Someone started a new group on Sustainable Living. I'm suitably impressed, and looking forward to talking about this sort of thing with SG folks.
I started a sharehouse with a pair of other like-minded greenie students nearly four years ago here in Suburban Sydney. It's been an interesting challenge trying to increase the sustainability of our household while butting heads against the prevailing culture of Sydney, the whims of real estate agents, and other things. It turned out to be easier than I thought though, it just required some lateral thinking.
The easy things were signing up to 100% green power (since I can't buy solar panels for a rental property), and getting a compost heap going. I've been gardening here for three years, and while I've built up some half-decent soil (it was sand when I got here) my vege-growing skills are slowly improving. I can hardly say I live of my vege patch, but we've made some bloody tasty meals from it over the years.
Over the years I've had a plethora of different people come and go, moving onto other places or other activities. I've had uni-students, environmental activists (one of them shut down a coal plant in Newcastle by tying herself to a conveyor belt), actors, hippies, drifters, chemical scientists and foreign architects. Only two of them aside from myself have owned cars. Some of them were mad-keen bike riders (one just rode from Alice Springs to Townsville), others experienced Sydney entirely by foot. Up until recently, every housemate has been vegetarian or even vegan, which has worked surprisingly well with my unrepentant carnivorism. I only ever buy kangaroo meat, as it's about as sustainable as it gets. It's hunted from a population that is vastly larger than it was prior to European Settlement, doesn't contain unnatural hormones or chemicals, and up until the day it's killed, lives a free life jumping around like nature intended. No factory farmed chicken or feedlot cattle for me, please.
For the last year and a half I've had my fiance Countessa sharing the adventure with me. I remember she was sceptical when I first moved in here with two vegan hippies, but she quickly joined in the adventure, gardening and bindiving and streetshopping and opshopping with me. Now she's a bigger greenie than I am. We're leaving this little mansion soon though, to start a new adventure, in a new place. Hopefully this time we'll reach an even more sustainable, alternative life, and I know we're going to enjoy every minute of it.
I started a sharehouse with a pair of other like-minded greenie students nearly four years ago here in Suburban Sydney. It's been an interesting challenge trying to increase the sustainability of our household while butting heads against the prevailing culture of Sydney, the whims of real estate agents, and other things. It turned out to be easier than I thought though, it just required some lateral thinking.
The easy things were signing up to 100% green power (since I can't buy solar panels for a rental property), and getting a compost heap going. I've been gardening here for three years, and while I've built up some half-decent soil (it was sand when I got here) my vege-growing skills are slowly improving. I can hardly say I live of my vege patch, but we've made some bloody tasty meals from it over the years.
Over the years I've had a plethora of different people come and go, moving onto other places or other activities. I've had uni-students, environmental activists (one of them shut down a coal plant in Newcastle by tying herself to a conveyor belt), actors, hippies, drifters, chemical scientists and foreign architects. Only two of them aside from myself have owned cars. Some of them were mad-keen bike riders (one just rode from Alice Springs to Townsville), others experienced Sydney entirely by foot. Up until recently, every housemate has been vegetarian or even vegan, which has worked surprisingly well with my unrepentant carnivorism. I only ever buy kangaroo meat, as it's about as sustainable as it gets. It's hunted from a population that is vastly larger than it was prior to European Settlement, doesn't contain unnatural hormones or chemicals, and up until the day it's killed, lives a free life jumping around like nature intended. No factory farmed chicken or feedlot cattle for me, please.
For the last year and a half I've had my fiance Countessa sharing the adventure with me. I remember she was sceptical when I first moved in here with two vegan hippies, but she quickly joined in the adventure, gardening and bindiving and streetshopping and opshopping with me. Now she's a bigger greenie than I am. We're leaving this little mansion soon though, to start a new adventure, in a new place. Hopefully this time we'll reach an even more sustainable, alternative life, and I know we're going to enjoy every minute of it.
VIEW 15 of 15 COMMENTS
thefuckoffkid:
What are tomorrow night's plans? (That is, meeting up before HF?)
thefuckoffkid:
I'm bringing Bridehead along. Happy to meet at Mac, although no guarantee it'll be at 8.30. Maybe 9-ish or so. But the general idea is sound and if you're there earlier than me/we are, you get more drinking time. 