Mother Nature Sends a Pink Slip

Destroying Mother Nature by William Orihama

In honour of Mother's Day, here's a little gem of a poem by Marilou Awiakta that deserves a wider audience.

 To: Homo Sapiens
 Re: Termination

    My business is producing life.
    The bottom line is
    you are not cost effective workers.
    Over the millennia, I have repeatedly
    clarified my management goals and objectives.
    Your failure to comply is well documented.

    It stems from your inability to be a team player:
        * you interact badly with co-workers
        * contaminate the workplace
        * sabotaged the machinery
        * hold up production
        * consume profits
    In short, you are a disloyal species.

    Within the last decade
     I have given you three warnings:
        * made the workplace too hot for you
        * shaken up your home office
        * utilized plague to cut back personnel
     Your failure to take appropriate action
      has locked these warnings into the Phase-Out
      mode, which will result in termination

                             No Appeal.

Superbugs and deadly silence

In the news today - again - scary deadly superbugs. A new WHO report reiterates that antibiotic overuse has led to antibiotic resistance, and there is now "no escape" from the risk. .

But even with this documented developing threat, this alert avoids mentioning an inconvenient truth to you. The article shares a few handy hints, implying you (yes you) can use antibiotics responsibly.

But despite all of your personal caution, the global animal industry's very model depends on routine (not prescribed) antibiotics.

I cannot say it better than councillor and veteran consumer advocate Sue Kedgley did in her 2013 article:

"There's little point in a nationwide campaign to reduce the amount of antibiotics we humans use if at the same time we turn a blind eye to the massive use of antibiotics in agriculture."

Clean green New Zealand

If like me, you are lucky enough to live in clean green New Zealand, you might think our system is not as bad as the rest of the world. And you are right - Sir Peter Gluckman says so. If only "not as bad" were good enough. 60 per cent of the total amount of antibiotics used in New Zealand are used on farmed animals, and even if they don't end up in the final product that you eat, they don't disappear.

• Experts in New Zealand know we use antibiotics in animal agriculture. They talk a lot about "minimisation" - surely a case of locking the barn door after the superbugs have bolted.
• The full WHO report says it "will also be of interest to the other sectors that are directly involved, including veterinary drug and animal husbandry, agriculture and aquaculture." And was it just in 2011 that we were talking about the last latest WHO report?

These facts need to be part of any antibiotic discussion, anywhere.  And especially in a national news report aimed at you, the consumer, who can vote with your money. You can go vegan. You can boycott any product from animals treated with antibiotics. You can make real change.

The Moneyless Man - Review

You may already have heard of vegan Mark Boyle, the former businessman who vowed publicly to live totally without money for an entire year.

With my interests, this was a book I had to grab from the Librarian Recommended shelf. You can read about his experience in multiple interviews online, but the book really gets into the details.

The motivation

It sounds crazy to voluntarily give up all the comforts that his money can bring and live apart. Just imagine:

• No grocery stops
• No cafe trips
• No car
• No toilet paper
• None

Why? Mark had become disillusioned with our money system. The first simple role of money is as tokens in a bartering system. But we've left that far behind, and money games now include international currency trading, derivatives, stockholder profits, and more. The more complicated it gets, the fewer people can possibly understand the game and get a living share. 

Mark cites the impact of money on community, security, competion/cooperation and the climate as vital motivations for his drastic change.

The preparation

Going from a money-based society to surviving totally moneyless takes preparation to work well. Others have managed with less, but probably not by choice. Mark set up rules for his challenge:

1. No receiving or spending money
2. "Normality" (eg yes, Mark can eat a meal at a friend's house; no, he can't eat there for 2 weeks straight)
3. "Pay-it-forward" - help others without worrying about the reward
4. Respect - for other people (eg use the toilet when visiting others, not a hole in the backyard)
5. No pre-payment of bills (eg, paying an electricity bill for a year to get through the year)

Mark first discovered the vast difference between living frugally and living moneyless. He had to scrutinise every item he might consume, and he gave himself a small budget to set up his moneyless year.

On the night before his challenge would start, he got a puncture in his bicycle tyre, stranding him far from home and help - I was quite impressed that he solved this in the same DIY way he'd committed to begin the following day.

Shelter  - On Freecycle, Mark was given a decent caravan that was a burden to its owner.

In our world of overconsumption, there is an oversupply of still-useful products that are not in use. Networks like Freecycle help solve this problem.

And he bartered his labour to a farm to get a space to park the caravan.

Sanitation - DIY Composting toilet, solar shower. Drinking water from the farm.

Power - cooking: DIY rocket stove; light: windup torch; heat: DIY woodburner; electricity for laptop and mobile:solar panel (the biggest cash outlay)

Food - foraging, urban foraging (from commercial waste food), growing, and bartering. (Being vegan makes the food requirement that much easier!)

