EcoRadio

Category: Green economics

  • Is a green economy possible?

    To explore that question it is important to understand exactly what we mean by a sustainable economy. Obviously it has to be something that can go on for ever. By definition it has to be able to sustain itself, so it has to be able to be sustained by the finite resources of the planet on which we live. Unless we are planning to move to the moon or Mars, that is a self-evident fact.

    There are two pillars that underpin any concept of a Green economy. One is zero growth and the other is zero waste.

    Zero Growth is a critical component because nothing can grow continuously forever in a finite world. The definition of a sustainable economy is one that can be sustained for ever, so the boom and bust cycles that characterise the capitalist economy are not sustainable by definition.

    Zero waste is a slightly more subtle concept but the simple truth is that six billion, going onto nine billion people, cannot continue to use up and destroy finite resources, because we will run out. When we take a complex hydrocarbon, cook it and cure it and turn it into an indestructible plastic and bury that plastic in landfill, we have removed that energy from the planets systems for thousands if not millions of years. If billions of us waste 1 kilogram of plastic a year, that is millions of tonnes of hydrocarbons being wasted every year. This is not sustainable.

    How is this different? Let me count the ways

    A sustainable economy based on zero growth and zero waste is fundamentally different to the economy that we are used to. It is important to understand what is different and why that is so important.

    The importance of growth

    Our newspapers are full of the dangers we face because the economy has stopped growing. The headlines talk about the fear of recession and recession is defined as two quarters of negative growth. We are so focused on growth that we dare not even use the term contraction, or shrinking, we call it negative growth.

    We know that our politicians, bankers and captains of industry are obsessed with growth and that growth makes us all rich, but we rarely question the basic assumptions behind this.

    The fundamental reason why growth is important to our society is because it is driven by capital. People with capital make money by lending or investing that capital to other people who can grow it for them.

    The only reason that you can borrow money from a bank to buy a house, is because your total repayments will double their money over a couple of decades. They will get a return on their investment. The only reason that you are prepared to do that is because you expect that the value of your home will be greater than the total amount you have paid for it. You expect a return on your investment. If the price did not rise, you would be better off paying rent. Your cost of living would be much lower.

    The same is true right across society. Industry borrows money to buy equipment to make things which they can sell to make a profit to repay the bank. Investors put money into companies who will grow and provide them a return on their investment.

    If the economy does not grow the entire financial system collapses. Right now the financial system is collapsing and the economy is not growing, so everyone is panicking and governments are doing every thing we can to start the growth again.

    Instead we should be building new institutions that do not depend on growth.

    The bad news is that this is a major project that will be opposed by the entire financial sector, all investors and most major companies. The good news is that there has never been a time when people are more receptive to the notion.

    The nature of waste

    Achieving zero waste seems a relatively easy concept to deal with. All organic systems are cyclic in nature so we should be able to establish system that usefully recycle our waste and restore the used components into something useful. Permaculture and organic farming are examples of closed systems that work exactly like this.

    Once we try to apply that principle across the entire economy, however we encounter a number of quite challenging problems. The first is the second law of thermodynamics. When we eat a plant we are extracting the energy from it, to build the cells of our body and to fuel our activity. What we excrete may contain the same base elements, chemically transformed by our digestive system but the fundamental difference is that we have consumed the energy captured from the plant by the sun.

    To recycle those nutrients we need to feed them to new plants that can capture more sunlight and convert the low energy nutrients into high energy plant material again. The same is true of recycled paper or glass, aluminium or steel. We live on the energy that we extract from the resources we consume. Even if we recycle or re-use all the material that we employ, we can never recapture the energy that we waste in that lifestyle. Fundamentally, a zero waste lifestyle means a significant reduction in our energy consumption to match the available energy that falls on our share of the earth’s surface.

    A separate issue is the toxic nature of much of the waste that we currently produce. The nature of toxins is to destroy life and so toxins have no place in a zero waste future. They must be eliminated completely.

    When we look at it from an economic point of view, the cost of applying these changes to our process makes much of our existing lifestyle impossible. In fact, the underlying nature of civilisation is built on the use of resources from somewhere else.

