The Scales Don't Lie!

Holy moly! Carbon footprint calculators are about as enthralling to use as my bathroom scale. The latest one I tried was last week at my daughter’s school in the Tread Lightly Caravan. The calculator predicted that, despite my worm farm, weekly organic box of fruit and veggies, home-grown veggies, four chooks and low, shivering-in-winter electricity bill, we will need 3.8 earths to sustain our current lifestyle. That’s not ONE earth, but nearly FOUR!

The main culprits? Apparently our wood-burner didn’t fare so well. Eating take-aways even occasionally doesn’t cut it if we are throwing away four to eight plastic containers at the same time. And driving a petrol-driven car for two hours each week makes us bigger carbon gluttons than the average person in the UK. Yikes.

I did try cheating a bit by re-doing the calculations about eight times, tweaking my answers to drive for only twenty minutes a week and only fly in an aeroplane for two hours, but to no avail. One earth won’t do for us.

So here’s what we are trying for starters:

1.       To scoot home from school on scooters instead of driving. That’s 25 km of exercise per week sorted.

2.       To use the train to visit the city.

3.       Turning off plugs at the wall, for all appliances.

4.       Using cold water washes in the washing machine.

5.       Absolutely, absolutely stick to our policy of only buying second-hand for all household items. Like this cute designer jacket I picked up at Savemart, my favourite clothing store in the world.

The best Carbon Footprint calculators:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/oct/20/guardian-quick-carbon-calculator

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/the-15-best-carbon-calculators

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/19/carbon.web

A great article on reducing household waste:

10 Tips for a Zero-Waste Household

A year’s worth of solid waste from Bea Johnson’s home fits in a quart-sized jar. Here's how you can reduce yours.

Two years in New Zealand, and you always take the weather with you!

This post is long overdue and to be honest, I’d almost forgotten I even had a blog. This is partly because life is so busy and full that I’ve stopped noting the significant, novel things about New Zealand, and just enjoy them in the moment. The other reason is that I was one of the unlucky Titirangi residents to catch the whooping cough doing the rounds in January 2011.

 The hills of Titirangi

Instead of sipping a glass of champagne to celebrate our milestone of two years in New Zealand on 24 January, I was swigging cough medicine. A lot of it.

And let me tell you, whooping cough isn’t called the 100-day cough for nothing. I didn’t just cough, but felt as though I had a fever for four months. Looking after two young children, trying to work and keep the house clean had to fit around long naps, or just periods of exhausted lying about for weeks on end.

Being a hard worker, this was an interesting experience of being forced, for the first time in my life, to stop the treadmill and convalesce. It's been a time for deep reflection. The result? I have walked away from the past few months with a new, exhilarating question playing around in my head: ‘What am I waiting for?’