Share-a-cycle systems

London has this brilliant cycle hire system, where you can pick up a bike at one of many stations around the city, ride to where you're going and drop it off at another station.

Paris has something similar - Velib. When I was there in 2011 it seemed wonderfully romantic and very French to see all these chic, beautifully dressed Parisians gliding past on their grey Velib bicycles.

How great would it be to have something like this in Wellington?

No junk mail

I've been pretty quiet on this blog for a while because life has been hectic - we've just moved to a new house. 

The new house has a minor but unexpectedly great little feature:

The letterbox already has a "No Junk Mail" sign on.

Living in my apartment with its indoor mailroom I had been shielded from junk mail for a while, so I was pretty shocked by how much junk mail we used to get at our last house - half a dozen items almost every single day.

I had vaguely thought about putting a "No Junk Mail" sign up, but wasn't really sure if it would work and never quite got around to it. 

Well, now I wish I had. That little sign on our new letterbox has created some kind of brilliant junk-mail-repelling forcefield. We have not had a single item of junk mail since we have been here. Fantastic!

More on green beans

I slipped up at the supermarket a couple of weeks ago and bought some green beans to make a particular recipe, even though I knew the season was really over.

It wasn't until I got them home that I noticed the label - Product of Australia.

Say what?!

I felt kind of shocked because it had never occurred to me that they sold imported perishable vegetables in regular ol' supermarkets here. I remember how gobsmacked I was by the imported African green beans I saw in UK supermarkets, but I hadn't realised that this was happening in New Zealand too.

However, in digging around on the topic I came across this interesting article from the Guardian - How the myth of food miles hurts the environment. It turns out the African beans are a common product over there - who knew? The article argues that food miles are only part of the picture and lots of other aspects of food production also have environmental impact - ideas that have been circulating here for a while thanks to the study on the carbon footprint of New Zealand lamb released in 2010, but including a few other factors that I hadn't considered. I find it intriguing to think that the air freighted beans from Kenya could actually be better than the local ones - I wouldn't have thought that the impact of using fossil-fuel-based fertilisers and oil-powered tractors would be that great compared to flying them to another country.


On the other hand, I'm guessing that those Australian beans weren't grown using just manual labour and cow muck. 

Sorbent follows through

We all had colds in our household last week, so I bought a box of tissues. I was dead impressed to see that Sorbent tissues are now PEFC certified.

It is great to see that they are following up on their commitment to move to certified fibre, as mentioned in my tissues post from 2009.

Even better, since I wrote that post I was motivated to start using traditional fabric handkerchiefs more and I think this is about the first time I have needed to buy new tissues since.

Petrol update

The fuel light came on in the car so I had to fill it up again on Tuesday - that's five weeks on one tank of gas, which makes me feel a little bit better.

However, I'd done about 475kms on my 34L of petrol. That's about 7.1L/100 kms - noticeably more than the 6.1L/100 kms the EECA fuel efficiency website rates the Honda Jazz at. I guess that's partly because I have just done short trips around town, but I feel there's plenty of room to improve my mileage here.

Number one priority: check my tyre pressure.

Drip drip drip tick tick

Still going on the tank of petrol - I think I'm about 2/3 through now.

Saving water

With Wellington's water crisis, talking about ways of saving water has gone mainstream.

As well as saving the baby's bath water for the garden, we've started showering with a bucket.

My Dad is catching the water from his washing machine in the laundry tub and siphoning it onto his garden. I reckon I might try doing that myself when I wash the baby's nappies today.

Save the environment - cut down the trees!

It's not often that someone will try to sell you a sawn-off tree as being good for the environment.

In this case, though, these trees are on the northwest of our house, shading everything with their big, leafy, albeit carbon-absorbing branches.

So although trees are good, pruning them to reduce our winter electricity use is way better.

They're growing on the neighbouring property, so this summer we approached our neighbour, who turned out to be absolutely lovely and very accommodating. He gave us permission to cut the trees right back.

The difference has been amazing. It's been way sunnier and warmer.

And the trees are already starting to grow again.

Compost Bloke earns his stripes

Compost Bloke isn't as interested in all this eco stuff as me, and, to be fair, is somewhat bemused by my efforts.

However, he's fully earned his name - and composting kudos. He's not super big on gardening, mostly sticking to mowing the lawn and pruning things, but for years while I wasn't here he faithfully dug all his compost scraps into the garden.

As a result the soil is brilliant - rich, dark, free-draining. So in spite of my somewhat scrappy efforts this season, the garden has taken off.

Now that it's late February the cherry tomatoes are booming. 

And here's the payoff for Compost Bloke - he's rather partial to those little sweet tomatoes.

Conscious Consumers go mobile

Conscious Consumers have created a smartphone app to help you find accredited cafes and restaurants while you're on the move. Nice.