    Cities appeared when farmers created more food than they needed and could support others not involved in food growing activities. Farmers did not start doing this naturally however. A king in ancient Iraq made them do it at sword point. Farmers along the Tigris Euphrates valleys grew enough food so those early kings could maintain a standing army and the first cities grew around those military bases. Civilisation grew from there.

    The entire project of the last ten millennia has been based on the extraction of resources from somewhere else, for use in the city, with the waste being deposited somewhere else again. It requires two somewhere else’s to maintain civilisation as we know it: One to extract the resources from, the other to send the waste to. The problem is that civilisation now circumnavigates the globe. We have run out of somewhere else’s. The last forests are being destroyed, we consume more water than is available in our water supplies, the marine ecosystems are collapsing under the stress of feeding us and we are choosing whether to use our land to provide fuel or food.

     

    See next page

    To explore that question it is important to understand exactly what we mean by a sustainable economy. Obviously it has to be something that can go on for ever. By definition it has to be able to sustain itself, so it has to be able to be sustained by the finite resources of the planet on which we live. Unless we are planning to move to the moon or Mars, that is a self-evident fact.

    There are two pillars that underpin any concept of a Green economy. One is zero growth and the other is zero waste.

    Zero Growth is a critical component because nothing can grow continuously forever in a finite world. The definition of a sustainable economy is one that can be sustained for ever, so the boom and bust cycles that characterise the capitalist economy are not sustainable by definition.

    Zero waste is a slightly more subtle concept but the simple truth is that six billion, going onto nine billion people, cannot continue to use up and destroy finite resources, because we will run out. When we take a complex hydrocarbon, cook it and cure it and turn it into an indestructible plastic and bury that plastic in landfill, we have removed that energy from the planets systems for thousands if not millions of years. If billions of us waste 1 kilogram of plastic a year, that is millions of tonnes of hydrocarbons being wasted every year. This is not sustainable.

    How is this different? Let me count the ways

    A sustainable economy based on zero growth and zero waste is fundamentally different to the economy that we are used to. It is important to understand what is different and why that is so important.

    The importance of growth

    Our newspapers are full of the dangers we face because the economy has stopped growing. The headlines talk about the fear of recession and recession is defined as two quarters of negative growth. We are so focused on growth that we dare not even use the term contraction, or shrinking, we call it negative growth.

    We know that our politicians, bankers and captains of industry are obsessed with growth and that growth makes us all rich, but we rarely question the basic assumptions behind this.

    The fundamental reason why growth is important to our society is because it is driven by capital. People with capital make money by lending or investing that capital to other people who can grow it for them.

    The only reason that you can borrow money from a bank to buy a house, is because your total repayments will double their money over a couple of decades. They will get a return on their investment. The only reason that you are prepared to do that is because you expect that the value of your home will be greater than the total amount you have paid for it. You expect a return on your investment. If the price did not rise, you would be better off paying rent. Your cost of living would be much lower.

    The same is true right across society. Industry borrows money to buy equipment to make things which they can sell to make a profit to repay the bank. Investors put money into companies who will grow and provide them a return on their investment.

    If the economy does not grow the entire financial system collapses. Right now the financial system is collapsing and the economy is not growing, so everyone is panicking and governments are doing every thing we can to start the growth again.

    Instead we should be building new institutions that do not depend on growth.

    The bad news is that this is a major project that will be opposed by the entire financial sector, all investors and most major companies. The good news is that there has never been a time when people are more receptive to the notion.

    The nature of waste

    Achieving zero waste seems a relatively easy concept to deal with. All organic systems are cyclic in nature so we should be able to establish system that usefully recycle our waste and restore the used components into something useful. Permaculture and organic farming are examples of closed systems that work exactly like this.

    Once we try to apply that principle across the entire economy, however we encounter a number of quite challenging problems. The first is the second law of thermodynamics. When we eat a plant we are extracting the energy from it, to build the cells of our body and to fuel our activity. What we excrete may contain the same base elements, chemically transformed by our digestive system but the fundamental difference is that we have consumed the energy captured from the plant by the sun.

    To recycle those nutrients we need to feed them to new plants that can capture more sunlight and convert the low energy nutrients into high energy plant material again. The same is true of recycled paper or glass, aluminium or steel. We live on the energy that we extract from the resources we consume. Even if we recycle or re-use all the material that we employ, we can never recapture the energy that we waste in that lifestyle. Fundamentally, a zero waste lifestyle means a significant reduction in our energy consumption to match the available energy that falls on our share of the earth’s surface.

