So, we draw near to the end of week one of my No Impact Challenge, what are my thoughts?
I talked about three categories, so let’s look at each in turn:
Consumption & Waste
I’ve tried very hard over the last week to only buy things that don’t have any packaging. I did a big grocery shop on Tuesday from Wild Organic Foods, which is just a short walk away from me. I took my own bags, and most of what I bought had no packaging, except for the meat (patties in vacuum wrapped plastic), the plums which came in a polystyrene tray with cling wrap over it, and the salad in a small plastic bag. Everything else – carrots, beans, bananas, marrows, bread, spinach, etc went straight into my bags.
The other things that have stumped me a little have been wine (which I bought to take to a friends engagement party), those little Lindt chocolates you get from Vida (love them) and buying pills from the pharmacy. This challenge of buying non-packaged goods will continue into the next couple of weeks, as I start to run out of things in the house and need to replace them. I’ll keep scouring Cape Town for stores where you can buy things without the packaging.
I tweet via instagram every time I buy something these days, especially focussing on any packaging that comes along with the purchase – if you want to follow the challenge follow my tweets here.
The one thing I haven’t started looking at yet is to consider the environmental impact of the production process that goes into any product or item of food that I buy. It’s something that I’ve spoken to a few people about and my intention is to look at this in phase 2 of the challenge – in a month or so.
Transport
The transport issue has been a tricky one. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about whether I can cope without my car. I definitely want to get a bicycle or an electric bicycle or a scooter. However, can I get by without using my car at all? And if I take it even further, can I get by without my car and without using public transport? (this is what Colin Beavan attempts, although he does make some exceptions for work-related travel).
The real difficulties for me are around (1) wanting go surfing, (2) getting around at night / in bad weather, (3) getting to work-related appointments in different parts of the city. If I buy a new 150cc Vespa, which has a fuel efficiency of 2,7l/100km, I can get to most work-related appointments, although I’m a little concerned about bad weather (this is Cape Town after all!) and riding at night. I’m also not sure I can manage a surf board on the Vespa, but (1) I could leave my long board at Muizenberg, and (2) I could put a bracket on the Vespa that holds the shortboard.
The other option I looked at was the new VW Polo Bluemotion 1.2TDi. According to the Car Magazine review, it’s the most fuel efficient car on the South African market, achieving something around 4l/100km if you drive it carefully. However, at R180k it’s a little beyond my budget at the moment.
My thinking at the moment is to sell my current car and get the Vespa, as well as an electric bicycle. I’d then like to set some rules for myself about when I use the bike and when I use the scooter. Also, I’d like to power the electric bike off a solar panel on the roof of the house, so that’s it’s genuinely a 100% clean way to get around.
Electricity
I’ve done an audit of all of the electrical lights and appliances in my home / office, which you can take a look at here. I’ve also replaced the few incandescent bulbs that were in the house with energy -saving bulbs, I’ve put in a solar geyser (and now I keep the backup element in the geyser permanently switched off so that my hot water is 100% solar), and I’ve also installed a very basic TREC energy monitor so that I can see in real-time how much electricity I’m using.
The monitor is available from the Powertime Store, or from Yes Solar. It’s a really nifty little device, and it’s certainly had the effect of making me far more aware of how much electricity I’m using at any given time, and of the impact of different appliances in the house.
The next step is going to be looking at installing solar PV panels on the roof. I could easily use these to charge the electric bike, but if I wanted to go one step further and use them to power part of my household load, then I need to get an inverter so that I can produce AC power.
So, overall it’s been an interesting first week. It’s definitely not easy to live without making any impact on the environment, but it’s also not impossibly hard to make some quite big changes – the biggest for me so far has been changing the way I shop – trying to push back against the trend towards convenience at any cost, and buy things that don’t come wrapped in plastic. One upside of this has been that my fruit and veg tastes amazing – I had some organic bananas this week that reminded me of how good bananas used to taste when I was kid.
I did have an interesting conversation last night with Lance Greyling about whether it might make more sense to try and achieve a sustainably low ecological footprint, rather than doing a no-impact experiment for a limited amount of time. Both have value – I guess for now I like the experiment because of the way it challenges me to be creative and rethink every aspect of my ecological impact. On the other hand, I don’t want to scare people off making meaningful changes by giving them the impression that it’s an all or nothing deal.
If you got here, thanks for reading this far, and stay with me, it’s only going to get more interesting from here!
Rich