Car confessions

So, yeah, I have a car now. No more pleasant sense of eco-virtue from being carless. (When I lived in my city apartment I sold my car and walked, took public transport or a Greencab when it rained, and occasionally made use of car-sharing scheme City Hop to reach less accessible places. It was good.)

But here in the suburban hinterland it's harder to do without. I have at least tried to minimise the environmental impact by choosing a small car, so it's relatively fuel efficient. (It's a Honda Jazz.)


I've vaguely noticed that I don't fill it up very often, but maybe it would be good to start paying more attention. So, as a little challenge to myself, I'm going to take note of how long it takes me to burn a tank of petrol.

I filled it up today - from fuel light on to full (34L worth - $75!!). I'll let you know when it's empty again.

Paradise Lot

There was an inspiring permaculture garden featured in the NY Times yesterday.

Reading about it makes me itch to get out the spade.

I wonder if Compost Bloke would let me turn the lawn into an edible forest?

Hand-me-down baby

Before he even got a foot out of the womb our baby started treading lightly, thanks to the tradition of The Great New Zealand Pass On. As soon as the news got out that we were pregnant, offers of hand-me-down baby stuff started coming in from friends and family. We've had almost everything given to us:


- a whole wardrobe of maternity clothes 
- pregnancy and baby books
- cot
- bassinet
- Portacot
- pram
- all-terrain buggy
- back pack
- baby bath
- bouncer
- baby gym
- nappy bag
- blankets
- muslins
- sleep bags
- toys
- oodles of baby clothes of different kinds and sizes

It's been amazing.


It probably helps that we have been laggards and had our baby after almost everyone we know has already  finished with having kids.

Now I'm keeping my eye out for the next baby coming up so I can take my turn in the Great Pass On. It's nice to think that all these things we only used for a few months can have yet another burst of life.

Reuseable baby wipes

Another part of the nappy equation is the wipes you use. I use washable baby wipes - partly for eco reasons and partly because it means exposing the baby to fewer additives. (The Waterwipes website has a long and fairly sobering list of ingredients in baby wipes that are potential skin irritants.)

Wendyl Nissen at Green Goddess has a recipe for deluxe DIY baby wipes involving witchhazel and rosewater. I was keen to try her recipe when I first had the baby but could only find the ingredients in ethanol with preservatives, which seemed to defeat the purpose! (In her latest book, Mother's Little Helper, Wendyl recommends sourcing the witchhazel from health shops and food-grade rosewater from Indian or Middle Eastern food shops, not the chemists'.)

I wound up just using plain water, which seems to work fine. At first I used paper towels, but they were hard to peel apart when wet and tended to tear. My partner's bright idea was to use thin kitchen wipes cut into sections instead (Wendyl suggests using Chux cloths). I wet and squeeze out the wipes and layer them in a re-purposed plastic takeaway container ready for use:

There's no need for any preservative because I just make them up fresh every day or two so they don't get a chance to go musty. Used ones just get tossed in the nappy bucket to get washed and line dried with everything else.

Now the baby is beyond the newborn stage I use a combination of disposable wipes and these ones - disposable wipes for cleaning up poo and these for when baby is just wet and not dirty.* (Yeah, I'm a little wimpy about poo!) It's another compromise - my partner prefers to use the disposable wipes, and who am I to discourage him from changing nappies? - but I save at least half a dozen wipes a day so I reckon it's worth it.

I really like it when I change a wet nappy and don't have to throw a single thing away. 

*Or, as my partner would say, "there's just a fart's worth of poo".

Gifts and guests

I've mentioned this before - I really struggle with trying to be sustainable when it comes to stuff for other people: giving gifts, having people around etc. When I buy stuff excessively packaged in plastic, or *ahem* fly to the other side of the world, it's often because I want to do something that's nice for someone else.

I was interested to read a really clear explanation of this conflict in Niki Harre's Psychology for a Better World (see the chapter on identity; also pp. 137-138). There are a lot of big ideas in this book. One is that you want to act in a way that is consistent with your identity, but in your life you have multiple identities that are sometimes in conflict. In this case, you are a greenie - so you want to be environmentally responsible - but you are also a mother/daughter/sister/friend and a member of a society that traditionally gives gifts - so you want to give a nice gift.

She also explains that you empathise much more easily with one person, especially one similar to you, than you do with any more than one. (Millions of people will suffer because of climate change vs your Nan will really like this present? Nan wins, hands down.)

So it's not just me! It is actually really hard to reconcile wanting to act in a sustainable way with wanting to do something nice for someone else, when those two things are in conflict.

So, Christmas is kind of hard. I think maybe the solution is to resolve the conflict by being creative and coming up with a solution that is both sustainable AND nice for someone else.

There are some excellent present ideas that are both nice to get and local/eco-friendly.