    A separate issue is the toxic nature of much of the waste that we currently produce. The nature of toxins is to destroy life and so toxins have no place in a zero waste future. They must be eliminated completely.

    When we look at it from an economic point of view, the cost of applying these changes to our process makes much of our existing lifestyle impossible. In fact, the underlying nature of civilisation is built on the use of resources from somewhere else.

    Cities appeared when farmers created more food than they needed and could support others not involved in food growing activities. Farmers did not start doing this naturally however. A king in ancient Iraq made them do it at sword point. Farmers along the Tigris Euphrates valleys grew enough food so those early kings could maintain a standing army and the first cities grew around those military bases. Civilisation grew from there.

    The entire project of the last ten millennia has been based on the extraction of resources from somewhere else, for use in the city, with the waste being deposited somewhere else again. It requires two somewhere else’s to maintain civilisation as we know it: One to extract the resources from, the other to send the waste to. The problem is that civilisation now circumnavigates the globe. We have run out of somewhere else’s. The last forests are being destroyed, we consume more water than is available in our water supplies, the marine ecosystems are collapsing under the stress of feeding us and we are choosing whether to use our land to provide fuel or food.

  • Is a Green economy possible? -Pt 2

    We cannot embark on a project that attempts to stifle innovation and end change, that is not sustainable either. At a local level, life itself involves the destruction and consumption of some resources so that others may live. A rainforest may appear stable from a satellite, but the view from a particular tree is dynamic and dramatic.

    The Shire of the Hobbits may seem idyllic in its pastoral simplicity but it is not only vulnerable to the marauding evil that stalks the globe, it is dependent on any number of larger systems in which it exists.

    We aim to build an economy, then, that is dynamic and evolving, but which is not harmful or wasteful and assumes a finite set of resources that must be recycled.

    The question then becomes, “Where do we find the solutions that will allow us to build a sustainable economy?”

    There might be here

    I first heard the saying “The future is already here, it is just not evenly distributed,” from Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet, which forms the back bone of many computer networks. He had worked at the Hewlett Packard Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), where the mouse and icon based computer screen that we all use now, was invented. He watched the personal computer and the internet roll out into society with interest, because he and his colleagues had invented it ten years earlier and had learned to use it as it was being created. The rest of society came to terms with it as a complete entity and undertook a completely different journey.

    I like the saying because it reminds me that the gadgets, fashions and cults that will take off and take over tomorrow are already in operation somewhere in the world today. If we want to understand the future, we need to cast our net widely and look at the widest possible range of activities currently taking place to identify those things that will survive and dominate.

    The elements of a sustainable economy, then, are already in position somewhere.

    Amish farmers, for example, have never used fossil fuels, pesticides or fertilisers. Their farms are about half as productive as their neighbours but twice as profitable. They are immune to fluctuations in interest rates, energy prices or the global economy because they are almost self sufficient. There is an example of a sustainable community that has stood the test of time.

    Other intentional communities have been established on different principles. They too have developed many of the elements that will become mainstream as we pass through peak oil, peak water and peak food. Some of them have gone beyond self sufficiency and are dedicated to the important project of building the necessary infrastructure to preserve the knowledge built up over millennia that could disappear if we allow civilisation to collapse untidily.

    These sustainable communities, though, are the obvious places to look. One challenge that they all face is that they deliberately set out to offer an alternative to the attractions of the big city, the cult of greed and laziness. They require a commitment to leave behind the desire for more while doing less that has been perfected by humans but ultimately drives all life and is inbuilt into the law of thermodynamics.

    The future economy may need that commitment built into it, but if we are to develop that without the harsh lessons of repeated Dark Ages then we will need it to come bubbling out of the effervescence of modern youth not from the ponderings of our elders.

    Lessons from the iCult

    One extraordinary development in recent times has been the social, cultural and economic impact of the internet. It has undermined many existing business models and is reshaping human communication in a very fundamental way. One of the key changes has been in the role of publishers, those capital intensive corporations that controlled the manufacture and distribution of films, music, literature and games. Fifteen years ago almost all these publishers dismissed the Internet as a toy that was peripheral to the “real” economy. With the collapse of the dot com bubble in 2000, those corporations claimed the high ground and went on with using the clout of their capital to lobby governments for legislation to protect their interests.

