Category Archives: Eco Thrifty Life

compost, Eco Thrifty Baby, environmental education, wanganui

Engaging Children in Recycling & Composting

March 20, 2014 Estwing 2 Comments

Last week I had every intention of writing about Sea Week, Castlecliff Children’s Day, recycling and composting. I even had the photos picked out.

But then I saw a cryptic invitation in the Chronicle about writing poems for St. Patrick’s Day. Then I saw a letter from Bob Walker on the costly and impotent “odour fence” and an article that included a remarkably uninspired statement by a councilor about “growth” and “lifestyle.”

What started as an innocent limerick in the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day rolled into 650 words of critique on what appears to be a pattern of reductionist, ineffective and costly decisions by council.

While I stand by every word, I did not mean offend anyone with undeserved insult – especially not the Chronicle editors. I think they, along with the entire Chronicle team, have guided our paper to a secure place of relevance at a time when many newspapers around the world are reducing circulation, down-sizing, digitizing, and disappearing entirely. Over the last two years, the Chronicle team has built what must be best network of local columnists of any paper in the country.

Long live the Chron

May all celebrate her in song…

Never mind, on to the rubbish…I mean waste management.

Good on Des Warahi for committing Castlecliff Children’s Day to waste minimization. Like SKIP’s Children’s Day a week earlier, we were able to work together to divert a large amount of materials from landfill by making recycling and composting easy for attendees.

Castlecliff’s Children’s Day wrapped up Sea Week, which saw many school children helping clean up our coastline. While it is important to engage children in this type of overt action to help the environment, it’s even more important to make sure that they do not perceive it as a one-off. In other words, tokenism has the potential to do more harm than good if children see “the environment” as something “out there” that they engage with only on certain occasions.

The Enviroschools programme has done a good job throughout New Zealand of making sustainable practices such as recycling, composting and worm farming regular parts of operations for the schools that join. Equally important is that children experience those practices at home.

Waste minimization is a great example of eoc-thifty thinking because it so obviously saves resources and money. For example, it takes our family about two months to fill one bag of rubbish. It may not be that we have any less total ‘waste’ than other families, but that we divert most of it from landfill by recycling and composting.

Much of the ‘waste’ that makes its way onto our property comes home with Verti and me from our walks along the beach. If there is anything I’ve learned as a new parent it is that my 18 month old daughter loves imitating and helping. From this perspective, I can’t think of many things more valuable than walking with her along the seashore collecting discarded cans and bottles, bits of plastic, and organic matter for our compost.

Plus, I get to check out the waves so I can plan for a surf after mum gets home.

Sidebar: TPPA Alert!

We face many challenges ahead, but perhaps the most immediate one is the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) being negotiated in secret at the behest of transnational corporations whose one and only mandate is to return maximum profits to share holders. The likelihood of the TPPA being good for people or the planet is about that of the All Blacks falling to Japan in a test match. Please attend the rally against New Zealand signing onto the TPPA Saturday 29^th March at 1 pm. Meet at the Silver Ball sculpture at the River Market and walk to Majestic Square.

Eco Thrifty Life, growing food, organic, tomatoes, wanganui

Health Benefits of Heirloom Tomatoes

March 17, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

A friend of ours who lives in Whanganui is active in researching the health benefits of tomatoes and apples. I’ll write about apples in a few weeks, but here is a blurb about their tomato research:

This research is looking to find the best open-pollinated tomato varieties in the world for human health, particularly those highest in lycopene for cancer prevention.
The research is also seeking to determine whether hybrid tomato varieties (and vegetables in general) are nutritionally deficient in comparison with traditional open-pollinated varieties.

Here is a bit about their findings:

Discovery of the Real Tomato (12 April 2013)

We are delighted to announce a break-through in our understanding about the superior health benefits of specific tomato varieties.

Two types of lycopene can be found in tomato. All-trans-lycopene is commonly found in red (and other colour) tomatoes; and tetra-cis-lycopene (also known as prolycopene) is found in some orange heirloom tomatoes.

Reductionist Thinking Does Not Serve Us

March 14, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

Editor’s Note: This is another of my weekly columns in our newspaper, the Wanganui Chronicle. I refers to a wastewater treatment plant that we’ve had to build (and pay for) twice because the first one failed after less than seven years. Council’s short-term ‘fix’ for the smells wafting over our windy, coastal city was to install a million dollar ‘odour fence’ spritzing ‘tutti frutti’ deodorizer into the air. Seriously…

Three cheers for the Chronicle editors

I prefer them to letters page predators

But sometimes their headlines

While rushing toward deadlines

Can leave me feeling discredited

My point is that eco-design thinking, as described in this column, is not about “going green” (headline 22-02-14) or being “eco-warriors” (headline 01-03-14). It is about recognizing and maximizing beneficial relationships within systems to develop strategies that are good for people, good for the planet, and save money.

