Hand-me-down and hand-me-round: Stylish secondhand toddlerwear

It's all got a little bit serious of late, so I thought I would take the pressure off and look at hand-me-down chic. Toddler style of course, because it is our little boy who enjoys the luxury of friends who give him all their old stuff rather than us. Now I realise that just by switching from new to secondhand we won't immediately eliminate the footprint of our clothing, but giving clothes a new lease of life does make some inroads in living a lower impact life. It also leads to some rather fine sartorial combinations. As illustrated by Senan here. To the right we see the little man channelling Arthur Daley for his best used car salesman look. For this we can thank his cousin Hannah for the coat, and his buddies Sam and Cameron for the hat and gloves.

The Urban Dandy look to our left is entirely thanks to 2-year old Cameron. 3-year old Mattie gave us the Weekend Sportsman look below. These secondhand clothes save in both fiscal and environmental terms and while this may sound laughably trivial, buying no new clothes for our son does make a difference in our low impact living. Calculating the precise carbon saving is not that simple, and as you may know, I don't like to look at things through a solely carbon lens. The impact of new clothes is also far bigger than carbon: the production of clothing consumes vast quantities of other finite resources such as water. For example: one cotton shirt takes 3,000 litres of water in its manufacture.

In a recent article in the Guardian, Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, said that we buy an average of 20kg of new clothes every year. He claims that each item made from natural fibres has a greenhouse gas footprint more than 20 times its weight. So not buying new clothes could actually lower our family's consumption by around a tonne of CO2 a year and that means Senan's hand-me-down wardrobe plays a big part in bringing down our impact. And once he's done with them they go on to his good buddy Sam who has just turned one. So they're not so much hand-me-downs as hand-me-rounds.

From Sustainability to Resilience: why a small change in terminology has big implications

This week there’s an ad in the Economist for a job at the UN as “Program Head for Climate Strategies and Resilient Development” to support climate adaptation activities in developing countries. So what? I hear you cry. Well, a year ago that job title would probably have been Head of Climate Strategies and Sustainability, and while it may look like a small change in terminology, moving from sustainability to resilience has big connotations.

Adaptation is very different to mitigation. The latter suggests the possibility of a sustainable future, the former accepts that if you can’t beat climate change, you’d better join it. But why the shift – is sustainability really unachievable? I think that if sustainability has become shorthand for maintaining the way we live today, then maybe it isn’t possible and resilience might be the way to go.

Climate change isn’t something that will just pop up in 2050 and bite our grandkids on the arse, it’s happening now. Climate scientist Dr James Hansen of Columbia University says that: “Changes are beginning to appear, and there is a potential for rapid changes with effects that would be irreversible.” In Strategies to Address Global Warming, his data demonstrates that we have already caused atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase from 280 to 387 ppm (parts per million) and this means that we are already beyond a safe limit. He says: “The safe level of carbon dioxide in the long run is no more than 350 ppm. Earth’s history shows that an atmospheric CO2 amount of say 450 ppm eventually would yield dramatic changes, including sea level tens of meters higher than today... we would hand our children and grandchildren a condition that would run out of their control, a situation that should be unacceptable to humanity.”

So even if we put in place mitigation measures, we should perhaps accept that we cannot avert some environmental crises and therefore planning for resilience is not a bad idea. The situation in Haiti demonstrates how preparedness is vital in responding to a national emergency. Can you imagine something like that happening in your neighbourhood? But hang on, before I spin off into utter gloom (you’ll know by now that I’m no fan of doom-mongering) what does resilience mean for us? Moving to higher ground with a load of tinned beans and a shotgun? I hope not. Here’s what I think we’ll need to hand our children and grandchildren.

Resilient communities:
This would probably mean neighbourhoods where the need for travel was minimised. That might mean families living near each other, producing the food supply from allotments and market gardens, and socialising and working locally. Critically though, protectionism should play no part in resilient communities – we need neighbours who are adaptive to change and welcoming if those from elsewhere need sanctuary.

