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Australia Through Time
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Sydney's Sustainable House
If you watched television during the 70s and 80s, you might remember ‘The Good Life’, a BBC sit-com about a suburban couple who decided to opt out of the system and live self-sufficiently. The series followed Tom and Barbra through a trail of misadventures as they gave up fuel, money, power and a town water supply.
The series, which ended in 1978, re-ran for years and was enormously popular, striking a nerve with many who felt that life was somewhat lacking, or that a feeling of control over the resources we consume was missing.
Michael Mobbs and his wife Heather Armstrong were one such couple. They were particularly concerned with the pollution that city living creates in the surrounding environment. Mobbs had been “trying to change the system” for nearly 20 years. He was an environmental lawyer and had even held a seat on Sydney City Council.
“The more I worked with governments, the less I was able to cope with their lack of will to reverse widespread environmental damage,” said Mobbs. “I got angry and depressed just reading the pollution stories in the daily papers.”
When Mobbs and Armstrong began planning renovations for their 100-year-old terrace house to accommodate their family’s need, they realised there was one small way they could make a difference: they could cut down on the pollutants they consumed and expelled into their surrounding environment.
Mobbs drew up a plan. The couple had a mortgage, so it was important that the house was easy to run with no strange gadgets to repel buyers if they ever needed to sell. They wanted an up-to-date kitchen and all the comforts of modern life, including plenty of hot water and electricity for hair dryers, television sets and washing machines. Mobbs worked from a home office, so a steady power supply was essential.
What they didn’t want was to contribute to air pollution by using electricity made from fossil fuels. They didn’t want to use any of the precious water stored in the Warragamba and Upper Nepean dams that supply Sydney. They didn’t want storm water running off their roof and yard and polluting Sydney Harbour, which is the typical course stormwater in their area follows. And they didn’t want to pollute the Pacific Ocean with wastewater from their bathroom, laundry and kitchen.
They also wanted to use plantation timbers or timbers from regrowth forests, rather than rainforest timbers. They wanted to use building materials produced by pollution-free manufacturing processes, and they wanted to avoid materials that discharged formaldehyde or other toxic chemicals while they were being used in the house.
Through hard work and determination, Mobbs and Armstrong got everything they wanted. The end result, The Sustainable House, was completed in 1996. The process was of course sometimes harrowing and required a steep learning curve. “Perhaps the main tool we used was something intangible,” says Mobbs. “We believed we could do it, and we wanted to, so we did.”
The Sustainable House has a solar panel on the roof that manufactures all the electricity the family needs from sunlight. During the day, unused electricity flows into the main grid. When the sun isn’t shining, the house draws power back from the grid. In six years, the family has never had to pay a power bill, in fact, they are in credit with Energy Australia.
Enclosed gutters collect rainwater from the roof for drinking, cooking and showers. “Even though we live in a polluted area,” says Mobbs, “rainwater is still just about the cleanest water you can get.” Just to be on the safe side, the House has a water filter for drinking water, but so far testing carried out by the University of Technology, Sydney, have shown that the Sustainable House has water that is as clean and sometimes cleaner than Sydney’s main water supply – particularly during the Giardia and Cryptosporidium scares in 1998.
At the end of their back yard a ‘miniature wetland’ absorbs all the storm water that lands on the house and yard and any runoff if the tank overflows. The family planted water reeds and other plants that need large amounts of water. The children have watched tadpoles grow into full-sized frogs there, an unusual experience for kids growing up in the inner city.
Buried in the back yard is a waste-water tank that processes all the biodegradable waste the family generates, including sewage, compost and paper. The waste material runs through a series of filter beds where worms, bugs, and micro-organisms break it down until all that is left is water. The water is further purified by an ultra-violet light, and by then it is clean enough to wash clothes and water the garden.