Transport - bicycle and trailer

Communications - mobile phone (incoming calls only) and internet (WiFi on the farm)

Buy Nothing Feast

On top of all of that, Mark successfully organised a free, moneyless feast for about 150 people for his first challenge day, Buy Nothing Day, 2008. (Remember, when things went wrong, he could not just spend his way out of the problem.) The success of the publicity overall meant that Mark spent a lot of his time early that year giving interviews!

Settling into moneyless life

Mark's typical moneyless day has exercise, wild foraging, personal grooming (with no purchased products), meal preparation, and online and farm work. After the day's work and dinner, he might cycle to a meeting and back (36 miles).

The book explains how he handled problems like the oncoming winter, keeping his bike in action, keeping in touch with friends, Christmas, international travel and doing everything the slow way. It also reveals a few facts worth knowing about the wastefulness of the "regular" way of doing things (eg: water usage from a plumbed vs composting toilet).

More challenges

Like any alternative lifestyle, one of the biggest barriers is interacting with the rest of the world. The media interest was fading, and he did his best to keep up with friends, but Mark's romantic relationship did not surive the strain of his challenge.

While Mark's general health was even better than anyone expected, he did have to find a natural remedy for his hay fever. He also had a tiny mouse visitor who became a big problem.

The moneyless community

Mark learned about other people around the world who also lived with little or no money, including Daniel Suelo and Heidemarie Schwermer. Heidemarie started an exchange group (Tauschring) to help people live without money, and Mark started the Freeconomy site.


Summer fun and food

Summer brought more ease to the moneyless life, and Mark describes how much food and fun there is available for free. Developing communities like Freecycle, Couchsurfing, etc, make it all even easier.

Autumn, almost there!

Mark found that the closer he got to the year's end, the less he was worried about ending it. He and some friends had a great wild-food foraging adventure, and Mark himself chose to spend a week in silence - probably a good preparation for the finish line and the renewed media attention.

Finished...?

He celebrated with an even bigger free "feastival" for hundreds of people, and handled media that brought a range of applause, curiosity, and criticism. And he made his decision that he was not going "back" to his regular life.

The book finishes with the lessons Mark wants to pass on from his moneyless year.

Mark chose to live this way for a year, as a statement and personal achievement. Hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone are forced into indefinite homelessness and poverty or zero-income.

Even if you have no urge to live moneyless, this book will open your eyes to the casual overconsumption our society is based upon, alternative choices you could use, and the people and organisations who seek a better way.

Mark's experience would have been quite different without the overabundance of products going to waste each day. However, without all that waste, everyone's lives could be richer.

Live simply so others may simply live. (Source debatable, intention admirable.)

Chicken - it's the new veal

Thanks to animal activists, most of us know about the extreme industrial cruelty involved in turning calves into veal, or force-feeding geese and ducks to give them fatty livers for foie gras.

Also recently highlighted - the cruelty of battery cages for egg-laying hens. But why would anyone hold a vigil for broiler chickens?

Sound silly? In fact, chicken on the menu is as much an ethical nightmare as veal or foie gras.

7 ways chicken is like veal

Broiler chickens and veal calves are both:

1. Taken from their mothers
2. Kept inside all their lives with only artificial light to control eating and activity
3. Live all their lives with very little room to move - therefore can't move or develop properly
4. Fed specifically to meet market requirements rather than health
5. Medicated to prevent diseases caused by their living conditions
6. At high risk of dying even before before slaughter time
7. Very young when killed (broiler chickens are only 5-7 weeks old at slaughter)

And a few extra horrors, just for the chicks

1. Their sheds are not cleaned out in their entire lives, so they live in increasingly deep piles of toxic ammoniac chicken waste.
2. They have been bred to put on so much weight, so quickly, that they cannot balance on their legs as they grow. So they spend twice as much time sitting in, and breathing, that waste pile.
3. Since they often can't walk, they are grabbed in bunches and carried by their legs when they are gathered for slaughter. This often breaks their legs (if their legs are not already broken).

Care for a game of Tic-Tac-Toe?

“It is now clear that [chickens] have cognitive capacities equivalent to those of mammals, even primates.”
—Dr Lesley Rogers, professor of Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour, University of New England.

Chickens may not be your favourite animal. But any animal with enough brains to learn to play a tune or even a silly game deserves better than this. Follow a broiler chicken through his short life here...

Please enjoy your personal choice - use it well and kindly.

Substitutes for chicken

"What’s key is to remember to season any dish that contains a vegetarian chicken substitute. It is not the substitute but the seasonings that simulate the taste of chicken."