This type of holistic, win-win-win design thinking helps our family save hundreds of dollars on our power and food bills every month. It is opposite to the lose-lose-lose situation Wanganui District Council has saddled us with regarding the wastewater treatment plant: bad for people, bad for the planet, and expensive.

On top of the original poor design and/or management, the finger-pointing and excuse-making, council has added insult to injury by piling on more debt by running a useless odour fence, which according to my conservative calculations will cost every household in Whanganui over $60.

Thanks to Cr Vinsen and Bob Walker for questioning this grossly reductionist thinking that will likely cost over a million dollars when interest is factored in to the total cost of the fence.

This would be a good time to point out to Whanganui ratepayers and voters that two large U.S. metropolitan areas have recently sought bankruptcy protection because of grossly mismanaged municipal projects. Montgomery County, Alabama, ended up over $4 billion (U.S. $) in debt because of a disastrous sewer project, while Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (the state capitol) faced over $300 million (U.S. $) of debt over a rubbish incinerator.

Sadly, it appears that a long history of reductionist thinking has boxed Whanganui into a debt corner from which council sees only one escape: growth. Put another way, WDC has racked up so much debt that it would be politically unpalatable for the current ratepayers to pay it off. Indeed, my combined WDC and Horizons rates are already on track to double in about nine years. How sustainable is that?

Let me make this perfectly clear: I think we should fight for every job and every dollar to stay in Whanganui, and that we should seek to create meaningful employment for those who seek it. But continued reductionist thinking is unlikely to get us there.

For example, I do not know if I have ever read a more generic, unimaginative statement than one attributed to Cr. Laws in a Chronicle article (26-02-14) regarding council’s “vision of growing the economy and a better lifestyle.”

Someone please name a city in New Zealand or a country on Earth that does not hold these exact goals? Given what appear to be misguided decisions and poor execution by WDC on a slew of issues that have appeared in the press recently, do they really think they can out-compete Palmy, New Plymouth, Hamilton, Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, China, India, Thailand, Vietnam and Australia at the same game?

Signs of the times: Vacant “Enterprise House” on Victoria Ave.

I recently told a well-attended Rotary luncheon that our council suffers from glass-half-empty thinking: constantly claiming that if we could only fill the glass…

Eco-thrifty design thinking, on the other hand, would be considered glass-half full. It seeks out and eliminates waste within systems that serve neither people nor the planet, and also waste money. A good example of this was turning off the lights in front of Central Library during daylight hours. That simple act will save ratepayers thousands of dollars in the years to come, but sadly could not save the thousands already wasted over the decades since the poorly designed system was installed.

As one always willing to give credit where credit is due, I acknowledge council’s decision to dowse the light, as I also acknowledge what appears to be the holistic thinking of senior stormwater engineer, Kritzo Venter, and the foresight of Cr Visser regarding the reductionist practice of continually pushing sand to windward on Castlecliff Beach.

May I suggest to my editors that I would rather see council “in the black” than “going green”, and that I’d prefer an army of “worrier warriors” in this city, because our unsustainable debt load is very scary.

cooking, Eco Thrifty Life, growing food, organic, solar cooking

Fresh, Local, Organic

March 10, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

Here are a pair of meals I submitted to the Green Urban Living Autumn Challenge. A description of each recipe can be found there. Below are pictures in a more-or-less step-by-step ‘visual recipe’ for each. Enjoy.

The first meal comes almost entirely from our property. (All except the fresh, local cream.) Vegetarian Chili, Fresh raspberries and peaches in cream.

The second meal is more local and less directly from our land. Snapper and spuds in cream sauce, sauteed broccoli and corgette, and stewed peaches in raw milk.

Peace, Estwing

crafting, wanganui

Modern Art – Antique Tools

March 6, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

Editor’s note: This is another of my weekly columns in the Wanganui Chronicle. Following it, you will find a response I wrote to a letter to the editor from an ardent climate change denier who has made it his mission to attack me personally because of my advocacy of eco-design thinking for our beach. See here, and here, and here, and here.

What an awesome weekend of well-organized and well-attended community events we had last weekend!

Saturday was all about Castlecliff, and the driftwood/sand sculpture contest at the beach. Ellen Waugh and Progress Castlecliff pulled off what appears to be the eco-thrifty event of the summer. With a little bit of prize money kindly donated by Mars, Jamie Waugh, and Castlecliff Four Square, and a miniscule entry fee, Ellen and P.C. were able to draw more people to the beach than I have ever seen.