    A decade later, though, and the cracks are opening up. Newspapers collapse, independent bands film-makers and gamesters flourish and the twittersphere and blogsphere challenge the media as the gravitational centre of mass communication.

    The shift from large, centralised, capital-intensive publishers to self forming networks of peer to peer operators characterises both the underpinning nature of the Internet and the future requirements of a sustainable economy.

    Perhaps most significant in this broad movement is the rise of Open Source. The term describes the software free of copyright restrictions, where anyone can contribute to the source code that makes the software work and no-one “owns” the intellectual property that is the software itself. It increasingly applies to other intellectual endeavours, though, where people contribute to libraries of images, written work or research data for the greater good.

    Most significantly, this is not naked altruism performed by charitable individuals working because of an earnest commitment to the greater good, it is a new economic model that pays people’s rent. This is so important it is worth teasing out a little.

    The altruistic drive to share code is classic Darwinian altruism as a means to protect oneself by protecting the community in which one shelters. Accordingly, the Open Source community is dedicated to the philosophical model of the Bazaar as opposed to the Cathedral. That means it can build software that allows its members computers to work properly without being controlled by a corporation that acts in the interests of its shareholders rather than its customers.

    Even that self centred version of altruism does not fully explain the power of the Open Source model as a basis for a new economy. The fact is that most participants in Open Source projects make their living from working with the Open Source software they produce. The community as a whole sells its services to technology consumers and lives from the fees paid for the services they provide.

    The fundamental between this open market of small businesses (the bazaar) as opposed to the corporate publisher (the cathedral) is that no-one owns the core code which drives the whole community. The distributed ownership of the code means that there is no need for capital to drive these projects, so there is no need for growth to maintain them. It is an example of an economy that is unplugged from the financial markets.

    This is largely an accident that has emerged from the peer to peer nature of the Internet. Ironically, that feature of the internet was developed as a military guard against a nuclear attack on a central computer. By distributing the capacity of the network around the edges, the military created a self regulating, self healing system that does not require central control. What is centralised are the regulations that underpin the cooperative nature of the project, the protocols that allow the computers to find each other, talk to each other and ensure that the communications are secure.

    Practice makes perfect

    The evolution of a new economy is not going to come fully formed from the pen of one thinker. It is not going to arrive suddenly at the recognition that the old economy is bankrupt.

    Just as the farmers and small businesses of India have had to march on their parliaments to get regulations to protect them from the ravages of Monsanto and Walmart and are still fighting a public relations battle on behalf of the world’s organic farmers, so every stand against vested interests will be tough.

    Just as the Open Source movement has taken twenty years to get to a point where business owners are prepared to put their mission critical applications onto Open Source software, so will this change come about gradually. And just has Microsoft has actively moved to undermine Open Source by planting code into Windows that inserts flaws into Open Source applications so will those vested interests move to shore up the existing economy.

    The good news is that the power of the economy ultimately lies with the consumer. Without customers there are no retailers. Without retailers there are no wholesalers, manufacturers, steel manufacturers, miners, ports or fossil fuel companies.

    We can effect this change in our own lives immediately by unplugging from the economy that is destroying us. We can grow food in our communities, we can car pool, buy a bike, walk more, stay at home. We can share washing machines, lawnmowers and entertainment devices. We can switch off the television and reclaim our leisure time. We can avoid packaged food by baking our own, growing what we can and by sharing generously.

    Sharing generously is the key to the entire project. As every community attempt to institute bartering systems knows, in the end, all you do is recreate money. As you do, governments get interested and all the overheads associated with accounting re-emerge.

    One of the key lessons to learn from the Open Source community is that by giving freely of your time you build a community that is unassailable because it has nothing to lose. One of the key lessons to learn from ecommerce generally is that, in the end, we are only worth the value we add.

    As you disconnect from the debt-fuelled, energy-intensive lifestyle that global capital and its enslaved governments demand you live, you will find that you have more time to give and less need for the money that drove you to work every day. You will begin to create the sustainable economy straight away without having to lobby, or vote for, a single politician.