Who wouldn't want a gift voucher for a cleaner to come in and clean your house?!

Blackberry season

It's high blackberry season and there's the most fantastic crop on the Western Hills.

Picking here is a dream. My memories of blackberry picking as a child in suburban Wellington are of all the bushes being well picked over and getting scratched up the arms stretching precariously over the edge of a steep bank to reach the last few. The same was true in Aro Valley where foraging was fashionable among the students. Up here there are masses of bushes dripping with beautifully ripe plump berries. You can saunter along the edge of the road idly picking only the juiciest and popping them in your mouth.

There are so many ripe berries within easy reach that you have to conclude that no-one up here really picks them at all. You're not in Aro Valley now, Compost Girl.

But what could be more frugal and eco-friendly than foraging?  So I was out today with the baby strapped on in the front pack, picking the blackberries down our street.

When I was a kid my Mum used to keep the best berries for blackberry and apple pie or to eat with muesli for breakfast. Any small or somewhat manky ones would go in a jar to make blackberry cordial. I'm doing the same, although I'm not up to pie - I've just made a simple blackberry sauce to go over vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Here's Mum's recipe:

Blackberry cordial

2 cups blackberries
2 cups white wine vinegar
450g sugar
250g honey

Pour vinegar over blackberries and stand one week. Strain and put liquid in a saucepan with the sugar and honey. Bring to the boil then remove from heat and cool. Bottle. Can be used much like Ribena.

Like my Mum I'll be adding blackberries to the jar over several days of pickings.

Enter ... cask wine?

A couple of weekends ago I had a drink for the first time in over a year (i.e., since I found out I was pregnant).

I was pretty stoked because, although I'm glad I didn't drink, and giving up alcohol seems a small thing in comparison to potentially harming your baby, there were many times during the year when I had hankered after a glass of wine.

But what I had was a beer. That's because, in my mumsy new life, by the time you've got baby to bed, you're knackered and know you won't be far behind, so one drink is going to be it - and it seemed a waste to open a whole bottle of wine. 

Which is what brought me to the cask wine section in the supermarket today. We thought maybe this would be a way to have the odd glass of wine here and there.

Cask wine doesn't really have a good name, does it? I can see why. The selection was pretty dire. (Side note: I guess maybe some graphic designers actually get a brief that says "Make it look cheap"?)  I bought the classiest-looking one but I still felt a bit like I should be wearing a dirty old raincoat and sloping off to a bus stop to drink it.

But it got me to thinking - apart from making your own, it's probably the greenest way to drink wine. Glass is pretty heavy to transport around. A 2L cask has the equivalent of three glass bottles of wine, with far less packaging. The cask I bought says it "has a much lower carbon footprint than the equivalent wine in glass". And then the one-way valve dispenser stops the wine from going off and being wasted after you've opened it.

If the wine inside is good it would be all good, right?

What do you reckon? Could cask wine ever be rehabilitated as an eco-friendly option or is that just a step too far?

The baby and the bathwater

Here's my one little water efficiency strategy: Every night baby has a bath as part of his bedtime routine. I save the water and bucket it onto the garden the next day. At this stage we still just wash him with water, so there's no suds to worry about - the water is perfect for putting straight on the garden.

That probably saves 20L from going down the drain every day. 

(And before anyone starts thinking I'm a terrible mother - he can't even roll over yet, so it's not a hazard to leave the baby bath full of water - not yet. I guess once he's mobile I'll need to put the water on the garden right away.)

Hurrah for ex-girlfriends

It's traditional to dislike your man's ex-girlfriends on principle, but I'm actually delighted about one of my partner's exes - because he once lived with a girl who was vegetarian.

Considering that his favourite meals are nachos, pizza and steak with mushrooms, I was really surprised when I served up a vegetarian dish one day and his reaction was "Dhal - yum!" Thanks to that nameless girl in London, he likes vegetarian food.

That's made it really easy to keep up one "green" practice - meat-free meals. We generally have vegetarian about once a week, but even that makes a difference for the environment.

To celebrate, here's my favourite lifesaving 10-minute vegetarian recipe for when you're exhausted, in a hurry, you haven't made it to the shops and there's practically nothing in the house etc:

Tuoni e lampi (Thunder and Lightning)

2 servings small pasta (I use penne)
about 1 cup or 1 can cooked chickpeas (rinsed and drained if you're using a can)
1 clove garlic 
a good glug of olive oil
parsley (optional)
parmesan (optional)

Cook the pasta until just done. In the last few minutes, add the cooked chickpeas to the saucepan to reheat. Drain well and mix with a finely chopped clove of garlic and a good glug of olive oil. You can sprinkle with chopped parsley and/or grated parmesan if you have the wherewithal.  