• Best vegetarian and vegan mock chicken recipes

1 Simple Step to Say No to Plastic Shopping Bags (and still take out the rubbish)

We all know how bad plastic bags are for our earth.

Watch an orca calf and a dolphin experiencing the wonder of a plastic bag that could have been yours, for all you know. We all know that we should be taking reusable bags or boxes to the stores, and sometimes we even remember.

(For more motivation, check out the free film Addicted to Plastic.)

But it can be hard to turn down a free bag, and lots of us still find those plastic shopping bags useful around the house, especially as liners for messy kitchen rubbish bins. Even though I work hard to reduce my waste, so did I - until now.

One Simple Step - Attitude Adjustment

"Nom, nom....nom?"

Many foods already come in plastic packages. So now, your empty bags are not rubbish, they are rubbish bags.

In other words, don't use bags to throw away more bags.

How?

I buy several products in bulk, so this is simple for our house. When a bag of rice, pretzels or chips is empty, I trim off the top and put it under the sink near the kitchen bin.

• They aren't 100% clean, but they won't stay there for too long anyway.
• They aren't the perfect size, but remember the orcas and dolphins?

Even if you don't buy in bulk, you will probably have other moderate-size grocery items you can use. Regular cereal and chip bags can hold a good amount of messy mess.

Use your imagination; it is worth it. Orcas and dolphins and turtles and seals. I even use the bags that hold toilet paper - they're not very strong but they can still hold their share for long enough to get to the big bins.

"Does this scarf look good on me?"

It Really Works

I now really really hate to see new plastic shopping bags come into the house. "What am I going to do with that? My bag holder is totally full!"

And I still have several food bags waiting under the sink to hold the kitchen mess.

Another plastic reduction tip

Never put a half-empty plastic bag in the rubbish. When you're throwing stuff away in a plastic bag, and if you're not late for a visit to the Dalai Lama, take a few extra steps around your house and find other rubbish to fill up that bag.

No Such Thing as a Free Plastic Bag

Three cheers for those stores who now charge a small fee to help you think twice about getting a plastic bag!

"Squawk! Thank You!"

The REAL reason not to eat animals is...

First, there was How the Health Argument Fails Veganism. Then, How the Ethical Argument Fails Veganism.

In honour of World Vegan Day (and Month), we are going to sort it out once and for all. The real reason not to eat animals is definitely:

The animals

Obviously, it's the animals!

Veganism means man has no right to exploit the creatures for his own ends. That was Donald Watson's whole point.

Every year, tens of billions of animals exist in hopeless conditions, are literally tortured by their keepers, and die horribly, simply to feed humans.When animals are bulk commodities, animal abuse for money will be the rule, not the exception.

How can you be an animal lover and eat animals?

Human beings

OK, we sure don't want to hurt animals, but not all farm animals are treated so badly - some farms are very kind. The human beings you know and love are more important. When your family and friends eat animals, they are much more prone to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, food-borne infection, and a host of other chronic and deadly diseases.

Photo: Kevin Carter

This is not only horribly sad for us, but impossibly expensive. In the US alone, healthcare costs are upwards of a trillion dollars and rising fast. We never seem to have enough money to do the important things. Let's save lives and money.

And what about the humans we don't know? 60% of humans in other countries (or even our own) do not have enough to eat. We're not helpless. From a Cornell ecologist...

"More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans..."

Plant foods simply cost less to produce, which means more people fed. Please, don't feed the animals, feed hungry humans instead. It's the least you can do, and the best.


The whole world

Actually, the big picture is paramount. We all have to have somewhere to live, or all these arguments about ethics and health just end up as details.

Intense animal agriculture is the number one reason for deforestation and soil runoff, and excess animal waste is polluting natural waterways and land alike. Farmed animals are crowding out native wildlife, upsetting the entire natural balance of the world.

There is no Planet B. Eating animals like this is unsustainable. That's what's important.

Arguments fail veganism

One of these viewpoints may well seem strongest to you - it may have been what changed your mind. But to turn the tide on animal consumption, we must stop competing for the right reason.

We are a tiny and underfunded minority, and can't afford to fight vegan wars. When we cleverly undermine other vegan points of view, we mostly provide ammunition for the mainstream to dismiss us entirely.

They're all good reasons. Each one appeals to different people with different values. Together, they're compelling. We need that wide appeal...if we want a vegan world (and not just World Vegan Day)

Biodegradable "Plastic" Wrap from FriendlyPak

I got really excited when FriendlyPak first gave away a roll of BioBag - a biodegradable "plastic" wrap. I didn't win, but I still wanted it.

We were almost at the end of our roll of supermarket plastic wrap. Plastic pollution is a serious problem, and this flexible, nonrecyclable stuff kills animals every day and isn't great for human health either. I'm thrilled to see an earth-friendly choice.