    Enjoy.

  • The Impact of bottled water

    In 2004 the people of the world consume 26 billion litres of water in 28 billion drink bottles. That consumes 17 million barrels of oil and of 2.5 billion litres of water, producing 2.5million tonnes of carbon dioxide just to make the bottles. Water bottlers waste up to on third of the water they consume. Consumers spent 100 billion dollars on bottled water.

    The total volume of packaged drinks was a staggering 490billion litres. Making bottled drinks consumes about 3.5 litres of water per litre of drink. The bottles for all these packaged drinks consume around 350million barrels of oil and 50 billion litres of water to make and produce more than 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

    Just in case you thought this was somebody else’s problem, each year australians throw away about 100,000 tonnes of drink bottles. That is 50 kilograms of plastic for every human being in Australia. The water used in the manufacturing of those bottles is almost 2 gigalitres, enough to save the Murray Darling. That also represents 2 million barrels of oil.

    You can check these statistics under Saving the planet or download Rosy’s power point here.

     

  • Recycling is just rubbish

    Recycling is just rubbish

    This is the reprint of an article from 2007. Statistics have not been updated and refer to 2007. Shockingly, most of these numbers are worse today than they were 11 years ago.

    The business of waste

    Our major metropolitan areas are running short of landfill and it is being transported increasing distances. Sydney ships around 400,000 tonnes of waste to Woodlawn, near Canberra, every year. Domestic waste makes up around 30 per cent of the total waste produced  with more than 40 percent of that waste goes to land fill. The vast majority of domestic waste is still dumped.

    Recycling of paper, plastic and metals not only reduces the cost of burying that waste in landfill it generates revenue. The separation of biomass from the waste stream to generate energy, via methane, and fertiliser, via compost, also produces revenue at the same time as reducing landfill.

    Capturing methane from landfills reduces greenhouse gases as well. Currently Australian landfill sites produce around ten million tonnes of methane each year, of which two tonnes are curently captured and used to generate electricity. This is a tenfold increase over the previous decade.

    Recycling of domestic waste is in its infancy but is well established in the construction sector. Building and demolition generates one third of Australia’s waste, but recycles steel, concrete and timber in significant quantities. Timber is mostly recovered and reused in renovations, concrete is crushed and used as aggregate in subsequent construction while steel is melted down and reincorporated into new steel products.

    Recycled steel consumes 40 per cent less energy than making steel from raw materials, concrete recycling saves no energy (but involves less quarrying), timber is generally re-used rather than recycled.

    In short, recycling is a significant, and growing, sector of the waste business. The waste business loves recycling because there is money in it.

    Is recycling for real?

    In Stupid White Men, Michael Moore writes,

    I think recycling is like going to church — you show up once a week, it makes you feel good, and you’ve done your duty. Then you can get back to all the fun of sinning!

    He argues that most recycling doesn’t actually happen: The waste companies simply dump the stuff in landfill and pocket the extra money they get paid for picking up two bins instead of one.

    I have personally encountered recycling trucks at the waste transfer depot, quietly dumping paper, cans and PET bottles in with the old sofas, food scraps and building rubble headed for landfill. That was a decade ago, and one example is no proof of widespread abuse. However, Moore cites investigations carried out in Washington DC, that lead him to conclude that the practice is widespread.

    Whatever transgressions might lead us to think that not all waste in our recycling bin gets recycled the overwhelming trend is toward greater use of recycling facilities as a more cost effective way of processing waste. The problem is that we are asking the wrong question. The question is not, ‘How can we better manage our waste?’, but ‘How can we waste less?’

    53 million tyres are thrown out in Australia every year
    53 million tyres are thrown out in Australia every year

    Waste in context

    The danger to our grandchildren from polluted air, water and overburdened landfill is negligible compared to the danger that they will not have enough energy, food and water to enjoy any kind of lifestyle we might wish for them.

    In 1798 Thomas Robert “Pop” Malthus famously predicted that the world would run out of food by 1850.

    He predicted terrible wars, followed by “epidemics, pestilence and plague … [while] gigantic, inevitable famine stalks in the rear.” His simple analysis – that food production increases arithmetically, while unchecked population growth increases exponentially – failed to account for the wonders of the industrial revolution.