Homegrown organic

Buying organic has been one of the things that I've given up in my new life. My new suburban mum version? Grow your own!

The biggest advantage of moving to the suburbs is that I finally have my own garden. Hurrah!

Thanks to my partner's fab mum, I was able to get a bit of garden going while heavily pregnant and then in the early days of having a baby. It's a bit weedy and chaotic, but I've kept it going by pulling out a few weeds here and splashing a bit of water around there in between feeds and nappy changes.

There's a bunch of herbs outside the back door:

A patch of Jerusalem artichokes that are looking good:

There's spring broccoli - we've had some already, and now the side shoots are regrowing:

And there's organic cherry tomatoes a-coming:

Now that I'm home with the baby, it's perfect having a hobby right here. I love that I can just step out into the garden for a few minutes while the baby's napping. And I love that I can still manage to get some organic food.

I'm already plotting what to put in for the winter season.

Modern cloth nappies

In my newly impoverished suburban mum existence, the obvious "green" things to do are the ones that also save you money - and luckily that's most "green" stuff, right?

First up, cloth nappies.(Yeah, this is strictly for the parents out there, so I'll stick everything in one giant post.)

To me, whether it's better to use cloth or disposable nappies depends on whether you can dry them on the washing line.

Environmental impact
Zerowaste NZ has a good roundup of the information about environmental impact of cloth vs. disposable nappies - essentially, cloth is better if you can line dry and use low temperatures to wash.

Costs and savings
If you compare the total costs of disposables and cloth nappies, the cloth ones are almost certainly quite a bit cheaper - though of course how much you save depends on exactly what all the costs are. Again, if you have to use a dryer that adds a lot to the cost of cloth. We use disposable nappy liners, which also adds to the cost (many are around 5c each) and the environmental impact, but for me is a good compromise as it makes dealing with the dirty nappies faster and way less icky.*


Laundering
So, is washing cloth nappies as yucky and difficult as it sounds? Not really, actually. Most of the poo gets thrown away on the liner. A few times a day a bit escapes onto the cloth and needs to be rinsed off - a little bit yuck but not too bad. All the dirty ones go into a dry pail (no soaking needed these days) and I just wash them in cold water every other day, about half a load each time. (I really didn't believe that this would work - wouldn't it stink etc? But it's fine.) Any stains get bleached out in the sun if you put them on the line, so there's no need to Napisan. So, it's mostly just a question of hanging out 20-odd items every couple of days. I can do that. Plus there is something wonderfully satisfying about a nice pile of freshly washed nappies all ready to go. 

Nappy types
It's hard to get your head around all the different kinds. (I found The Nappy Lady,  The Nappy Network  and the Snazzipants website useful sources. I didn't manage to go myself, but I reckon going to one of The Nappy Lady's workshops would be brilliant, so you could see the various nappies firsthand.)

I bought the newborn size of a few of the most promising-sounding types secondhand on TradeMe, so I could try them out before committing. That was a pretty good approach. It's when you start using them that you quickly notice the pros and cons and develop preferences.

Some are more absorbent but slower to dry. Some are a bit slower or more fiddly to put on - and, yeah, that does make a difference when you're changing nappies ten times a day. But suffice to say that THEY ALL WORK FINE.

My review
My favourites are Snazzipants fitted nappies with a Bummis whisper wrap cover. The velcro makes them as easy to put on as a disposable, and laundry tabs keep the velcro from sticking to other things and getting fluffed over in the wash. Poo-splosions sometimes escape the nappy itself, but the separate cover usually provides good containment and prevents mess getting on baby's clothes. They are nice and absorbent - the one disadvantage is that they are quite slow to dry, sometimes not even drying after a full day in the sun.

BabyFirst two-part nappies are really handy as they dry superfast - within a few hours on the washing line. However, I bought the second size of these and they still don't fit my approx 7.5-8kg baby too well - maybe they'll fit better when he's crawling and changed shape a bit. The dome fasteners are fine, but not as easy to use or adjust the fit as velcro.

Flat or prefold nappies with a Snappi were brilliant for a tiny baby as you can get them to fit snugly - I was able to use these from the first few days. I used them with a waterproof Bummis whisper wrap cover on top. However, now I find them a bit fiddly and harder to keep securely on an active older baby.

The Itti Bitti Tutto one-size-fits-all snap-in-two seemed like a great idea, but I found it unnecessarily complicated in practice. It has a bunch of absorbent pads that dome together in different combinations for different levels of absorbency - but who can really predict how much a baby will pee?


In conclusion
We've used disposable nappies exclusively for a few days one or twice (e.g., on holiday) and, man, does it create a crazy amount of waste, as well as chewing through the money. I really hate it and much prefer my cloth nappies.  

* I've recently discovered rinsing out and reusing the liners if they are just wet. Works fine!