As a new product, it seemed to take forever to find out how I could buy it. The product was announced in April, but didn't seem to be orderable from the advertised outlet. So when I saw one big catering roll in  Wise Cicada, I impulse-bought it for $50. (It is now available through ecostore.)

We didn't use plastic wrap for much anyway - sealing the ends of cucumbers, mostly. We use wax paper for the kids' lunches. With a catering-size roll, I'm using it for everything!

Results

Good

The wrap performs well as a wrap, sticking to the end of the cucumber and protecting it.

It worked well on the kids' sandwiches too at yesterday's picnic - held two together very nicely.

I wrapped the end of a frozen Cheezly (vegan cheese) in it. (It's still fine, but I think I should have wrapped the whole Cheezly because it didn't stick on when left in a freezer drawer jumble. My bad.)

And I can see when I empty the compost that the wrap shows signs of breaking down as promised.

Cautions

The biodegradable wrap is more fragile than regular plastic wrap, which is not too surprising for an organic product that is going to break down soon. I can't use the tug and unroll method with the large heavy catering roll - the wrap stretches so much from the weight. So I use scissors to cut off the pieces I need. It doesn't have a tear strip on the box anyway, but that's fine because a plastic or metal tear strip is just more to go on a landfill.

After a few days of protecting a cucumber end in the crisper, the wrap is already showing a hint of its biodegradability compared to the plastic wrap, which I could often reuse. This is only a small problem because we usually have to slice off the end of the cut cucumber anyway, and I can toss the used wrap with the old slice (and a clear conscience) and get a new piece.

Also unfortunately, our roll has been gouged by something about 5cm in from the edge.  This hasn't impacted us much as we haven't needed large pieces yet, but I wish I'd saved my receipt.

Update: the cool people at FriendlyPak are sending me a complimentary roll!

Recommendation

Absolutely! It works, and it's biodegradable. While I have to treat this wrap a bit differently to ordinary plastic, it is worth it. And when more people buy these choices, the price will come down, so...

What earth-friendly products do you invest in?

Happy Vegan Hunting - 9 Frugal Secondhand Investments

I'm an avid secondhand shopper. Here are some winning vegan goodies that you can always find in the secondhand shops. For similar reasons, these are also items you might score from Freecycle - if you haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for?!?!??

See how the jam looks like a cat?

1. Yoghurt makers

Yes, you can make your own soy yoghurt even more easily than dairy yoghurt. Soy yoghurt is so expensive to buy and so easy to make.  Since making your own is faddish for many, there are usually several varied yoghurt makers on the shelf.

I have had consistent success in my secondhand EasiYo by adding about 3 Tbsp of soy starter to 1 box of room-temperature original VitaSoy. Methods, tips, and tricks abound on the internet - search on making soy yoghurt.

2. Quality cookware

People used to cook more, and they needed great quality cookware.

Often, the younger generation doesn't know and doesn't care about those nested stacks of Corningware and cast iron, and off they go to the secondhand shop for you to find.

3. Quality storage

Lots of us frugal vegans buy and cook in bulk, and you need to keep your supplies safe.

I reuse some of the plastic containers I get from food (eg, Anathoth jam containers are BPA-free), but a quick look at the secondhand store will show you loads of great old-fashioned Tupperware at prices your Tupperware lady can't match. (Apologies to my Tupperware lady friends, mwah!)

Click-clack containers also roam wild on the secondhand shelves, as well as older-style glass or terracotta containers.

4. Popsicle moulds

Summer will arrive soon! If you didn't inherit your family's popsicle moulds like I did, it won't take long for you to find a set on the secondhand shelves.

Super cheap popsicle recipes:

• flavoured nondairy milk (flavour your own with cocoa, vanilla, fruit, or jam)
• fruit juice or puree (hint: tinned fruit comes in fruit juice or syrup)
• a banana (dipped in nuts or chocolate)
• ...or search the internet for cheap vegan popsicles

5. Chocolate moulds

We thrifty are just as gifty as the next person. But vegan gift chocolate has a hefty price tag. People love getting hand crafted chocolate and it's fun for the kids to help make! If the specialty chocolate moulds at the homewares stores are too pricey, look for secondhand flexible novelty ice-cube trays among the piles.

I just scored this cute orange-slice shaped tray - now I can make my own vegan chocolate oranges.   

6. Juicers

Want to try juicing, but don't know where to start? Don't splash out; these babies cycle through the shelves on a regular basis.

7. Pressure cookers

The best way to cook dry beans, pots of potatoes and free soup quickly. Watch your grocery totals shrink as you serve these super budget savers.