Each year the Sustainable House:
- leaves 102,000 litres of Sydney’s water supply in the Shoalhaven River and Warragamba Dam
- keeps more than 100,000 litres of sewage out of the Pacific Ocean
- produces more than 100,000 litres of clean water
- recycles several tonnes of newspaper, kitchen scraps and compost
- reduces carbon dioxide pollution from power stations by 8.3 tonnes
- keeps more than 100,000 litres of stormwater out of Sydney Harbour
- produces $1119.30 worth of clean energy a year, or $3.06 a day
- saves 4.3 tonnes of coal from burning
Today, Mobbs is running a sustainable design business. “I believe the best way to effect change is to make sustainable design more cost effective than mainstream design.” he says. He offers sustainable renovation packages through his design company, Michael Mobbs Sustainable Projects. “Or you could build from scratch, which is an even better option. I can now build a two bedroom home with a study for $65,000.”
With figures like that, it’s little wonder that sustainable homes are popping up all over the country.. The Federal Government is offering a rebate of up to $4,000 for residents who install solar energy systems, and some banks such as the Bendigo Bank are offering incentives for ‘green mortgages’.
And sustainable design is not just for the would-be Tom and Barbra’s in private homes – apartment developments and office buildings are also appearing as sustainability starts to make sound business sense.
Sydneysiders can look to the solar-powered suburb of Newington, where the Olympic Village was located. The Athlete’s Village offered conclusive proof that governments and large corporations can achieve dollar-conscious sustainable housing when pushed. Efficiency in recycling building materials for the site was particularly impressive – up to 90 percent of the hard waste (timber, concrete and broken bricks) was recycled within the site – timber offcuts, for example, were turned into mulch for the landscaping instead of going into landfill.
The Athlete’s Village was only Stage 1 in the Newington project. Due for completion in 2004, Newington will house 5,000 residents, making it the largest solar-powered suburb in the world.
In Melbourne, Lorna Pitt and Mike Hill have completed Stage One of the WestWyck project. Now in its third year, the project is taking place within the building and grounds of the former Brunswick West Primary School in inner suburban Melbourne. The development will contain a shared housing cluster, five new townhouses on the grounds and seven warehouse-style apartments created within the original classrooms and corridors of the Victorian-era school buildings.
One of their aims, according to their mission statement is “to create a project that is influential in setting new standards for quality sustainable design and sustainable living.”
The WestWyk project is based on principles of sustainable design and also eco-housing, which encourage interactive communities that aim to live with minimal environmental impact. The onsite vermiculture (worm farm) waste treatment facility will be the first multi-dwelling model of its kind in Australia.
In East Brunswick in Melbourne, the public can visit CERES, the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies. CERES has onsite examples of sustainable technology and eco-housing, including solar passive design, wind generation and vermiculture.
South of Brisbane, development is underway on The Green, a community offering low-cost, sustainable living for seniors. The Green aims to be a close-knit community comprising 70 to 90 sustainable, relocatable homes.
Sustainable design is now so cost effective that business and industry are also taking note. To help them along, the Australian Conservation Foundation has created Australia’s first sustainable office building, 60L, in Lygon Street, Melbourne. New standards for a sustainable building of this site were set during the construction, such as a 60 percent mix of recycled material in the concrete.
“The interest in sustainable design is phenomenal,” says Michael Mobbs. “In the past six years we have had 20,000 tour our house, and people say as they leave ‘I can do this!’”
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“Having completed the project,” says Mobbs, “I lost the anger and feel no desire to compel governments, their authorities or other people to stop their pollution. It is enough to stand under the shower and know the water is not running down the sewer to pollute the Pacific Ocean. The project has liberated me from some very negative emotions which had come to dominate my life.”
More about Sustainable Design
- Visit the Sustainable House in Chippendale, Sydney. www.sustainablehouse.com.au
- Visit the CERES community environment park in Brunswick East, Melbourne. Phone CERES on (03) 93872609.
- The Australian Conservation Foundation have built a sustainable office building for their Melbourne headquarters. Read about the project at www.60lgreenbuilding.com
- Learn more about sustainable design at the Alternative Technology Association’s web site www.ata.org.au They produce a quarterly subscriber newsletter, Renew
- The Ecospecifier, a guide to sourcing environmentally preferable materials.
