Audi Ad Ticks Greenies Off

Check out this Audi ad for their new diesel-powered car (thanks to ecorazzi for posting and bringing this to my attention!).

30% fewer emissions than what… a bike? The bus? The vege oil car? Even the annoying guy on the footpath? (He really shouldn’t be riding there, and I would get serious pedestrian rage if he was telling me to get out of the way, but that’s beside the point.)

The point? I don’t think the new Audi has 30% fewer emissions than any of those. Maybe it has 30% fewer emissions than a regular petrol car.

Audi, is your target audience the greenies, or just the light-green greenies who wanna look like they’re doing the right thing without having to actually go to any effort?* Or maybe it’s the people who are sick of paying huge petrol prices. What are you really going for?

Cos I think you just pissed a lot of people off.

*I probably just pissed a bunch of people off too, cos that was pretty cynical. Oops, I’m sick, my brain-mouth/typing fingers filter is gone.

Update Again

I haven’t posted since the big dust storm, which seems ages ago now. We’ve had a couple more since then, but nothing like that first big one.

I’m sorry I’ve neglected the blog, but it’s just been a bit crazy crazy. Here’s an update on the latest goings-on.

Diva Princess broke two of her toes and has been stuck inside for a month with a bandage on her foot that she insists on trying to rip off. She looks so pathetic with the cone around her head that I try not to make her wear it unless she’s getting really crazy with the bandage pulling. She’s also had an ECG to check on a mild heart murmur we just found out she has.

Diva Princess is highly disgruntled that she is stuck inside with a bandage on her foot.

There are new white Tim Tams. Yankee Elv is obsessed. There have been a lot of Tim Tams in our house. Yankee Elv’s mom is obsessed too, except she lives in America, so it’s hard for her to have lots of Tim Tams in her house. Fortunately for her, they’re staring to sell them in the US soon. There’s lots of excitement about that, on both sides of the Pacific. I feel bad that the Tim Tams come in a plastic tray, in a plastic packet. They need to make eco Tim Tams that come in cardboard and paper. Plastic or not, I still eat them. Bad hippy. Bad.

Dog/cat/turtle-sitting is over. A great time was had by all. We introduced the dogs to a new dog park, which is full of very friendly people and is split into a section for big dogs and another section for little dogs. Loodle was not very sociable with the dogs but wanted everyone to pat him. Everyone loved him. Pseudo-Marley was simultaneously scared of the big dogs and desperate to play tag with them. Everyone loved him too. I like how they supply all the dogs with biodegradable poo pick-up bags.

I got a long-awaited promotion, Mr Teeny-bop has become a Drama-king (lots of school plays) and Yankee Elv has gone back to school.

I walked to the supermarket last weekend (for exercise and to reduce car trips – I took my green shopping bags too). Loodle can’t walk that far with us anymore, but Mr Teeny-bop came on his scooter. It was nice to walk along with him. We’re keeping our eye on a mango tree in a park along the way. In a couple of months we may be able to score some free mangoes. Yum!

Mangoes!

Loodle is getting into shaving season. He’s a North American dog all the way and doesn’t handle the heat, so we have to shear him like a sheep (although he ends up looking like a pink piggy when we’re finished). Shaving will occur this weekend. The first shave of the season is always very laborious, but not as bad as the weekly bath. The arthritis in Loodle’s hips is getting so bad he needs to sit down for his bath now. 😦

Yankee Elv and I celebrated (quietly to ourselves) a year of using menstrual cups and cloth pantyliners instead of disposable ‘sanitary products’. Going for reusuable menstrual items is one of the best decisions I ever made and I don’t just not regret it, I celebrate it – every month, every time I walk past tampons in the shop, every time I see an ad about pads and every time some poor girl tiptoes up to me at work and whispers “I don’t suppose you have an extra tampon in your bag, do you?” (I actually do keep a few tampons in case of emergencies so they are always lucky.)

Diva has figured out how to open the screen door and Loodle has figured out how to open the gates. I love having smart pets but this kind of extreme Houdini-style behaviour is a bit much. We’ve had to institute some counter-measures. Now our gates rival Fort Knox and the screen doors are always locked. That doesn’t stop Diva climbing them, and with summer coming we can’t close the wooden door all the time. Any suggestions?

Yankee Elv went blonde (partially). Anyone know what the ecological impact of bleach is?

