Why make your own?

I had a brief chat with some kindy mums this morning who had been reading my blog, and they had a few questions to throw at me. I thought if they were interested, then maybe some others would be too, so here is a summary of some of their questions and my answers.

Q. Why make your own laundry detergent, cleaners and toothpaste?

A. The short answer is: there are no petrochemicals in the products I make. The long answer is as follows:

1. Whilst I am not an "alarmist" about petrochemical products, I've done extensive reading about the effects of artificial food additives (including preservatives and colours) on children. A lot of this reading has been anecdotal - there isn't a lot of scientific evidence for the negative effects of additives - but having one of my children that is noticeably affected by several additives myself, I believe that I am doing my kids a favour by limiting their exposure to these additives in their foods. In the same way, whilst I don't panic about the petrochemicals present in the every day products we use in our home (and they are in everything!), it seems sensible to my way of thinking that limiting our exposure to them is prudent. The same child of mine that is sensitive to additives has also suffered from eczema, and I can't help but think that putting harsh petrochemicals up against her skin all day long (in the form of laundry detergent residue or sunscreen, for instance), wouldn't be helping the situation.
2. We have reached, or are about to reach, "Peak Oil", which means that the petrochemical products that are so ubiquitous in our lives at the moment are going to need to be replaced by other products at some stage because cheap oil is going to rapidly become a thing of the past. That won't happen tomorrow, and possibly not even for a couple of decades, but the cynic in me can't help but think that the politics of oil supply is going to affect us long before the actual supply becomes an issue. Look at how petrol prices are affecting us at present! What most people I have talked to think when I've mentioned the concept of "Peak Oil" is that driving cars is going to get expensive. What they don't realise is that petroleum derivatives are used for almost everything: plastics, shampoo, toothpaste, fertilisers and pesticides, car tyres, clothing, the list goes on. So in that light, it seems sensible to me to at least do what *I* can to reduce my family's dependence on oil, even if *my* savings seem pretty insignificant in isolation.

Q. We don't have water restrictions here, so what's the point in saving water when we have plenty to go around?

A. Short answer : good stewardship. Long answer:

I believe we are the most wasteful generation of humans that has ever walked the earth, and that our wastefulness extends to every aspect of our lives. I personally feel that:

1. It's wasteful to expend so much energy and use so many (petro)chemicals to treat our household water to very high standards, and then use it to flush our toilets and water our gardens.
2. It's wasteful to expend energy and chemicals to treat all of the enormous volume of wastewater discharged to our sewerage system. I'm not saying wastewater shouldn't be treated to high environmental standards, but I am saying that one person having a ten minute shower using an inefficient shower head discharges around 150 litres of water, whereas another person having a 4 minute shower with a water-saving shower head discharges about 36 litres of water. Multiply that by the number of people your town or city, and just in showers alone, that is a staggering amount of extra water that requires treatment each day!
3. Just because we have stacks of a particular resource doesn't mean we should use stacks of it. Although it might seem unlikely this week after all the local flooding, it's not at all inconceivable that all this rain we are having might be the last significant rain for months and that we too could be drought-declared sometime in the future.

Q. What were the first things you did to reduce your footprint and why?

A. The first thing I did was to Google "green living tips" and then check out heaps of the websites that came up, especially their top ten tips. Some tips will be easier than others to implement, but for the most part there are some really significant things you can do that don't cost anything, or very little, and that will not only save you money but will help the environment as well. In no particular order the first things we did were:

• Compost our greenwaste and kitchen scraps (actually, we'd been doing this for years) = reduce waste;
• Bought a shower timer and cut down our showers to 4 minutes = save water;
• Installed low flow shower heads = save water;
• Switched to GreenPower = save greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions;
• Turned all appliances off at the wall = save GHG;
• Installed compact fluorescent bulbs where we didn't have them already = save GHG;
• Installed tinting on our western and some northern facing windows = save on cooling (GHG);
• Switched to organic fruit and vegetables = better health, reduced petrochemicals use and pollution;
• Offset our cars' carbon emissions with Greenfleet = save GHG;
• Reduced the amount of pre-packaged and processed food we buy = save resources, save GHG, better health (less additives, sugar, salt); and
• Started eating less meat = save resources (energy and water).

We've obviously gone on to bigger and better things since then to reduce our footprint even further, but these were/ are a great start. I also highly recommend calculating your footprint using one of the links on my links list (right) to begin with too, that will give you a lot of information :-)