- Learn more about solar energy at the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society’s web site www.anzses.org.
- Visit the Solar House Day website www.solarhouseday.com
- Learn more about the WestWyck Project www.westwyck.com
Amy is a friend of a friend. She went backpacking, as twenty-somethings will, and fell in love with a boy. They parted, and the longing, yearning and pining was so terrible that eventually she wound up in Israel, living with him while he finished his compulsory conscription. He was, she declared, The One. They made plans to move to Australia and start breeding the moment his service was finished.
Then one day, Amy was bored and decided to liven things up. She asked, with a dangerous glint in her eye: "Darling, do you like pornography?"
Ingenuously, he replied: "Why, yes Darling, I LOVE pornography."
Amy thought oo-kay... and she bit down on her standard tirade against the exploitation and objectification of women.
Instead, she snooped.
She found videos and magazines in a cupboard in the living room. The videos and magazines contained pornography. Animal porn. Bestiality.
She was on the plane home as fast as you can shriek: "You have something wrong with your SOUL, man!"
She was on the plane so fast the magazines flapped around in her slipstream.
And here she was in a Melbourne pub, crying into her beer. She said she was still in love with him, if it wasn't for this one flaw, he was truly Mr Perfect. And they were still in touch, on the phone every second day, and he was appalled, aghast, how could she let this come between them? She KNOWS him. It wasn't like he was off fucking animals, for Godssake. He was merely interested in what people were "into".
As in, he was into animal porn, but from a sociological study perspective.
She asked me, hopelessly, "What would you do if you were me?"
I floundered and went, erm, if I were you, I'd be really anti-porn, wouldn't I? Because you are. So how could I compromise on, like, who I am?
I went away, wondering. If there is something a bit off in one area of a person's life, does it follow that there's something off in other areas of their life? I mean, if you settled down for a life of wedded bliss, would you come home one day and find him in bed with an ALPACA?
In true Gen X style, I did a quick poll of my friends. Where else do you look for moral guidance?
"What she needs to do," said Email Doug, by Email, "Is write up a list of pros and cons on the guy. If the pros outweigh the cons, she stays with him."
"As in, 'Pro – Big Dick. Con – Something Wrong With Soul?'" I emailed back.
"Yes. And Pro – Stupidly Honest.
Jade the Babe declared that one Con can outweigh a whole page of Pros.
"Animal porn is CRUEL," she declared, her voice getting all high and squeaky.
"She still loves him," I said reasonably.
"I wouldn't be able to love JULIO if he were into that stuff,” she said. (JULIO being the Love of Her Life, whose only flaw was a wife and child.) "I wouldn't be able to love YOU anymore if you were into that stuff."
I tried not to look shifty. And said, "Well, I'm not,"
A few days later Email Doug emailed again. "You know, I've just been looking up Animal Porn on the Internet. Maybe it’s not not necessarily a cruelty and power thing, you know? Some people are writing love poetry to their furry friends here."
"GAH!" I said. "You've been looking at ANIMAL PORN!!!!!"
"No, wait, you don't understand," he said. "I was CLEANING the animal porn, in the nude, and…"
Then Ally told us The Gummy Shark Story and turned me around on the whole issue.
Ally was in Lismore in hospital because she’d swallowed a guitar pick (a long story). One night this guy was wheeled past him on a stretcher, and he had a BIG bulge over his hips, like, sticking several feet up in the air, and there was a sheet covering it, whatever it was. Ally asked a nurse what the story was, and she went giggle, shhhh, I'll tell you later.
Seems our friend was walking along the beach in Ballina when he found a dead gummy shark in the shallows.
Obviously, as you would, he decided the Thing To Do was to have sex with it.
Unfortunately, something in a gummy shark's anatomy goes "click, snap, lock" when you try to make sweet love to it.
Result – agonising pain, hospitalisation, and, most importantly, eternal infamy.
Which is probably the main reason we concluded that Amy shouldn't bother getting back together with her boyfriend. With the constant chest-beating and beer-crying, they’d never be able to show their faces together in Australia, ever.
© 2007 Lynda De Lacey