8. Sushi mats

This vegan takeaway standby is expensive to buy because it's fiddly to make compared to curry and chips, but you'll be rolling your own in style before long.

Making sushi

9. Gardening gear

Goodbye Garden World and Kings, because secondhand shops are blooming with planting pots of all sizes.

You can also find good garden tools if you keep hunting.

You could be overflowing with vegan goodness in your very own ground or container garden before you know it.

And more!

Of course you don't want to spend money and fill up your life with a lot of extra stuff you don't use. But making or growing your own is a backbone of frugality.

I want to hear about your best secondhand vegan finds...

Secondhand Smarts - next nursing nightgowns

It's time for another chapter in the continuing story of my triumphs in secondhand shopping...

Out with the old...

These have been my winter nightgowns for 6 years. 

Back then, I was thrilled to find them in the (retail) shop.  I'd wondered if my only choices for nightwear I could breastfeed in were floral flannel or spendy specialist gear.

I give them full marks for accessibility and funky colour. Those numbers even sparkle!

But buttons have been pulled away by twiddly and ever-stronger little fingers, holes are gaping wider, and the fabric is so stretched that I hardly need to unbutton anymore - a bit chilly on the chest in wintertime! 

They've been exposed to every bodily product you can name. They're good only for rags...

Hmmm.  Maybe time for a family cloth experiment?!?!

In with the new...

Serendipity sent me to search in a different local charity shop than my usual. 

There, neatly hanging on the rack, were these three cutie-patooties in perfect condition...

My daughter's favourite is the one with the cats. (I predicted that, even though there was a pink one.)

DH thinks they look like the Sushi Cats; DS is not convinced. 

Total price: $12

I think the old nightgowns that I bought retail cost me $15 each.  And seemed cheap compared to other retail choices.

Why shop anywhere else?

Decluttering: a win-win

Last year I was lucky enough to win a beautiful set of eco-friendly bamboo party ware from Friendlypak in New Zealand. More about eco-friendly packaging...check out the new biodegradable cling wrap!

I had a serious decision to make - these bowls and trays are beautiful, but I already have a set of party bowls.  The prize bowls also needed a home...not the downstairs sofa.  So was their home in my home or someone else's home?

I implemented Workout #4 of my Productive New Year's Workouts and cleaned out all the shelves in my refrigerator, pantry, and other kitchen cupboards. That is a serious workout, and it lasted a couple of days.

Mid-clean

After

Not only did I get clean cupboards, decluttering is a natural side-effect.

I repackaged some food items and threw out some more.  We still have a full pantry, but just better.












 And just look at our wine collection.

We don't drink wine!

It always seemed wrong to just get rid of perfectly good bottles of wine.  So instead, we left them hidden away until they were no longer perfectly good bottles of wine. When the inner hoarder wins, everyone loses.  Those bottles of bubbly are from our engagement and wedding - some 15 years ago!

Out they went, the less antique ones free to friends who were up for a lucky dip, and the antiques down the drain and into the recycling.

And the prize for decluttering? 

A new home for my prize...

Don't they look great at my son's birthday party?

What things do you have hidden away that need a new home?

Six Clean Energy Sources Need More Power - Mad Like Tesla Book Review

2012 is the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All.  Mad Like Tesla, by Tyler Hamilton, salutes people dedicated to finding cleaner alternative energy sources.

Nikola Tesla was an extremely quirky inventor full of mad ideas about the world - many of which eventually proved to work.  Tesla didn't stop what he was doing if others ridiculed him.  He invented the AC induction motor, radio, remote-control (teleautomation) and more.  In 1931, at age 75, he published a design for a geothermal power plant and a way to generate power from the ocean's temperature differential.

These new energy source developers follow in Tesla's footsteps. Most of them have left successful mainstream positions to pursue clean energy using ideas generally considered impractical in our time.

You don't have to be a geek to enjoy this book, but it helps.  The language is accessible, but even technology-lite can get a bit heavy.  But I felt genuinely educated by the end of it.

Mad Like Tesla presents mini-documentaries on real projects in:

Nuclear fusion

The dream big brother to dirty and dangerous nuclear fission power - the sun does it, so why can't we?  Fusion has a bad reputation from past false hopes - including the truly ideal cold fusion concept.

There are two main approaches to fusion, magnetic fusion and inertial fusion, and the US government oversees projects using each kind.  But Dr Michel Laberge believes his smaller and much nimbler General Fusion has a real chance (well, 50% and rising).  General Fusion has mixed the best of both worlds into magnetized target fusion - which notably removes the most expensive parts from the design.

