy outside right now. So usually, when there’s no sun, at least there is wind. That’s the plan!
I’m writing about this because it’s actually the third time that something like this has happened — where a well-intenioned human being has ‘accidentally’ (yet intentionally) poisoned something on this land. What has happened recently?
First some more detail:
We have converted an old inflatable spa into a “scum pond”. Why would we want to do that? Why have we intentionally built a scum pond?
Quick answer: because it enables me to test my waste byproducts in there in order to reduce toxicity. For example, after doing some manufacturing, I wash the tooling and/or moulds in there. I wash my hands in there. Why? Because that way, PVA residue doesn’t go down the drain. And I can check whether it really does benefit the environment, or whether my artificial little wetlands suffers. So we have a scum pond because the whole idea is to produce waste that nature can eat.
The other reason we have a scum pond is because they use nasty chemicals in sewerage and waste treatment plants. And they too have to come from somewhere, like, for instance, Nauru.
So this pond has green aglae in it. It has some mosquitoes in it. It’s far from dead. It’s alive! Everything just appeared all by itself. It rained and that was it. That was all we had to do. Leave it alone. The good news is that, so far, it has devoured everything we have put in there. It’s like a different form of composting or bokashi. I think that is pretty cool.
So yesterday, the pool guy came round and I briefly saw something splash in the scum pond. I didn’t think too much about it because I was heading to the toilet. Actually, I thought he might have been fishing something out of the bottom. Why I do not know. And I wasn’t going to ask if he was fishing for things in the bottom of our scum pond. Fair enough.
And a little while later, I overhear him say to my mum: “I just chucked some chlorine into the spa; I won’t charge you for it”. And believe it or not but my mum actually defended me and said “oh no you shouldn’t have done that” and half explained why (no chemicals; it’s rain water; we pour the water onto the worms). She stopped short of explaining about the scum pond. But I think people should know.
Why do people have this innate desire to kill things? Those little algae have chlorophyll in them, don’t they? That means they are providing us all with oxygen. Why on Earth are we trying to stop that process? Why kill that? What gives us the right to decide what goes on in that scum pond? It’s even worse than the expression: “biting the hand that feeds you”, because we need oxygen oh so much more than we need food. I hope one day there is a new expression: “adding chlorine to the scum pond”.
I felt like saying something further like that. But I didn’t want to make the young guy feel even more awkward.
Come to think of it, it’s just one of the reasons that I don’t really like working with other people that much. It’s not that I am a control freak or anything. It’s that sometimes people don’t think. I know people are only trying to help. But the fact is, they often don’t.
“Some things could be better. If we’d all just let them be.” —GNR
Firstly, thanks for reading. Secondly, apologies for the state of the website, it’s still very much “in progress”. Well this is going to be somewhat of a strange post. The idea is that I’m just going to write as I think and not to edit (and that way, more articles are likely to get published). I think it’s fun to follow people’s journey, so that’s what I’ve decided to do.
So as you may know, I am trying to develop a range of “zero waste” products and manufacturing processes. Actually, not just zero waste. More like “waste negative and nature positive”. Anyway.
The thing is, this is turning out to be more difficult than expected. So these are a couple of things that have happened recently and I thought I’d share my story.
Hemp is among the earth’s primary renewable resources. Hemp is an environmentally friendly crop which requires no pesticides or herbicides when grown, therefore producing “organic” and environmentally friendly products. One acre of hemp can produce 250% more usable fiber than cotton, 400% more fiber than cellulose (tree wood) and 600% more fiber than flax (linen).
Hemp fabric requires fewer chemicals than cotton and is stronger and longer lasting. Hemp requires less water than cotton and grows in a wide variety of climates. Hemp also doesn’t require the huge amounts of herbicides and pesticides and fertilizers that cotton does.
Hemp is an excellent rotation crop: it crowds out weeds and its deep tap roots break up hard soils. It enriches soil and prevents erosion.