I keep forgetting to water the herbs and veges regularly, so while they are not dead, they are not flourishing as they should be. The Spanish onions down the side of the house are growing best – they are out in the sunshine (but not too much sunshine) and the rain. I have had a tarp down beside the driveway for a couple of months to kill off the grass and hope to create a proper vege garden over the next couple of weekends. I think between exposure to the rain and my haphazard watering, they should fare better.

I got my empty witch hazel bottle refilled at the local organic shop. The cost was nearly three times what I pay for a whole brand new bottle in the supermarket. I don’t think I can justify spending that money to save buying a recyclable plastic bottle, which makes me really sad.

Yankee Elv has been helping me avoid buying lunch at work by cooking up big batches of food and freezing it. It’s like I have a restaurant inside my freezer that I get to go to every morning. I love that I’m saving money, eating super tasty food and not getting a bunch of disposable containers and cutlery each day.

Many, many grapefruit.

We got rid of about 80% of our grapefruits from the fallen branch via Freecycle, which I love! There is no way those hundreds of grapefruits were going anywhere otherwise. There are still hundreds more on the tree – the possums and bats are stocked for the summer. The passionfruits and pawpaws will be out before we know it too (if the morning glory doesn’t choke them), and then they’ll have dietary choice. I hope this choice encourages them not to eat anything out of my vege garden-to-be though. My colleague tells some lovely stories about possums eating her herbs and capsicums and her mad spraying with garlic and chili water (first the plants in an attempt to stave off the eating, and then the possums in retribution).

Cheeky possums eat everything, including bread, grapefruits, passionfruit, pawpaws and people's herb and vegetable gardens. They especially like the flavour of chili and garlic.

We’re planning another local holiday – south this time, just after Christmas. It should be good! No tents for a change. I need a break from holey air mattresses and tarps. I really hate putting up tarps.

So that’s what’s been going. Life has been interfering with my eco-life, which kinda sucks. Why are there so many things I wanna do, that I can’t do, cos I don’t have time, energy or money? (Mostly the first two.) Has anyone managed to find a balance? I could really use some advice.

The Elves in Melbourne!

I had to go to Melbourne for work on Monday, so I booked a flight for Yankee Elv and we went down a day early to take in the city. It was a good way to amalgamate travel costs and reduce emissions. We flew carbon neutral, which was surprisingly cheap, only $3.08 per flight, which is about a third of a tonne of emissions. It’s the first time Yankee Elv has been there, so it was fun!

So what kind of ELV-esque stuff did we see?

The Queen Victoria markets have a really big open-air section for fruit and veg, and one whole big aisle of it is for organic food. It was huge and pretty cool. If we lived in Melbourne we’d definitely shop there. In contrast, the West End markets up here have only a few organic stalls and they all cost a fortune. The ones in the Queen Victoria markets were fairly reasonably priced. Yankee Elv bought an orange for breakfast the next day.

The organics aisle at the Queen Victoria markets.

Melbourne is known for it’s cafe culture, so we tried out a place I’d never seen before – Hudsons Coffee. It looked like a one-off sort of place, but once I got inside and started ordering, I realised it was some kind of franchise, not dissimilar to Starbucks (with better atmosphere), which was a bit disappointing. It was cosy and warm in there though, and we’d already paid for drinks, so we stayed. I couldn’t figure out why they served our drinks in paper cups and our food in paper bags, rather than using crockery since we were eating in the cafe. Weird – and wasteful.

Disposable junk at Hudsons.

Speaking of cosy and warm, Melbourne is cold, and apparently even the locals agree. Why else would you see restaurants with signs advertising heated couches? I wonder how much energy that wastes…

Heated couches!

Public transport is pretty good in Melbourne, and a fair number of people ride bikes… probably about the same as Brisbane.

Trams and cycling and horses, oh my!

I’m not sure how I feel about the use of electric trams. I think they’re better than diesel or even natural gas buses (are they? fossil fuels still go towards the production of electricity), but the wires look ugly and they make the road rules weird! Plus, they scare the horses.

The trams scared the poor horses. Horses shouldn't be in the city anyway!

When I was working on Monday, Yankee Elv checked out this little veg*n fast food place called Lord of the Fries, right on the corner of Flinders St and Elizabeth St. She loved it – apparently the nuggets were particularly awesome. I like that there’s a veg*n food venue in such a populated place. It always seemed to have plenty of customers. I wonder if that’s because they don’t seem to advertise too much that they’re veg. When I was first in Melbourne and looking for a place to eat, I didn’t realise they were veg and I asked if they had any vege burgers. Needless to say, they looked at me a bit weirdly. At the time I felt like Indian though, so I didn’t get anything from there. I will next time though!

Veg*n fast food, Lord of the Fries.