Resilient services.
Again, localisation is key to this. We will need a local infrastructure that can provide food, education, policing, health services and goods readily in uncertain times. Removing reliance on global logistics to get us the things we need is key. Just look at how the snow affected the UK recently with schools, libraries and even supermarkets shutting. We need to be better prepared than that!

Resilient people.
This is the hippy dippy bit. Resilient people will be those who can live through crises without succumbing to fear, depression or protectionism. To be adaptive to change is not easy, but we must raise loving, kind and, most importantly, adaptable kids. They’ll need to be flexible if they’re going to live fulfilling lives in uncertain times.

So does that mean “Sustainability is dead, long live Resilience”? I hope not. I hope that our collective efforts to reduce our environmental impacts work and we can retain the better parts of our modern society long into the future, but a little forward planning for what we might do if they don’t won’t do any harm.

Endnote. I must acknowledge that this post is based largely on a conversation I had with a colleague on my masters alumni weekend. He is the brainy one who made all the salient points and I just added the bit about shotguns. I hope I reflected the discussion appropriately without him feeling used!

The Audacity of Hype: Why Obama’s strength has actually been his weakness

20 January 2009. Can it really be a year since Barack Obama’s inauguration? I remember it with such clarity. I was so inspired and for the first time in years I could visualise a better future. One year on, does it still look so rosy? Sadly no. The poor guy has been beset by baying masses throwing tea parties on Pennsylvania Ave, Republicans rising up against his proposals and the Democrats rebelling. His approval rating fell to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll – the lowest for any president in recent history. 2012 midterms are looking in the balance. But why?

In my view his big problem has been the gap between his rhetoric and the reality. Obama is an excellent communicator, possibly the best speaker the White House has known in the televisual age, but ultimately it is this incredible presentation style and statesmanlike manner that have shot him in the foot. He is just too good at the talk.

This is the curse of the great orator. That man can talk BIG, but his calls for massive, transformative change have been followed up with watered down actions that are disappointingly twentieth century. While he describes himself as a postmodern – even feminist – man, his presentation style is actually more befitting of the archetypal heroic alpha male. And a hero is what America thought they were getting: someone who would single-handedly kick butt with the economy, win wars and revive America’s flailing spirit.

Ronald Inglehart describes this as the “Authoritarian reflex” that triggers a need for a hero, he says: “Rapid change leads to severe insecurity, giving rise to a powerful need for predictability. In secularised societies, severe insecurity brings a readiness to defer to strong leaders, in hopes that superior men of iron will can lead their people to safety. This phenomenon frequently occurs in response to military defeat or economic or political collapse.” (Inglehart, 1997: 38)

Let us not forget, he took over at a time of both economic and political collapse in the US. And while he readily promised a return to the good old days of the American dream, the reality is that he could never deliver on such a promise, at least not in his first year. The kind of change he called for – for a better America, and therefore a better world – can also not be achieved without the people taking some responsibility for change too. I don’t think that voters realised that their actions would be a central part of making change a reality. In finding comfort in his big words, we forgot that Obama is still only human and even if he had balls of steel he could not drive through massive change alone.

Personally I don’t think he’s done a bad job considering the poisoned chalice that he was handed by Bush and the ongoing display of utter vitriol that he receives from his (many) critics. It must take some fortitude to handle with grace such a cascade of criticism that calls you a nazi, a communist, and casts aspersions on your race and religion. So I’m choosing to look back on his first year with delight rather than despair for the following reasons:

• He made a good start with the plans for Guantanamo releases.
• The fact that nuclear disarmament is even talked about in the White House is amazing.
• He got in quick with his commitment to ban torture by US soldiers.
• He is attempting healthcare reform. If you’ve seen Sicko, you’ll know America needs that.
• He made an optimistic extension of the hand of peace to Iran.
• It is a relief to have a president in power who accepts that climate change is a reality.
• The core of his economic renewal plans rely on a surge of green jobs.
• While Cop(out)hagen was a disaster, at least he was there. The Republicans would have boycotted the talks.