Solar power from space

Asimov wrote about it in 1941 - huge amounts of solar energy could be generated in orbit and beamed down to us.  Technology (and demand) may again have caught up with Asimov's imagination.  
Gary Spirnak and his company (Solaren) have made a previous NASA design feasible by losing the heavy copper wires and planning for remote installation instead of launching astronauts.   Generated power would be beamed to receivers on earth via microwave.

Tesla was also a big fan of air as a conductive medium for power - he was talking about wireless transmission before anybody reading this was born.  And technically speaking, power can be transmitted from one place on earth to another.

On the one hand, this is a complicated way of collecting solar energy that falls for free every day, and traditional solar power is advancing rapidly.  On the other, the energy would still be available at night and on cloudy or just plain polluted days.

(I'm visiting Solaren's hometown soon and I have requested a tour.  Wish me luck!)

Tornado power

We know tornadoes have enormous destructive power.  Now imagine controlling and using that power.  Tesla was convinced we can break up tornadoes.  Louis Michaud wants to recover the costly waste heat from thermal power plants and use it to create controlled tornadoes, or vortex engines.

Solar chimneys were a predecessor to the idea of using the temperature differential to create air movement and therefore power.  But the towers need to be really really tall.  The manmade tornadoes use the same mechanism but require no material construction.

In future, these vortex engines could be built near tropical or equatorial warm waters (natural vortex generators in themselves).

Biomimicry (bionics meets sustainability)

Aussie nature guy Jay Harman believes that natural designs beat human inventions - and he has good reason.  Based on his lifelong observations of nature (and water swirling down a bathtub drain), he's invented a spiral fan (Lily Impeller) which is both measurably more efficient and much quieter than traditional designs.

Not very exciting?  Fans and propellors are part of every computer, every air conditioning system, every pump system... Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute estimates it "could save over a tenth of the world's energy."

Bionics, or copying nature to improve technology) has a respectable history.  Da Vinci was one of its greatest practitioners, and Velcro was a bionic invention (ever gotten a burr stuck to your clothes?).  Most of us think we know bionics from the very limited application described in The Six Million Dollar Man, but bionics has far greater application than replacing biological body parts.  And biomimicry adds sustainability as a key goal in bionic inventions.

In hives, although drones have very small brains, they constantly send each other data and modify their behaviour for the success of the hive.  This swarm logic has been successfully applied by REGEN Energy to control energy use in a large building - distributed decision-making succeeding where top-down control fails.

Algae biofuel
Cleaner biofuels are controversial because they're usually made from corn (that could feed someone directly) and have a poor energy return.

Other plant sources must be specially processed to create biofuel.  But cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, can create some ethanol metabolically when under stress.  Paul Woods is sure he can genetically modify these cyanobacteria to produce lots of ethanol under normal conditions.  Promisingly, this Algenol has potential for both car and jet fuels.

A casual comparison to milking cows was obviously meant to normalise this process for the General Public.  As I've failed to renew my GP membership, it just pinged my V-dar.  There are enough complex moral and practical issues around genetically altering and permanently harnessing live organisms for our own purposes to keep me arguing with myself for hours in the dead of night.  This isn't just using using yeast to make bread.
The chapter reassures us that sufficient genetic manipulation will prevent ecological problems a la failed biological pest control (cane toad, anyone?), but this failes to soothe all my ruffles.

Super Power Storage

Every day we become more dependent on battery power for the latest inventions.  The intriguing Richard Weir and his company EEstor have been promising a "ceramic battery" - a hybrid between an standard battery and an ultracapacitor. The ceramic battery would be safer, have a higher capacity, and have a much longer lifetime than today's batteries.

This is a game changer from handheld devices all the way to electric cars, for which power storage is a major barrier.

EEStor's ceramic battery development history has been slow and full of hype leading only to delays and disappointments, and other competitors have joined the race to get a ceramic battery into a real device into the market.

And over the edge

I thought this book had already shown me the bleeding edge of energy research...  Have we discovered everything there is to know about the universe?  Not likely.  Some researchers promote ideas that contradict accepted physical laws, and if they're convincing and diligent enough, they can pull a bit of funding too, in the hope of supporting a genuine world-changing breakthough.

Conclusion

I highlighted my concerns about the cyanobacteria biofuel project.  Naturally, the side effects of the other cleaner energy projects might be just as worrying if I knew more about them.

An even more worrying common theme to all the stories:  stronger than any possible technological barrier is the financial barrier, and the true source of the financial barrier is the monopolistic entropy of society's status quo.  Or BAU, business as usual.  Innovators want to get large energy companies on board to support them, yet large energy companies want to be on board only so far as they can prevent threats to their business.

Major governments invest heavily, with our money, into dying and dangerous power sources - subsidising and encouraging deep sea oil drilling and funding commercially unpopular nuclear fission power plants.