And of course, no trip to Melbourne is complete with a stop at Taco Bill for dinner. Be warned though – although they make the most awesome chocolate mousse ever in the entire universe (that I’ve tasted), it’s not vegan (just vegetarian). I’m not an official convert yet.

Taco Bill and me.

Tell me about your favourite ELV-ish place in Melbourne!

Reduce: Reliance on Transport

Lately I’ve been making a point of leaving work by about 5pm (sound normal? not for me) so that I can walk from work to the city (Brisbane CBD), where I catch another bus home. I really like it!

Normally I have been catching a bus, or occasionally taking the train, into the city. Since they’ve closed down my original bus stop due to road work though, I’ve been increasingly irritated by the need to schlep ages down the street in the wrong direction just to get to the bus. The only thing that made it worthwhile was that at the time I normally leave, it’s too dark for me to feel comfortable walking, and the traffic has thinned out enough that it’s much quicker. Last week though, I had an early mark and the traffic was so bad and it was still light, so I thought – hey, you haven’t walked into the city for ages, why not do it?’ So I did.

It was really pleasant; a nice time for me to stop multi-tasking and just think. It’s good exercise, and I liked watching the sun set over the river. So this week I’ve walked every day except today. I like it much better than my frenzied morning dash to the bus, I don’t hurry, it’s just nice and relaxed (although I do walk fast, I can’t help it). I like that the footpaths are typically quite wide and not crowded where I’m walking, so I don’t get pedestrian rage (kinda like road rage for walkers). I like that even just in the week I’ve been walking, I’ve started noticing the sun is setting slightly later as time goes by – the season is turning back to spring… eventually.

I’m very much enjoying trying different routes and discovering little quirks about this awesome place I’ve lived in for ten years. I love that this city never runs out of new things to see and explore. Yesterday when I was walking, I was looking at all the viewing nooks as I crossed the William Jolly bridge (another new route). I was also noting all the different kinds of manholes (yeah, weird, but I’ve been editing some work on manholes lately and it was actually kind of interesting to see what I’ve been reading about).

The William Jolly, or Grey St, Bridge. (Yoinked from stephenk1977's flickr photostream, full credit to him).

I like that it’s one less fuel-driven trip I’m taking. Even though it’s public transport, which I totally support, even reducing my use of that (and subsequently increasing my use of footpaths) is a good thing,  I think. Tomorrow I’m going to try going along the boardwalk past North Quay.

Today I had to work late and I found myself ticked off that I didn’t get my daily walk. Looking out the window into the growing dark and seeing the silhouettes of trees, and then having to turn back to my laptop, was fairly frustrating.

I think I’ll keep it up.

Note:
Access stephenk1977’s flickr photostream here.

Reuse: Green Bags

Ok guys – this post is kind of a continuation of yesterday’s post on reducing plastic bag use. Yes, I know it’s lame and unoriginal, but when this post appears on the blog, I’ll be in Perth for work so I’ve had to write some posts ahead of time. This is the last one left, it’s nearly midnight at my flight leaves in less than 8 hours.

So seriously… let’s reuse our green bags.

Reusable green bag from HEB in Texas (we used to shop there... cos there was nowhere else to shop)

Why? Cos it’s, you know, the right thing to do. See yesterday’s post for more detail on the why. Today, I’m more interested in the how. That is, how do you remember to bring them to the shop!?

The grocery stores have taken to putting up signs reminding us that green bags only work if you remember to bring them. The only thing that does is make me feel guilty that I’ve forgotten. A sign at the shop is a bit too little, too late, you know what I mean? As I mentioned yesterday though, before we switched to a mini-rubbish bin, I used to use way fewer plastic bags, and thus used green shopping bags all the time. I had some secret ways of remembering to bring them.

