OK, So I will welcome myself to the blogosphere…YEY ME!
This Blog is a part of my assessment for EDST204, a science unit focusing on environment issues which is a core unit of my Bachelor of Education (Primary), and will be a way of logging my efforts to apply principles of sustainability to my own lifestyle. So basically this blog is going to be a way of showing how I will try and reduce my waste, consumption and pretty much move away from living like a slob.
So before I have even started I am saving resources by not using paper! (Yes I am using an earth shatteringly awesome laptop but it was going to be on anyway.)
The first part has been to get all the initial information together. This will serve as a base mark which I will use to plan strategies for living efficiently.
I like to say I want to live for efficiently rather than say something along the lines of “to save mother earth” or “environmentally friendly” because living to save the environment does not resonate with me at all. I would rather make changes to like more efficiently (AKA Smarter) rather than live like a fool.
My Family consists of 4 people, 1 cat and 2 dogs. I'd say as a family we are wealthy enough to have whatever we want but still needed to work 5 days a week.
I think if we are overly wasteful it would be because of habit rather than a lack of ability. Which sounds foolish, but when most people are acting just as foolish it doesn't come up as a problem.
Ecological Footprint
This information is from the Australian EPA website, calculated in a flash quiz. (http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/ecologicalfootprint/globalfootprint/index.asp)
This ecological footprint was meant to be for only my personally information but I have done it for the household.
As a poor starving university student I am living with my family still and as such I feel my ecological footprint is linked to theirs. Even if I personally do not perform the action which would raise the families ecological footprint I reap all the benefits. My ecological footprint is inseparable from that of my family. (Unless I moved out…so like I said INSEPARABLE)
Waste
This photo is of a random days worth of waste. The bin in the middle is 13L.
The top half is what has gone into the recycling and the bottom is all rubbish.
All of the rubbish is mostly plastic packaging with some food scraps mixed in.
Waste Breakdown.
| Type of waste | Amount (approx volume) Litres |
| Paper | 1.5 |
| Plastic | 8 |
| Metal | 0 |
| Organic Food | 2 |
| Other | 0.5 (glass) |
This table is not very scientific but here is how I did it.
· 13L bin was reasonably full so I’ll call it 10L
· Assumed each Plastic bag was 0.5L
· Recycled was assumed 1L
I will attempt to use the same approximations for the final check to have some degree of accuracy. I was not keen to dig to thoroughly as most was covered in meat juice, gravy and some random cheesy substance…not that keen to know. I think the point is “yes, there should be a better way to organise waste and limit waste”, not “get Aidan to gag”.
Water Usage
All percentages can be found at http://www.savewater.com.au/ (I did a little tweaking based on my brother’s responses. He is a plumber and had some statistics on hand from his Holmesglen Course. Also just as a note we do not water the garden, it’s a kind of a social darwin-istic approach to gardening…only the strong will survive.
It also contains a lot of other useful information and resources about how to save water.
| Where Used | Percentage of Daily Usage | Beginning of Unit Per Person Daily in Litres |
| Total Household | 100% | 798L a day. 199.5L a day per person |
| Bathroom | 40% | 79.8 L |
| Toilet | 20% | 39.9 L |
| Kitchen | 15% | 29.9 L |
| Garden | 0% | 00.0 L |
| Laundry | 25% | 49.9 L |
Not quite 155L.
Energy Consumption
Like before the percentages were derived from a website this time Energy Kids (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=us_energy_homes-basics ).
The information about car transport is an estimate based on my family’s cars fuel efficiency and travel distance per day. Combined efficiency is about 8L per 100Km and my family travels approximately 150km a day. So taking this more cautiously I have rounded out petrol usage to 10-15 per day
I am the only one who rides public transport, it’s not about saving the planet, and I have just always disliked having a car as it seems an excessive cost. (The hypocrisy is when you see me with my $2000 laptop, PDA phone and Bluetooth headphones)
But after using (http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/energy.shtml ) as an approximate energy usage for trains per kilometre I worked out my daily public transport cost.
· Approx 500 people on train (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comeng_(train) ) (could be anything from 0-800 depending on load)
· 42.9km of track (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgrave_railway_line,_Melbourne )
· 0.04 Mega Jules per Kilometre (http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/greenhouse.shtml )
(I walk to the station as much as possible, its 40 minutes away but I can use the exercise….and buses run against trains due to poor planning.)
| Energy Source | How Used | % | Beginning of Unit Per Person Daily |
| Gas | Total Household | 100% | 109.895 Mega Jules |
| Gas | Space Heating | 80% | 87.916 Mega Jules |
| Gas | Water Heating | 15% | 16.484 Mega Jules |
| Gas | Cooking | 5% | 5.495 Mega Jules |
| Electricity | Total Household | 100% | 6.12 Kilo Watt Hours |
| Electricity | Appliances | 80% | 4.896 Kilo Watt Hours |
| Electricity | Lighting | 20% | 1.224 Kilo Watt Hours |
| Petrol | Private Transport | 100% | 10- 15 L of unleaded |
| Electric | Public Transport | | 1.72 Mega Jules |
Ok so that is a fairly good approximation of the consumption and waste of this household. I for one am glad that working all of that out is over, and I am sure anyone reading this will be glad to hear that there will not be any more data analysis until the end of this assessment task.
The next post will be on strategies to lower consumption and waste. I will for the most part choose to avoid using other people’s data for proof because I would rather give these things a try myself rather than trust internet sources…which to be honest will be where the bulk of my data will come from. My plan is to get ideas and strategies from others in the unit, friends and the internet and give them a go myself.
Also posts will be much shorter! I just needed to get this data out there, both for the project and to organise myself.
Until then…
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