Andrew’s Sustainapedia

I recently posted links to two GHG emissions calculators that can help you quantify your current emissions levels and figure out how to reduce them. The one calculator I had not been able to find at the time was from the official One Tonne Challenge site, which seems to be gone. Luckily, I was talking about emissions calculators with a cohousing friend of mine this weekend, and he informed me that the One Tonne Challenge emissions calculator is still available. It is a much better tool than the previous two I’d linked.
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One week ago serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson and past presidential hopeful eco-celebrity Al Gore launched the Virgin Earth Challenge; a US $25M prize seeking technology capable of removing at least 1 billion tonnes of GHGs from earth’s atmosphere annually. Carbon capture and storage (also known as carbon sequestration) has many different technologies in testing, development, and even commercial use. However, there’s a Canadian technology which I think is much more promising.
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Since I’ve become a homeowner, I’ve done a number of small things to reduce my energy use and thus my greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In our house, we:

• wash clothes in cold water in a front-load washer
• use the “light” wash cycle on the dishwasher and don’t use the “heated dry” option
• have a programmable thermostat that drops from 19ºC to 17ºC at night during the winter, and rises from 24ºC to 27ºC at night in summer
• replaced at least a dozen incandescents with CFL bulbs in high-use rooms
• turned down the hot water tank’s set temperature
• installed a dimmer switch for our front foyer’s light
• put our exterior lights are on a timer

Hooray, US!

The thing is, I know these actions save energy, but how much? How can I translate my actions into GHG emission reductions? Enter the web-based calculators! Although they are fairly generic in order to be applicable to the most number of people, they do give an excellent idea of how much energy/emissions one can save per action taken. Please evaluate what you can do (or have already done) at:

• Environment Hamilton
• OneLessTonne.ca

I’m happy to report that we’ve shed our tonne, but I’m looking forward to shedding more in the future.

Kudos to the Aussies! Just yesterday they announced that they will be phasing out incandescent light bulbs in favour of compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs. Through this program they hope to cut GHGs by 4 million tons by 2012, and cut household power bills by up to 66 percent.

Relatedly, Inhabitat.com recently answered some questions about eco-friendly lighting options, including a question from yours truly regarding what to do with surplus incandescent bulbs.

While we’re on the topic of lighting, I wanted to let you know about a Canadian firm called Group IV Semiconductor that is leading the race towards solid state lamps (”light engines”) made out of silicon. Apparently, these would be more energy-efficient than even LED lights, and thanks to the computer industry’s vast knowledge on the subject of silicon fabrication, such lights would be dirt cheap to make. I’ll be watching for more news on that front.

In my household, we do a lot of food reheating. When we cook we usually have leftovers, and we’ll also double a recipe to get some meals into the freezer. Add in the fact that I like taking leftovers to work for a hot lunch instead of making a sandwich, and it results in lots of experience in reheating food.

Simply through sheer volume, I have come to find a few ways that one can reheat foods in a more energy efficient manner. Unfortunately the missing ingredient is time, so this won’t work if you are in an absolute panic to eat. Otherwise, it works just fine.

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Getting the Sustainapedia up and running has been fun! I’m looking forward to building up a nice, easy-to-digest body of sustainable information for everyone here. I wanted to note that although I had a huge rush of topics I wanted to cover initially, I’m not necessarily aiming for daily posts. If that happens, great! However, I don’t want to post something just because I have to or feel like I should… I want to post good information that is relevant, useful, interesting, and any combination thereof.

Don’t forget that sharing goes both ways; if there is something you don’t know about and want information on, I’d be happy to do some digging for you. If you’ve got a topic that you know inside and out, I’d also be very happy to include it here - see the Contribute link at the top.

If you are interested in cohousing, you are probably already aware of the Cohousing-L e-mail list. (If not, go subscribe now!) I’ve been a member for less than a year, but even in that short time I’ve noticed many requests from individuals and groups asking for samples and examples of existing cohousing groups’ documentation; CC&Rs, by-laws, house rules, membership approval procedures, and the like. So when someone mentioned that it would be a good idea to gather all such documents in one place, I wholeheartedly agreed, and volutneered to do something about it.
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Now that I’ve introduced the 4th “R”, Repair, to the traditional three, I’d like to make sure everyone knows about a service that will help you with your Reuse. The thing is, “reuse” doesn’t specify that YOU have to reuse something. If you can’t (or don’t want to), why not let someone else have a crack at it?

Sounds good, but how do you get rid of something that isn’t worth selling, without simply putting it at the curb and hoping someone scoops it up before the garbage man gets to it? Enter my new best friend and patron saint of clutterbusters everywhere, Freecycle!
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I recently came across a blog entitled Say No To Trash. Sarah McGaughey and Kyle Glover are attempting to go a month with creating no garbage in Toronto. The more I think about it, the more I appreciate how ambitious an undertaking it really is. It’s a worthy read.

Recently, they reposted an article that originally appeared in The Eye about why recycling is the worst of the 3 “R”s. Having read that, I agree that recycling should not be the focus of any drive towards sustainability. After all, recycling still requires energy inputs, where reduction or reuse don’t.

However, I contend that there is another “R” that is missing entirely that needs attention in our increasingly disposable consumer product economy: Repair.
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Thus far I’ve discussed what cohousing is, and my involvement in cohousing locally, but I haven’t really touched on why cohousing belongs here in the Sustainapedia. Can the model of how we house ourselves really contribute to the sustainability of our dwellings? It sure can.

Cohousing in and of itself isn’t necessarily a sustainable practice. (It’s a good practice, yes - anything that promotes actually getting to know your neighbours and re-introducing that “small town feeling” into our anonymous suburbs is just peachy as far as I’m concerned.) There is the potential for more sustainable living with cohousing, and in large it comes from the many ways in which cohousing promotes densification.
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