1. Have quite a lot of bags so you can have bags in different places.
2. Keep a bag in your work bag/backpack for emergency shopping on the way home from work. You only need one, as you don’t normally buy much on the way home from work when you have to carry things on the bus.
3. Keep some bags in your car boot – we normally take the car when we’re going shopping for lots of stuff.
4. Keep some bags inside the house in case you want to walk to the shops. Keep them out of reach of naughty cats who pee on things. Trust me on this one. Don’t think the top of the fridge is safe, either.
5. Have spare bags so you can keep on using them while you’re mending the older bags that start ripping.
6. Have at least one insulated bag so your cold stuff stays cold while you’re walking home from the shops – this is most important in hotter climates like Queensland. Yes, I know we’re not the ones having a heatwave this summer (sorry Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney), but normally it’s hotter up here. We also have an insulated backpack, which works better if you’re cycling, scootering or skating to the shop.
7. Put your bags back where they go as part of your grocery-putting-away routine. For example, after a big shop, gather the bags up and put them back in the boot of the car. Otherwise, you’ll get to the shop next time and realise you left them on the kitchen bench. That sucks. Once it’s part of your routine it will seem normal.
8. It’s ok to buy the odd new green bag, but don’t go crazy. That’s emergency times only, and only if you’re a bit low on green bags at home.
9. You can use any old bag, not just a green bag, if your groceries will fit. I’ve carried lots of stuff home in my laptop backpack before. It also makes it easier to carry on the bus.
10. Enlist other people to help you remember and help you put the bags away as part of your routine. If you’re too lazy tired old busy doing incredibly important things, you can always have the kids do it. 😉

How do you remember your green bags?

Reduce: Boredom on the bus

I was going to write about reducing your carbon emissions and costs when keeping cool in summer. Instead, I’m writing about reducing boredom on the bus.

Why?

Cos today I decided to reduce my stress levels by having a couple of drinks with a colleague, who is also a friend, after work. So I’m not sure that I’m quite up to a serious post requiring a bit of research… hence, boredom on the bus! The topic came to me on the bus ride home, strangely enough.

Also, my wrist hurts. Not sure what I’ve done to it. Must minimise typing requirements.

So: first up, why the bus?
Well, here’s my little transport pyramid. I made it myself. Just now.

Aussie Elv's Transport Pyramid

It has five sections – the bigger the section (towards the bottom), the more you should use that type of transport.

People Power
This type of transportation includes walking, running, jumping, somersaulting, hopping, swimming or any other transport that involves your body and no equipment to get you from one place to another.

Move it Yourself
This type of transportation includes unicycling, bicycling, scootering, skateboarding, surfing, rollerblading, sailing or any other transport than involves a piece of equipment, by which you are propelled using your own kinetic energy (muscles) or sustainable energy (wind or solar).

Let’s get Together
This type of transportation includes bus, train, light rail, tram, ferry, city cat – any transport that is accessed publicly and transports reasonably large numbers of people, and is typically powered by fossil fuels or renewable energy. This could be electricity (possibly produced sustainably), gas (including natural), diesel or petrol.

Mini-me Vehicles
This type of transportation includes motorbikes, motor scooters, hybrid cars – any private transport that runs on either a small amount of fossil fuels or uses a combination of fossil fuels and electricity, possibly sustainable. (For more about sustainable cars, see my review of the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?)

Hummers and Friends
This type of transportation includes cars, utes, trucks, camper vans – any private transport that runs on fossil fuels. Note – carpooling reduces the severity of this one. If enough people are in the car, it might reduce it down a level or two. (I don’t drive, so I can honestly say I’ve never been in a car and not carpooled).

What do you think of my pyramid?

So back to reducing boredom on the bus.

I take the bus because I live too far from work to walk or ride (I might be able to ride, but I’d be to buggered to work by the time I get there). I could catch the train, but the bus is more convenient. It’s not a long bus ride, and I change buses in the city to get to my workplace in one of the inner suburbs. But I gotta tell ya – the bus can be friend or foe.

Ways I make the bus my friend (aka – beat boredom on the bus):

• Sleep/nap/snooze – you’re there before you know it (this is the most common thing I do)
• Read books about sustainability, low impact living, veganism, or the latest celesbians (we all have our vices)
• Knit or crochet (I don’t do this cos I am the slowest knitter in the world and I’d knit one row before I got there, but I watch another lady do it every day, she’s very good and fast)
• Prep yourself mentally for work (this is my least favourite)
• Talk or text on the phone
• Look out the window at all the pretty trees in bloom (it’s summer here)
• Discreetly people watch (remember, public transport takes away physical and auditory privacy, so it’s unspoken etiquette to give other passengers visual privacy – to a point)
• Count your fingers (this one is for when you’re still half asleep)
• Plan your dream eco-home (mine includes strawbale construction and lots of mango and frangipani trees)
• If you have a signing friend, sign and watch the other passengers try to not look at you
• Discreetly read people’s lips if you can
• Make up stories in your head about the other people
• Do a crossword or play sudoku
• Listen to music (I don’t do this, but lots of other people do, which gives them auditory privacy)
• Read a free newspaper
• Make a friend and chat (I have bus buddies, which is cool as they all live in my neighbourhood so I see them around home too).

What do you do to reduce boredom on the bus?