Armchair ethics: A green guide to living

By Alex May

I love my plasma screen TV – do I need a smack?

Those home theatres are enticing, aren’t they? No need to worry about smog, climate change or the parlous state of your compost heap while engrossed in the big screen, comfortable in the knowledge that you’re creating very nice bum dips in your couch while your eyes goggle over the widescreen. But have you checked your power bills since the plasma screen arrived? Those big tellies sure can chew through the electricity. G magazine editor Sara Phillips says one of Fujitsu’s technical officers admitted plasma screens can use four times as much power as regular, bog standard cathode ray tellies. “Apparently if all the plasma screens that have been sold in Britain were turned on at once, that country would need two nuclear power plants just to power them,” Sara says, advising all plasma-screen owners never to leave their guzzling TVs on stand-by. “Turn them off when not using them.” Nick Rowley, who has advised Tony Blair’s government on climate change, says big-screen addicts should buy LCD televisions, which typically use less power and have a longer lifespan. But check the energy efficiency star rating on plasmas before you buy one – power use varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.

I don’t feel like my bathroom is really clean unless I have sloshed bleach or one of those headache-inducing cleaning products all over the room? Do I need an attitude adjustment?

You obviously lost your mind amidst all those chlorine fumes. Smelly old bleach won’t kill all the bugs and nasties in a bathroom. In fact, no cleaning product can kill all bacteria. But do you know what you are doing to yourself inhaling all those chlorine fumes? Why, chlorine was one of the ingredients in mustard gas. Nice. Eco-specifier technical director David Baggs says bleach breaks down into organo-chlorines which ain’t so good on the food chain. He also muttered something about the evaporation of chlorine from household bleach and swimming pools contributing to the hole in the ozone layer. Baggs, who wrote the book The Healthy House, says steam cleaning is the best chemical-free way to sterilise and clean a bathroom. And cheap and boring old white vinegar is just as good at killing most of the nasty bacteria that reside in bathrooms. “Anything highly acid or alkaline will work in the same way bleach does,” Baggs says. And what about those chemical-free cleaning mitts? Nothing wrong with those, provided you have the elbow grease to put into it. So there. Get back into the bathroom with something safer.

I plan on buying my oh-so-enviro girlfriend a big diamond engagement ring. She doesn’t see anything wrong with that, but aren’t diamonds manufactured by big evil mining companies?

Planet Ark says we don’t have to worry too much about cutting sparkly gems out of the ground in earth-scarring open cut mines – they believe diamond mining is one of the least environmentally damaging extraction processes. (Mind you, Planet Ark does have a few concerns about the gold in the diamond ring, which uses arsenic in its cleaning processes. Oh dear.) Not all diamonds are created equal - some are produced by companies that have signed up to The Council of Responsible Jewellery Practices to stamp out nasty little issues such as diamond-trading to fund terrorism. But have you heard of food miles? That’s the concept of minimising the distance food travels from where it is grown to where it is eaten low, thereby emitting fewer greenhouse gases. When it comes to diamonds, they have miles of travel stamped in their little diamond-y passports before they get to the consumer. Australia’s Argyle diamonds, produced by Rio Tinto (a member of The Council of Responsible Jewellery Practices) travel from the Western Australian mine to Europe before being bought by people called diamondteers who turn them into jewellery and then sell them back to Australians. Those little stones must be jetlagged by the time they make it into a store. Vintage diamonds are an ethical alternative to buying new. And doesn’t it sound oh-so-fabulous to be buying “vintage”, even if it is just a fancy word for getting-the-ring-cheap-at-the-pawn-shop?

I like to see my house brimming with cut flowers – am I an environmental rapist?

Oh don’t be such a drama queen. Exploiting nature for our own decorative rewards has been a human pursuit since time began. Flowers keep your body and soul attuned to the beauty of the natural world, thereby tweaking your conscience about leaving lights on and throwing your clothes in the dryer when you really should dry them on the clothesline. But have you thought long and hard about just how many miles those flowers have done to get from the farm to your side table? Flowers that are grown close to where you live are best. Also best if it’s a variety of flower that doesn’t need intense chemical spraying to reach full bloom. Or you could always grow your own flowers in a window box and save guilty thoughts for more useful things like tending a young pansy seedling in a waterwise manner.