    His basic premise was revived early in the twentieth century when, despite the carnage of two world wars, population figures were clearly on an exponential curve while food production was not. The “Green Revolution” of the 1950s saw a further increase in food production thanks to the wonder of fertilisers, pesticides and preservatives all made from fossil fuel. Malthusian gloom was discredited once more.

    Now, we see a third major revival of the concept on a global scale.

    In the green corner we have peak oilers, climate warriors and defenders of the environment. They point out that the world’s fisheries are in crisis, one quarter of the world’s population live in water catchments that cannot supply their demands, we have used half the available petroleum reserves in 150 years and will use the other half in less than forty, carbon dioxide levels are an order of magnitude higher than geologically normal, the world’s forests are disappearing before our eyes and we do not have sufficient arable land to feed the projected population in 2020 even if we manage to sustain current levels of production.

    In the blue corner, the titans of capital point to technological solutions, clean coal, nuclear energy and algae as the miracles that will sustain us. Who needs forest, farms and fish when we can power economic growth using microscopic organisms and subatomic particles? Human history has proved our resilience as a species. We may well evolve a synthetic ecology and maintain our virtual lifestyle. It seems unlikely that we will solve world poverty on the way. Nor will we achieve consensus that this is the future we want to leave our descendants.

    Looked at in terms of this debate, waste becomes a symptom rather than a cause. The waste mountain we produce each year is simply the difference between the resources we consume, and the resources we actually use to survive. Of course, the waste mountain itself is only one part of the resources we squander, we also pump our sewerage out to sea, our unused nutrients into our rivers, and our exhaust fumes into the atmosphere.

    However undesirable the nature of civilisation’s residue, the bigger problem is the squandering of irreplaceable resources. We pump oil from the ground, convert it into plastic, use it once and then throw it away. That oil took millions of years to create and its energy – captured from the sun by prehistoric plants – will never be available again. Intercepting the waste stream to capture that plastic, then using more energy and toxic chemicals to turn that plastic into another bag, a plastic garden stake or a poly-fleece sweater which in turn gets thrown out or recycled again, may be slightly less wasteful than burying it, but it is still a significant waste of finite resources.

    The only logical solution is to reduce our consumption. Unless we do, we face a future of increasing conflict as the world’s wealthy take more resources from the poor. The looming increase in grain prices to satisfy the demand for grain based ethanol fuels is a very real example that will make news headlines in mid-2008.

    Waste management policy-makers talk about the four Rs: Reduce; re-use; recycle and remove. The first two of these go directly to conserving resources, but have almost nothing to do with waste management.

    Reducing waste involves consumption patterns and is generally considered outside the scope of government influence. Resource taxes are considered from time to time, and howled down by industry concerned about the impact on profits. Incidentally, carbon trading is a form of resource tax now being demanded by industry, but only because it has become an integral part of the global economy.

    Re-use of goods that would otherwise become waste is also outside the scope of the waste management industry. Trading of second-hand goods is the simplest form of re-use, but for effective resource management re-use has to be designed into a product before manufacture. An electric appliance made from plastic that is moulded together cannot be taken apart and repaired, or refitted for another purpose. A building that is constructed as cheaply as possible to meet the minimum building regulations becomes nothing but scrap, once the integral structure begins to weaken.

    To reduce the amount of resources we waste, we have to manage our consumption rather than our rubbish.

    You, the consumer

    The only person that can reverse these dynamics, is you. In fact, the consumer is the most powerful person in the economic food chain. After all, we are the ones who buy the products that pay for everything else.

    It is challenging to think that little old you and me can influence the patterns of  waste production and resource consumption as we go about our daily lives. After all, our homes only produce about one quarter of the waste that trundles off to landfill every year, we use about one fifth of the water consumed across the country, one quarter of the energy and one sixth of the transport fuel. How on earth, you may ask, can we affect the other much larger chunk of society.

    The fact is that although we only directly consume a small amount of the resources used by the society we live in, indirectly we are reponsible for one hundred percent. It is our insurance premiums, superannuation payments, bank interest, entertainment budget and the profits generated from every purchase we make, that keeps the wheels of industry turning. If we start to be careful exactly who we give our money to, we can make a real difference to the world, fast.