Hamilton uses the "half-full, half-empty glass" cliche to signal optimism in the final section of the book.  My conclusion from this book is that we have exactly no idea whether any of these fascinating brainchildren will overcome its technological barriers and then the monopoly market barriers...in time to make a difference.

Luckily, I can see a Plan B.

Plan B - No impact energy source

Much of our world's energy is squandered on the production and distribution of:

1) food animals
2) consumer leisure goods

and

3) wars of economic imperialism (ironically, the US military is the USA's highest energy user, while recently deployed to kill to protect our energy interests)

All these make our lives and the planet poorer.  The award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness, which I'll be reviewing later, blows away any lingering fragments of the myth that our technologically complex society makes us fulfilled and happy.

A society like ours, dependent for success on unconscious consumption, will drain any energy source. I watch with interest the pursuit of cleaner power.  But none of these sources is free, none risk-free...and none is even ready now, when we desperately need it.

The only free energy?  Reducing consumption.  That's my little drone message to you, my fellow drones in this hive called Earth.  In that, you already have the real power.

Eco-friendly packaging - an investment in our future

The winner!

Last year I was lucky enough to win a beautiful set of eco-friendly bamboo party ware from Friendlypak in New Zealand.  

This substantial set arrived packed in their own compostable product - popstarch.  By the faint fragrance, this is made of potato starch like their compostable trays and bowls.  I've been happily reusing this packaging in my own boxes.  

FriendlyPak specialises in compostable containers - stores and food providers can use these instead of plastic (which often goes unrecycled due to food contamination).  They even have shopping and dog waste bags!  And how cool is it that they link to The Story of Stuff on their website?

Basic scary facts on packaging waste:

• US Waste Facts  - "Every year, Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times."
• European Packaging Waste  "On average every citizen in the 27 Member States EU-27 generated 164 kg of packaging waste in 2008."
• NZ Packaging Waste  "Each New Zealander throws away 83 kilograms of used packaging every year."

If we continue to ignore packaging waste, we're going to be up to our necks in it.

Packaging choices under pressure

I don't run a store.  But I could use reusable packaging like the lunch wraps from 4MyEarth.  I have already chosen waxed paper (which can even be reused for a few days) over plastic wrap for the kids' sandwiches.   I need to do some more research on reusable vs compostable. 

One New Zealand survey shows that consumers are concerned about too much packaging but feel ill-informed to act on that concern.

Another study takes a hard look at the eco-friendly claims for various types of packaging - there's lots to learn here even for those of us who might think we're already savvy.
Counting the cost

This packaging discussion finds that cost is still the biggest factor when people choose disposable packaging over more eco-friendly choices.  They also point out that as waste pressures rise, the real cost of waste disposal will motivate more consumers to choose better packaging. 

In Auckland, the Waste Management and Minimisation Plan includes charging us each time our bin is emptied instead of (as present) a flat cost each year. As a pretty good waste minimiser already, I'm a fan!

And, of course, the more we support these eco-friendly industries, the cheaper their products will be. 

Thanks!

So here is my public thank you to FriendlyPak for this prize, and also my heartfelt message to FriendlyPak, 4MyEarth and companies like them:

Thank you for providing us with genuine green consumer choices.  Thank you for developing products to support the vision of a thriving green economy.  Thank you for helping us put our money where our mouth is instead of into the same old poisonous products.

Minimalist dilemma

As a minimalist, I still had a serious decision to make. These bowls and trays are beautiful, but I already have a set of functional and attractive party bowls.  The prize bowls also needed a home.  In the rush of the holiday season, they simply sat in a stack on the downstairs sofa.

So was their home in my home or someone else's?

Stay tuned to hear all about Workout #4 in Productive New Year's Workouts, and how it all eventually worked out.

Everyone's doing it - what's your best tip to reduce your waste footprint?

• Reduce
• Avoid creating trash
• A year without spending makes less trash

Frugal Vegan Transformers - Beyond Leftovers

Save time and money in your vegan kitchen! 

You know you don't want to forget your lurking leftovers - that means mess and waste.  You can munch them yourself for lunch or serve them at the end of the week for "take it or leave it day."  

Or you can take charge - don't let them gang up on you, transform them into a new delicious meal right away.  

These transformers are tested in my very own home.

The secret life of the humble potato
First - steamed or mashed potatoes.  I steam as many potatoes as I can possibly fit into our large pressure cooker. My family loves mashed potatoes and gravy!  I make them special by mixing in very small pieces of a vegan sausage.  Mashed potatoes can easily be shaped into a heart or other designs that will win over the kids.

What next? Presto change-o, potato pancakes.  Mix your mashed potatoes with a bread/flour binder and fry them up.  Hint: My pancake technique often fails to satisfy, so I use my waffle iron for instant crunchy success.