The rest of the ingredients for a fabulous community day were free, abundant and non-toxic: driftwood, sand, shells, pumice, flax, sunshine, and heaps of human effort, imagination and enthusiasm.

I spent much of Saturday applying my head, heart and hands to an age-old craft that I acquired on my New England farm a decade ago: hand joinery. I know some terminology between New England and New Zealand may differ, so let me explain exactly what I mean in five words: bit, brace, chisel, mallet, saw.

Hand joinery was traditionally applied to cutting mortises and tenons into massive, squared timbers to build post and beam structures in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. This was a time when steel hardware was expensive, so wooden pegs were used to hold the building frames together. (Think of an Amish barn-raising if you can, and you’ll get the picture.)

Because my post and beam farmhouse was built in 1782, and because I was young and foolish when I bought it in 2000, I decided to use a book to teach myself hand joinery and then to build a barn without power tools. To make a long story short, the job started by felling pines with an axe, hewing them by hand, and then cutting the mortises and tenons before having my own barn raising party with about 40 friends.

Now that I am old and foolish, and the rules of the sculpture contest allowed for hand tools, I dusted off my bits and chisels and headed for the beach. The first thing I learned was that New Zealand native timbers are much harder than New England pine. The next thing I learned is that art and hand joinery should never be rushed.

Although I spent eight hours working on Saturday, the sculpture was barely finished by the four o’clock judging, and never during that time did I experience the focused but relaxed joy of ‘joining’ that I recall while building my barn.

To make a short story even shorter, with the help of Dani, Verti, Maddy and Te Rina, our creation – Surf’s Up! – impressed everyone except the judges. C’est la vie.

On Sunday morning, I managed to drag my limp and lifeless shoulders from bed, and load the car with bins, signs and my family to make the trip to Springvale Stadium for Children’s Day.

Good on Lynette Archer and Liza Iliffe, SKIP Co-ordinators, for committing again to waste minimization at the event. With their commitment and my 25 years of experience in waste minimization education/management, we were able to organize our strategy through five text messages, one of which was redundant!

By maximizing good design and minimizing physical effort, we were able to divert over 80% of ‘waste’ from landfill – an accomplishment rarely equaled anywhere in New Zealand. Once again, win-win-win eco-design thinking succeeds at being good for people, good for the planet, and saving money.

I strongly believe that as adults it is our highest obligation to set good examples for children to follow. If we do not teach them that recycling and composting are important enough that we ‘do’ them at community events, then what we are teaching them is rubbish.

Peace, Estwing

Response to Letter to the Editor:

Please note I wrote the accompanying column on Monday morning with no comments about council or the man who identified himself as E. Parker that verbally abused me while I participated in the driftwood sculpture event on Saturday.

But on Wednesday, E.Parker, who has previously called me a hypocrite because of my eco-design suggestions for the beach, had written a letter to the Chronicle claiming some further nonsense about me. What he did not include in the letter was a series of bizarre and clearly untrue comments and accusations he made during his tirade.

I understand that we may disagree on how the beach should be managed, but I do not understand why E. Parker has made it a personal issue. May I suggest that I like Castlecliff as much as E.Parker, a fact supported by the hundreds of hours I have spent working with all four Castlecliff primary schools, not to mention the thousands of hours of volunteer work my wife and I have done in the community. Can we agree that we both like Castlecliff while having somewhat different visions for its future?

Eco Thrifty Renovation, environmental education, interns, transformative learning, wanganui

Everybody Loves Us…Almost

February 28, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

Editor’s Note: This is one of my weekly columns for our city’s newspaper, the Wanganui Chronicle. I use it regularly to help facilitate transformation in our city, and to point out some of the wasteful and unsustainable practices of our council.

The last two columns told stories about our first interns, John and Amy, and how they helped us transform an abandoned villa and section full of rubbish and weeds into a little paradise of sustainability. Along the way, the process of working with us provided vital steppingstones for each of their own transformations to more sustainable worldviews.

Transformative learning, as I pointed, is a learning theory often applied to adults that seeks to explain changes of perspective that differ drastically from those held previously.

As I have pointed out in this column with regards to Castlecliff Beach, the potential for change can be scary, and so many people resist it. Transformative learning theory stipulates that in order to undergo transformation, learners must experience a “disorienting dilemma” or “cognitive crisis.”