Here’s to a better 2010 for Obama. Let’s hope he can use his superior communication skills more sparingly next year and focus on the job in hand. Let’s celebrate the path for change that he is forging if for no other reason than by virtue of his difference to the mainstream (his colour in itself is flushing out a cascade of prejudices that have remained largely dormant since the civil rights movement in the 60s). He may be down in the polls, but he’s still a hero in my book.

Quote of the day

“Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society – its world view, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions – rearranges itself. And the people born then cannot even imagine a world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born. We are currently living through such a transformation.”

Peter Drucker

Oops! I forgot the cake...

...In case I offend my family by forgetting one of their vital contributions to the green wedding, my mum of course made our lovely wedding cake.

My big fat green wedding

My sister got engaged last week and this got me thinking about green weddings. When I got married three years ago I proudly touted it as a green event, but looking back on it, I’m not so sure it was so squeaky green. Here’s what we did:

• Invitations: I designed the invitations myself and had them printed on recycled card. I made all the table decorations from hand-made paper on and printed the menus on recycled paper.

• Venue: We got married in central London and encouraged guests to use public transport. We hailed a cab to and from the venue to avoid wasting cash and carbon on fancy cars.

• Dress: My dress was made for me by a local dressmaker. I tried to employ a “don’t buy what you don’t need” strategy because the frivolity can really get out of hand when you are in wedding shops. The lace was vintage, but the silk was not. My jewellery was either borrowed or made by a friend.

• Flowers: My poor florist got the full force of my Bridezilla as I asked her to source only seasonal and local flowers that were also dazzlingly beautiful in March. She did an amazing job and grew many of them herself, getting the rest from New Covent Garden Market.

• Food and drink: We went to great lengths to source local organic produce for our meal. The wine was all organic (although the champagne wasn’t!). We sourced our meat from the Ginger Pig, a butcher in London renowned for its ethical sourcing policy. (This was blinkin’ expensive!) We wrangled with the venue over the silliest things, over why frozen UK peas were better than fresh imported ones. I’m absolutely sure he was happy to be rid of us!

• Rings: a local craftsman in Ireland made our rings from white gold.

• Gifts: We asked that instead of giving gifts, guests could donate via justgiving to our two chosen charities (mine: the Rainforest Foundation, Brendan’s: The Connection at St Martins). We raised well over £1,000 for each charity but there were those who didn’t like the cold anonymity of cash donations and wanted to give us a tangible gift, so for them we set up a small list on http://www.ourgreenweddinglist.com. I must say it was nice to get a few gifts delivered when we got back from honeymoon, the most exciting of which was a rainwater butt (that is not sarcasm - it really was exciting!!).

• Transport: We encouraged our guests to offset their transport emissions via the carbon neutral company which invests in renewable energy projects.

• Honeymoon: we travelled around continental Europe by train and committed to making no long haul flights that year.

If I could do it all again, my top three tips would be the following:

1. Consider having a smaller wedding.
The carbon cost of the guests' travel was astronomical, so I would consider making it smaller in the first place or thinking twice about long-haul invites (er... not so easy when it is immediate family who live in Canada). Our wedding required 6 return flights from North America (6.6 tonnes), 2 from Australia (6.4 tonnes!!!), 60 from Ireland (12 tonnes) and 4 from continental Europe (1.2 tonnes). In total that is a whopping 26.2 tonnes of Co2!!

2. Go vintage.
While I went for a little vintage lace shrug, going the whole hog would have been better. Vintage (er... second-hand) is the answer to cutting the majority of both the environmental and ethical costs of the day. There are many vintage dress shops that can alter beautiful dresses to suit any figure, and were it not for the particular shopping madness that overwhelms most brides-to-be, I’m sure that this would be more common practice. Vintage jewellery could also help stem the tide of waste that accompanies gold mining: Payal Sampat, director of the No Dirty Gold campaign recently told Treehugger.com that: "Producing a single gold wedding band leaves behind 20 tonnes of waste at a mine site."