What next? Curry!  It's pretty easy to save a cup of mashed potatoes from the lot.  I add a can of Indian flavoured tomatoes, some soymilk, and blend.  Make lots of rice (think extras!) and serve dinner.

Rice is still nice
 
What next? That rice is still fresh enough to serve with a Chinese sauce on the side.  If you're really pressed for time, plain soy sauce will do, especially if you also serve some cashews or peanuts. 

What next? Fill your Mexican nachos or tortillas with leftover rice along with all those healthy vegetables and beans.

What next? Fried rice takes tired leftover rice for a carnival ride.  It's also wonderful for hiding lots of veggies inside, chopped finely.

What next? Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - transforms into soup!
Safe handling of leftovers - this is easier for vegans but still worth a read...

Christmas wrapup - frugal and eco-friendly

My three year old daughter loves to paint.  She brings her paintings home for me and tells me all about them.

You get the picture.  She can draw people and things, but she's still a creative abstract painter.

So what do you do with stacks of these paintings that only a mother could love?

Beautiful and useful

Using kids' artwork as giftwrap solves two problems:

• How do I wrap my presents?
• What do I do with stacks of paintings that all look the same to me?

Family and Eco-Friendly

Wrapping gifts in alternatives to giftwrap is not just quirky and frugal, it's important.  It doesn't take much imagination to see the built-in waste of producing, packaging, buying, and disposing of square metres of decorated paper every holiday.  According to Earth911:

As much as half of the 85 million tons of paper products Americans consume every year goes toward packaging, wrapping and decorating goods. Also, wrapping paper and shopping bags alone account for about 4 million tons of trash annually in the U.S.

So does it look cheap and weird?

You decide:

More like unique and colourful!

Don't own any small perpetual artists?

Of course, not everybody will have this alternative.  

If these other wrapping alternatives don't suit, you could offer to babysit for your favourite family for a few hours, buy some old newsprint and paints, and have a giftwrap making (I mean fun painting) session!

Free eco-friendly planter - from the trash!

My winter parsley and kale are rapidly going to seed as the sunshine hits the garden.  I cleared the kale and made a whole crock pot of soup. 

If I want juicy tomatoes, tender squash, lettuces, a cucumber or two - then there's no time to waste.  I need to get the summer seedlings going. (Luckily, the strawberries are doing what strawberries do all by themselves.)

I could always use small plastic pots, but the kids and I really enjoyed the clever Peat Pellet (used at a Small Poppies session) for planting.

It was fun to watch it grow with added water, and satisfying to plant the healthy seedling straight into the garden with no root disturbance and no plastic container.

I don't need to check the price to know they're not frugal enough for me.  What to do?

It's easy.

Make your own free biodegradable seed planter  

• Take one empty toilet paper tube.
• From one end, fold the circular edge down (4 folds) to roughly close off the hole.

        

• Press the folded end as flat as possible, using your fingers both inside and outside of the tube.
• Fill with moist soil.
• Repeat with as many tubes as you have.  If you run out, another one will be ready soon.
• Plant and enjoy!

Hints

• Use promptly after making.
• Use a containing box (the planters may not stand up well on their own).
• Before planting, open the bottom end of the tube and wet the whole tube thoroughly so the roots can get out to the soil.

Here's a lineup of my hopeful planted seeds along with a couple of baby lemon trees (I really want a lemon tree) and beans...

Good luck to us all!

Climbing disposable mountain...

Now that both Alex and Nadia are out of nappies, I've cleared the various caches and shelves and made a collection.  Look at that!

I feel a bit sick actually.  Like being caught sneaking ham onto my plate when I've been a vegan for 15 years.

That's almost 60 nappies and pull-ups - a huge shopping bag brimming over.

Obviously these are the last from packets we bought but didn't use.  Behind (haha) that substantial pile lingers a much higher ghost pile of the other packets and their contents that went used into the landfills.

We really did use mostly cloth, but over years even one or two a day really piles up.   And as far as I know, the groundbreaking nappy composting technology isn't in our neighbourhood yet.

We can't change (wow, the puns are everywhere) the past, but we can look at our choices today that seem small but add up over time.

For example, I do buy some individual serving products for the kids' lunchboxes.  Not a huge number, but it wouldn't be that hard to buy the full size snack packages and use packaging I already have to keep them fresh. On one hand, as with the disposables, I've been excusing myself since it isn't a large part of our lifestyle and our overall waste stream is quite low.  On the other, I bet I could do the same embarrassing photo shoot for waste packaging if I tried...

Is there one small change you could make in your purchasing this week that better represents your hopes for our environment?  

• The Everyday Minimalist discusses disposables of all kinds
• Even more ideas from Planet Green