    The first step in the right direction is to use eco-friendly alternatives where possible. These include recycled (post consumer waste, or PCW) paper, driving a Prius (if you can afford one) and buying goods made from natural materials like Zelfo rather than plastic and aluminium. Buying products that minimise the harm you do to the environment is a significant step you can take as a consumer. On its own though, this is as much a “feel good” approach as anything else. What is required is a framework that really gives some meaning to those purchasing decisions.

    You can salvage the warm inner glow you once got from recycling by tackling the first two of those four Rs, reducing and reusing. You can achieve all that is needed with your wallet and a little ingenuity. Along the way, you can replace the thrill of acquisition with the power of community. You can enjoy life more, by taking less. All it requires is a simple adjustment of values.

    There are three ways to do this.

    1.    Live more simply, that is actually have less stuff.

    2.    Buy things that last, that is keep things for longer so we do not throw stuff away.

    3.    Buy things that are made so that once they have served their initial purpose the components from which they are made can be re-used with minimal reprocessing.

    By changing your lifestyle in accordance with earth friendly values, you can make an even greater difference. Consider the following four steps.

    Shop locally

    Become an active participant in your local community. Walk to the shops, buy goods made in your area. You will reduce the transport involved in shipping goods around the world and reverse globalisation by demanding goods made locally. Take holidays locally, socialise with the people in your neighbourhood. This builds a decentralised independent economy in which you are an active player. The best news is you become a part of a community and it feels good.

    Do it yourself

    Whether it is preparing your own food, repairing things that wear out, or picking up items that other people don’t need any more, you can significantly reduce the resources you consume. Yes, you need skills to do these things but acquiring those skills is satisfying, in a way that sitting down in front of the television can only emulate. Once you start looking at the items you own with DIY eyes, you’ll soon recognise that quality is cheaper in the long run. Well-made goods last longer and can be easily repaired when they begin to wear.

    Generate value

    Grow your own food, make things that other people want, offer your services to your friends, family and the community. The switch from consumer to supplier puts you in a completely different relationship with the community in which you live. You are rewarded by the payment and respect you receive. Instead of being envied because you have the largest TV screen, the most attractive swimming pool or most expensive car, you are loved because of what you do.

    Share generously

    In a world based on consumption, sharing is foolish. If you are always seeking more, the last thing you want to do is give things away. If you value happiness and community over wealth and acquisition, the situation is reversed. Sharing your time, resources, and the goods you create connects you with other people, makes them happy and in turn makes you happy.

    Reality check

    Agriculture uses 80 per cent of the water collected in Australia, industry and transport uses over 80 per cent of the energy generated. Less than one third of the waste generated in Australia comes from our homes. This article detailes how your consumption patterns can make a difference.

    Someone has to buy the goods that industry create. Someone has to pay for the buildings that get knocked down and rebuilt. Someone has to eat the rice or wear the cotton that consumes the water taken from our rivers.

    Your choices as a consumer drive the economy that consumes the resources that destroy the ecosystems that will sustain your grandchildren. Refuse to live in a cheap building that is only built to last for fifty years, refuse to buy water and energy intensive products, refuse to drive to work in peak hour traffic and park in a concrete parking lot. Value everything you do by the impact it has on the environment and live accordingly.

    Not only that, the values of acquisition and consumerism drive economic growth, by learning to live well without consuming more we are turning the economic model on its head.

    An Egyptian friend of mine used to say, “The best revenge is to live well.” I’m not sure who he was avenging, but I am avenging the destruction of the planet. It sure feels better than filling up the recycling bin every fortnight.

    Giovanni Ebono is host of The Generator on Bay FM, community radio station of the year, and director of the Ebono Institute www.ebono.org

  • Australia-US Free Trade Agreement and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)

    Talk given by Peter Sainsbury, President, Public Health Association of Australia, at the launch of ‘Trading Australia Away’ (AFTINET, May 2003) at NSW Parliament House, 19 May 2003


    How many things can you think of that are Australian, are good for patients, good for doctors, good for taxpayers, good for government, and are widely recognised as the best in the world? Well, the PBS is one. It ensures that everyone in Australia has access to essential medications when they are sick.

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