3. Look for an eco-venue or at least a place that has eco credentials.
Even though it was only three years ago, eco-venues are a lot more commonplace now than they were then. It was pretty knackering having to constantly explain our choices to our venue, when their major concern was cost and simplicity. It’s not like we weren’t on a budget too! Dealing with an eco-minded venue would have made the process a lot simpler and also given us the peace of mind that they have the energy efficiency and ethical sourcing parts of the wedding puzzle sorted. We got ourselves twisted up in knots sourcing our own food and wine to be prepared later by the venue. There are many eco-venues popping up all over now, so giving them the business over old-school room hire is the way to go I’d say.

The problem with proselytising...

There are perils that come with promoting yourself as a greenie in the blogosphere. The main one is that at some point you are bound to get caught out being un-green by some keen-eyed buddy who read your blog. I had never thought about that while I happily typed away about my fabulous virtuous low carbon life in the comfort of my own living room, but on Saturday night at a party a friend looked over my shoulder as I filled a plate full of chicken wings at the buffet and said, “Flexing that ’tarianism I see”.

Busted.

I had no idea where the meat came from and it didn’t cross my mind to ask. But having written about the virtues of carefully considered meat-eating, I was caught out ignoring my own rules. This is the problem with being evangelical about a lifestyle choice, nothing can sustain 100% perfection. I do try on an ongoing basis to live a good life, but there will be times when I fail. And that isn't the end of the world, it just proves that I am human. It has prompted me to think about the big hypocrisies that us environmental types fall prey to - fodder for a future blog...

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway: Making a transition from fearing the future to a life sustaining society

As I learn more about climate change I find it harder to avoid despair. With such an urgent call to save the planet, I often feel scared and useless. And it is the green movement that's pushing the fear hardest. The language of climate change is anxiety-based and blame-ridden. We talk about an imminent cascade of crises, environmental catastrophes and extreme weather. My anxiety about this future is then further exacerbated as a new mother whose child has his whole life ahead of him! But, then I remember that this fear is a complete waste of energy.

Now I’m not denying there’s a crisis, but where’s the fun in all that doom and gloom? Yes, there is a clear mandate for a transition to a low impact, post-materialist society, but must we fear that? How are we serving the next generation if we despair of their future? Surely joy and fun will also be part of a sustainable future alongside clean energy and low carbon buildings?

In order to maintain happiness, I aim to live lightly on the planet both in word and deed, and to remember that having a laugh with a friend might be as important in creating a brighter future as any action I take to reduce my carbon footprint. I have found solace in the writings of environmental philosopher Joanna Macy. She suggests that in order to quell the need for haste that comes with fear, we must hold a wider perspective about who we are as humans, recognising that we are a short life in a long history of many short lives. She says:

“As humans we have the capacity and the birthright to experience time in a saner fashion. Throughout history, men and women have labored at great personal cost to bequeath future generations monuments of art and learning far beyond their individual lives. And they have honored through ritual and story those who came before. To make the transition to a life-sustaining society, we must retrieve that ancestral capacity – in other words, act like ancestors. We need to attune to longer, ecological rhythms and nourish a strong, felt connection with past and future generations. For us as agents of change, this isn’t easy, because to intervene in the political and legislative decisions of the Industrial Growth Society, we fall by necessity into its tempo. We race to find and pull the levers before it is too late to save this forest, or stop that weapons program. Nonetheless, we can learn again to drink at deeper wells.” (Macy 1998: 136).

If I can detach from fear I can tap into Macy’s concept of “deeper time” which helps me to envision a brighter future. By projecting myself outside of my own generation, both to the past and the future, I can gain a better perspective about the present. I still feel the fear: don’t get me wrong, this crisis is real. But I live my life anyway, with as much laughter, snowball fights and kitchen discos as we can fit into a day.

The carbon credit crunch – why calculating your carbon footprint isn’t easy peasy

Today I decided to quantify my carbon tonnage. Yes, I know it was just last week that I was moaning about the oversimplification of the environmental crisis into Co2, but I figure that I might as well know what I’m talking about if I am going to rage against that particular machine. So, let’s think back to the beginning of 2009 when my husband and I committed to reducing our carbon footprint in an effort to live a low impact life. Now I want to see how well we – or more specifically, I – did before we set sail into 2010. To do this I used three online carbon calculators on the assumption that there would be a little variability but that I could get an average baseline carbon footprint. The results were more than just a little variable, here’s what I came up with...