I love my puppy dog but someone told me the dog makes my eco-footprint bigger. My feet are large enough already! Do I have to give up my dog to be green?

Fido and his mates may well push your household’s eco footprint higher, but there are ways to off-set this. An eco-footprint is a measure of how environmentally rapacious a household is by calculating all the resources and energy a household uses. Check out www.bestfootforward.com to calculate your own. Because dogs are carnivores, they will push a family’s meat consumption higher. If the Australian Conservation Foundation had its way, they’d like us all to eat less meat to help save the earth. But if giving up your own – and Fido’s – steaks is too difficult, then do something to offset our carbon-gobbling ways. At the risk of sounding like a roman-sandal-wearing greenie, we need to turn off our lights, reduce car useage and stop flying in so many airplanes. Baggs says there is a massive pollution issue surrounding dog waste and urban water quality – so pick up the poo, or you really will be in trouble. Mind you, then there’s the question of whether it is mindful to use a plastic bag for the dog poo or not … hmmm. You can get plastic doggie bags made from cornstarch that are 100% biodegradable. Check out www.neco.com.au.

There’s no way I could think about getting rid of my beer fridge. It’s just too convenient to have a second fridge. That’s not so bad, is it?

It’s not a problem if you don’t mind wasting loads of electricity and emitting unnecessary greenhouse gases just so you can have a cold beer. Baggs admits he has a second fridge, but the bloke does live in Queensland where it gets mighty hot. The trick is to make sure the second fridge is only turned on when needed and isn’t stored in the garage against a hot, west-facing wall. “The problem with second fridges is that they are usually old and inefficient and then placed in a spot where they will consume even more energy,” Baggs says. He owns a fancy Leibherr fridge, which he says is the only one in Australia which has a six-star energy rating and uses an R600 refrigerant, rather than the R134a refrigerant. “If every fridge with R134a was replaced with the R600, it’s the equivalent of taking a typical family car off the road for four months,” he explains. So that will allow you to drive to the bottle shop more often, pick up a slab of cold beer and – voila – no need for a beer fridge.

We recycle, take short showers and scrimp and save to send our kids to a private school on the other side of town. Are we undoing our good work with all that driving for the drop-offs?

Probably. And if you live up to the cliché of driving the kids in a four-wheel drive, then you really do have some carbon-gobbling habits. The Australian Academy of Science says four-wheel drives are the most fuel-thirsty cars on the road with models such as the Ford Escape and Grand Cherokee jeep sucking down more than 12 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres. Check out www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au to find out how sinful the car you drive can be. But, really, what’s wrong with public transport for the kiddies?

Think about the advantages of the local public school – it is usually within walking or cycling distance. And how much money would you save on school fees? You would then have enough cash to buy carbon credits in schemes like Greenfleet, which plant trees to offset your rapacious earth-consuming ways. Or you could switch to green power, which Neco founder Jeremy Davies says would force governments to immediately build more wind and solar power plants, negating any need for nuclear power plants in the future.

Aren’t those green re-usable grocery bags made of stuff that’s just as bad as the plastic bags we are trying to stop using?

Oh details … details! Technically, many of the re-usable bags are made from polypropylene, an oil-based plastic, which is not biodegradable. The Australian Conservation Foundation says the energy that goes into making re-usable bags is the equivalent of creating around 100 plastic bags. The entire argument for the lurid green re-usables is that less one-time-use plastic bags will be manufactured to chug up landfill or blow into the oceans and kill marine life. Even if you only re-use your bags four or five times, you are probably a better environmental citizen than the profligate plastic bag user. (And that’s even if you re-use the plastic bags for rubbish.) Now if only there was a way to remind you to take those bloody re-usables to the supermarket …