In a nutshell, either of these conditions present the learner with the perception of mixed messages about the world and their place in it. For example, one message might say, “Buy! Buy! Buy!” while another message says, “Western consumer lifestyles are harming the planet.” Then she or he may choose to seek out learning experiences that help change their perspectives and lifestyles accordingly.

The mixed messages that most of us observe and some of us internalize are also sometimes called “cognitive dissonance.” For example, one can smoke cigarettes while believing it to be unhealthy. Psychologists suggest that those who experience such inconsistency (dissonance) are likely to be psychologically distressed.

Well people, I’m here to say I’m psychologically distressed. No, I don’t smoke. Nor am I living a consumer lifestyle. Here is the nature of my distress.

During any week, half dozen strangers will stop me on the street and say something like, “I read your column. Keep up the good work.” Or something like, “What you’re doing is so important for Whanganui. Don’t stop.”

Additionally, our work has been praised by leading permaculturists across the country and around the world. Our Eco-Thrifty projects have been featured in national and international magazines. We have been invited to other cities to present our work.

Meanwhile, it appears that certain elements of Wanganui District Council does its best to ignore the work that Dani and Verti and I do to help make our community more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.

Please note, I have been advised not to make blanket statements about “council”, as it is a large and diverse organization. I recognize that many council staff may feel their positions have little or nothing to do with sustainability, and that they are not the ones making what appear to be unsustainable decisions for our city.

On another level, I suppose an argument can be made that it is not the role of council to help people live healthier lives while saving money and protecting the environment. Indeed, a senior staff member indicated such in a letter rejecting funding for a Community Contract with which I was involved.

Our council cuts heritage trees, dumps raw sewage into the ocean, and spends tens of thousands of dollars pushing sand to windward on the beach while other councils around New Zealand support innovative and successful sustainability programmes that help people and the planet. Does this explain the cause of my psychological distress?

Leading up to the elections last year I asked the question in this column if “sustainability” and “environment” were dirty words in Whanganui because almost nobody standing for office used them. Evidence of council decision-making certainly supports the suggestion that they are. But this begs the question, WHY?

Given the amount of good will that comes my way and the number of people that ask me to stand for office, it would appear there is a quiet majority of citizens – including some council employees – who recognize and appreciate the win-win-win thinking that I share in this column.

Silence over the last three years on our work appears to indicate the positions of those recently re-elected politicians, but the good news is that two of the newly elected councilors have indicated an interest in sustainability: one has contacted me via Facebook and one recently attended a local Green Drinks gathering.

Could it be the early signs of transformation for WDC? Time will tell.

Eco Thrifty Life, food forest, garden, growing food, organic

Harvest Season Permaculture Update

February 25, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

We have been blessed with a week of light winds and pure sunshine that has topped off our blackboy peaches, put our tomatoes into overdrive, and all of the other good things of early autumn.

We are actively saving the stones to plant more of these amazing peaches.

Hard to keep up with the tomatoes at this point, and giving away the excess.

But eagerly awaiting our first capsicum.

The tamarillos got pounded by wind three weeks ago, but are recovering now.

These autumn raspberries are fabulous.

While strawberries still going after 3+ months.

First rock melon on the way.

Pumpkins curing before storage.

Monty’s Surprise apples will be ready in another month.

Big, beautiful broccoli flourishing despite white butterflies.

Even a rare chance to harvest seaweed on our coast. It usually does not wash up here.

We were invited to have dinner with an interesting European couple who spend six months each year on their farm nearby. They gave us these gorgeous pears.

And our dear friend Murray brought us these early Tropicana apples for us to enjoy.

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Life, environmental education, our story, permaculture, voluntary simpllicity, wanganui

Eco-Thrifty in the International Press

February 22, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

There seems to be a rising level of concern lately of news stories that put Whanganui in a bad light. Of course we all know that there are many groups and individuals working hard to do just the opposite. Among them are Dani and Nelson Lebo of The ECO School (Castlecliff), whose efforts have earned them praise from a wide range of environmentalists and sustainability advocates both near and far. At present, their work is featured in the current issues of three magazines: one domestic and two international.

Local writer Helen Frances has penned a fabulous article for New Zealand Lifestyle Block that runs a full eight pages, profiling the couple’s unique philosophy and international perspective. Find one in the shops before the end of the month.

Additionally, Nelson has written a piece for Permaculture (UK), on raising an eco-thrifty baby, using many of Dani’s photographs. It’s rare for New Zealand projects to feature in this magazine, so this is a particular accomplishment for a Whanganui-based permaculture property.

And finally, Nelson also contributed to Green Teacher (Canada), describing an environmental education curriculum he developed based on the couple’s renovation in Castlecliff. You can find information on the curriculum at The Little House That Could on Facebook.