Carbon Calculator # 1: Act on Co2

I started with http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/actonco2/home.html , the UK government’s Act on CO2 web site, where I inputted a little information and was given the very modest score of 2.74 tonnes per annum. As I was under the impression that the average UK lifestyle had the output of about 11 tonnes per annum, this seemed too good to be true. I decided that rather than taking it as proof of my saintliness, my low score was probably down to the fact that this calculator only measures home heating, electrical appliances and personal transport and critically it misses out on water, waste, food and consumption. So this calculation only really accounts for around 40% of my carbon footprint. In a nutshell, this one is not the most accurate carbon counter there is but it is a helpful and easy to use site and it gives good tips on what to do to reduce your impact, just don’t be fooled that you are as good as it tells you you are.

Carbon Calculator # 2: Bioregional

I decided to find a more detailed calculator and googled “one planet living” to see if I could get a more comprehensive measurement. I was pointed to the One Planet Living microsite run by Bioregional http://calculator.bioregional.com/. This calculator took about 10 minutes to complete and looked at home energy usage, travel, household waste, food, water use, retail consumption, garden, wildlife habitat, health and wellbeing. It also includes some quite random questions like “Have you ever looked into the history of your local area?” (How exactly would that impact my carbon output???). After finishing the questionnaire on this site my carbon footprint shot up to 8.9 tonnes and I was told in no uncertain terms that if everyone in the world lived like me we would need two planets to support us, but I was able to take some solace in the fact that I am still below the UK average of three planets. This site gave me the most comprehensive analysis and clear tips for what I could do to further reduce my impact.

Carbon Calculator # 3: WWF

So then I thought I’d see what WWF had to say as they are the originators of the concept of one planet living. The WWF footprint calculator http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/ has a bold interface and is very easy to complete with quick-fire questions grouped into four categories: food, travel, home and stuff. You get through the questions in about 3 minutes, but some of them do skim the surface a bit (eg. no specificity on the type of loft insulation you have which does make a difference). After the quickfire questions the site then encourages users to join the WWF campaign to reduce Co2 and gives snappy tips for how to make changes. Shockingly, however, it calculated my carbon footprint at a massive 13.78 tonnes per annum and 2.66 planets, which just about bowled me over.

2009 Carbon Calculations

I was left wondering how these three sites could take in the same data and come up with such different answers. Because they varied so wildly, I decided the most reliable calculation was the Bioregional one as it used the most comprehensive data. So I have my baseline: 8.9 tonnes, but did I also find out if I reduced my carbon footprint at all in 2009? Well, yes, but I had to seek out other web sites to help me calculate that. Specifically I wanted to calculate the savings made as a result of two key changes we made last year – 1) giving up our car and 2) composting all our food waste. Giving up the car saved 1.9 tonnes per year (source: the carbon neutral company http://www.carbonneutral.com/) and by composting all our food, garden and cardboard waste, we saved emissions equivalent to 0.28 tonnes of carbon dioxide. (source: Centre for Alternative Technologies http://www.cat.org.uk/). That is a total saving of 2.18 tonnes – which roughly means we cut our carbon emissions by about a quarter last year. That is not perfect maths of course, but then again those carbon calculator web sites were not exactly demonstrating Carol Vordeman precision!

New year resolutions

So if we managed 25% last year, we can certainly cut our emissions by at least another 10% in 2010. I have signed us up to 10:10 http://www.1010uk.org/, alongside squillions of celebs and big companies, and I’ve got a few ideas about how we can reach that target. Firstly we need to tackle the house – it is too draughty and the loft insulation we have is too skimpy. With a baby in the house we keep the heating on more than we did before so we really need to replace three windows and increase our loft insulation to 400mm depth. I also plan to invest in an electricity meter and a chimney balloon for the unused chimney stack. However, the area that I’m not sure we can impact this year is air travel as we aim to go back to Canada in the summer, so I will have to look into the issue of “love miles” in more depth in a future blog.