Eco Thrifty Renovation, reuse, transformative learning

Transformations: Part II

February 21, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

Last week I marked the three-year anniversary of the arrival of our first two interns, John and Amy. That was an opportunity to share the story of the transformation of what was once a chimney in Gonville into our brick patio in Castlecliff.

It was also a chance to talk about transformative learning, a process by which many adults undergo a profound change in the way they view the world. In order to undergo such a major shift of thinking, learners need a nudge, which can come in the form of a ‘disorienting dilemma’ or a ‘cognitive crisis’.

In other words, something happens that renders unsatisfactory their current way of thinking. An easy example of this is a diabetes diagnosis that may force a change in ones view of diet and exercise. Other examples include the loss of a job or the break-up of a marriage. It should not be hard to recognize that these would alter ones perspective on financial security and relationships.

For many people in the sustainability movement, transformative learning is sparked by a slow but cumulative body of evidence indicating that the current state of the world is unsustainable. Literally, it cannot be sustained. Trends in everything from ecosystem health to energy supplies to extreme weather events to income distribution show that we are headed for volatile times ahead.

As such, the prudent and conservative thing to do is to look for systems on our planet that are more sustainable. For example, a forest ecosystem experiences a dynamic balance of plant and animal populations as well as materials recycling.

Observing such systems has led to the development of eco-design strategies such as permaculture. As one would expect, many adults experiencing a ‘cognitive crisis’ about the damage that Western consumer culture is inflicting on the planet and many of its people turn to permaculture as an alternative worldview.

Because I knew John-the-intern before he came to us three years ago, I expected that he was already well on his way to developing an alternative worldview. But Amy came to us more or less as a stranger. When she left many months later, not only was she a friend, but also a young woman on a mission.

For Amy, it all started when she picked up a hammer and built us a fence. This was an empowering experience for a number of reasons. First, and most importantly, she chose the project herself from a long list of options. Second, I set her up for success by providing enough structure that the project could be accomplished with her limited building experience at the time. Third, it looks awesome!

In the same way that John transformed a chimney into a patio, Amy transformed our former deck into a beautiful and functional fence. Also like John, her experience served as a steppingstone along a path to a more sustainable worldview. Two and a half years after she left us, that path recently led Amy to the International Permaculture Congress in Cuba in December of 2013.

Interesting how transforming our little villa here in Whanganui has helped transform a few young minds along the way.

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Renovation, environmental education, passive solar, The Little House That Could

It’s Academic

February 17, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

As part of our education programme, we have developed a curriculum on passive solar design for upper primary and lower intermediate/middle schoolers. It is included in the current edition of Green Teacher, and viewable on our website: http://www.theecoschool.net/The_Eco_School/Research_and_Publications.html

Here is a story that sets the scene:

Once upon a time, in a small country at the edge of the world, a couple bought a run-down house and renovated it into an eco-home using passive solar design. They shared the project with the local community through open homes, workshops, school visits, and presentations. And they shared the project with the world with their blog. Word of the project traveled far and wide, up the Whanganui River and out across the Parapara Range to number of rural schools that formed a cooperative network called a “cluster.” Teachers from three schools in the cluster decided they wanted the theme of their final term (Term 4) to be sustainable energy use. They contacted the couple and arranged a hui – Maori for gathering or assembly – to talk about working together.

At the hui they decided together to take a cross-curricular approach, integrating science, maths, English and the arts. The isolated locations of the schools across the rugged New Zealand countryside offered both challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, the couple would not be able to visit the schools during the term. But on the other hand, they could use the Internet as part of an innovative unit plan that could be shared not only across the Parapara, but also across the world. Additionally, the rural schools had roles of five to 25 students, so mixed-age classrooms were the norm. Therefore, the lessons would need to be adaptable for different ages and abilities. The couple returned home and developed a series of multi-disciplinary lessons on energy that became The Little House That Could (TLHTC). What follows is an overview of the unit and then a number of individual lessons.

Also check out TLHTC on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Little-House-That-Could/205750306163061

Eco Thrifty Living

Category Archives: Eco Thrifty Life

Engaging Children in Recycling & Composting

Health Benefits of Heirloom Tomatoes

Discovery of the Real Tomato (12 April 2013)

Reductionist Thinking Does Not Serve Us

Fresh, Local, Organic

Modern Art – Antique Tools

Everybody Loves Us…Almost

Harvest Season Permaculture Update

Eco-Thrifty in the International Press

Transformations: Part II

It’s Academic

Wedding Renovation Baby Life