Plastic-free produce

In Australia, green bags are pretty ubiquitous. They have been since I was a study abroad student here, way back in 2004, and this was something I thought was very cool and progressive. I still do! I especially love getting green bags (which are often not green, but that's just what they're called) for free at events and things. Very handy. We keep some in the car, in case we forget to bring our main stash with us when we go shopping. We still get plastic bags sometimes, and actually have an embarrassingly large stash of them under the kitchen sink. We use them in our rubbish bin (which is actually just a bucket), but that only uses up one per week. What to do with the bulk of them is a bit of a mystery - I suppose we'll keep them under the sink until we get so good at remembering (enough) green bags that we never get plastics and we run out.

There are lots of other roads that plastic takes into our house, though. I was flicking through Facebook a fortnight or so ago when I saw an ad for Plastic-Free July. I made a pledge - avoid the top four single-use plastic items for the whole month. Drinking straws is easy - we never eat takeaways and thus avoid places where straws are provided. Plastic bottles is also fairly straightforward - in a regular month, we don't often go anywhere to purchase drinks. We drink tap water at home and at work, and if we do go out for an adventure we bring a stainless steel bottle of water with us. Coffee cup lids are a little trickier, mainly because getting them is so automatic. But, when I go for coffee (actually, chai) with people, we have in almost 100% of the time. So I can do this one easily if I avoid the two or three coffee places at JCU that serve only in takeaway cups. The final item in the top 4 is plastic bags. My overly-long intro to this post talks about grocery bags. But what about other plastic bags?

Produce bags are more common in our grocery- and market-trips than plastic shopping bags. Until May, we had been using them daily as Andy's sandwich bags. He would even bring them home to re-use if they were clean enough. And we use them every now and then in places where we might otherwise use cling wrap. But for Andy's birthday I got him a most excellent sandwich container - plastic! but re-usable - that is big enough to fit our homemade bread. So we began accumulating produce bags, too.

From http://www.happyjackson.co.uk/shop/

I was inspired by a link from Plastic-Free July to a tutorial on re-usable produce bags. I looked at it, got the gist, and then made them on a Saturday morning. I used a piece of mesh fabric - mosquito-net style - that we had laying around. I didn't really measure the fabric, but cut it into different sizes.  Working slowly, with plenty of interruptions, it took me about 3 hours to make about 8 bags. I think I'd be quicker next time, now that I know what I'm doing.

I used yarn instead of ribbons for drawstrings, and I love the rainbow I've got to shop with.

We tried them out with stuff from the garden, because Andy was skeptical - he thought they would be annoying.

Yellow passion fruits, yum. 

But the next day we brought them to the markets. We couldn't use them for the first half of the markets. I was disappointed - first we bought things that we don't put in bags, like bananas, and there were heaps of stalls selling items pre-bagged. But in the second half of the market we got to use them, which was very exciting for me! (Simple pleasures?)

As I was making them, I thought about how multi-use these bags are. They are basically the same as a delicates bag that you might use in the washing machine. When I posted a picture of the bags on my Facebook page (have you liked it yet?) Cate and Melissa both talked about using them for toys and crayons and other things. Andy came up with a good use for them after our tomatoes were eaten by a mouse or rat.

Protecting ripening tomatoes from a hungry pest.

In the two weeks since making them, we have put them to use several times. They store fairly small, so I can keep some in my bag, and they weigh about 10 grams each so they don't add much to the cost of produce. They were worth making with the free ingredients I had on hand, but I think I would even go out of my way to get more material.

Spring Things

The start of spring, in Australia, is the 1st of September, and it has definitely warmed up here in Townsville. We still have the blankets on the bed, but when I walk the dog very early in the morning the sun is up, and I don't need a jumper anymore. The warm weather has meant a few different things.

Cucumbers.

Bucket loads of cherry tomatoes. We didn't plant the cherry tomatoes in our garden - they just came up, all over. We get big bowls full a few times each week.

Last week Andy gave Tika some cherry tomatoes to see if she would like them. She did, and he thought that was awesome. The next morning I saw Tika eating them straight off the bush. Upon realising that he has competition for his tomatoes, Andy doesn't think it's so awesome anymore.

Cherry tomatoes in fresh salsa - with cucumber, capsicum, chilli and coriander.

Fresh salsa on Nachos, with refried black beans and guac.

Cherry tomatoes in Brooklyn Pad Thai.

We got a BBQ, which is fantastic not just because BBQed food is yummy, but because BBQ dinner is quick and easy and doesn't make a big mess.

Stuffed capsicums, cooked on the Weber, with some baby zucchinis.

BBQ potatoes, garden radishes, garden zucchinis, felafel balls, and corn on the cob.

Side salad with tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, nasturtiums and rocket, all from the garden.

Chickpea patties. Check those char marks.

I grew soy beans over the winter, knowing full well they are a cool climate crop and they might not do much. But I knew they would fix nitrogen in the soil even if they didn't produce beans, so they were worthwhile.

And they did produce a tiny crop.

I got more shells than beans.

Edamame salad with cucumber, wasabi, soy and pickled ginger.

We also got solar panels. On a good day we get 24kilowatts per day, and if it's a bit cloudy more like 20, which is 2-3x what we use each day, so we're pretty smug about things.

 Also, our patio is getting lovelier and lovelier, with the BBQ and the fairy lights, and a quickly growing passionfruit for shade.

 

Moving out cleaning

We've lived in our current flat for 4 years and 9 months. But the longest lease we were ever allowed to sign was 12 months. And since 2010, our employment/living situation has been a bit uncertain. So since we moved in, in 2007, we've always thought we would move out sort of soon. As a result, we avoided the sort of regular cleaning that you might do if you knew you were staying a while - why clean now, when we'll just have to do it at the end of our lease? I don't mean that we lived in a dump-hole. Our house was regularly tidy, and I always kept kitchen, bathroom, and living areas clean. I'm talking about the less-necessary cleaning -- getting dirt out of window tracks, cleaning windows, getting oil spots off garage floors...

Well, now we're at the end of our lease, and we had about 5 years of built-up dirt to clean up. We're fairly unwilling to spend money on cleaning products, though, especially since most are pretty terrible for health and the environment. But we do have a few nearly-empty bottles of things, and our natural cleaning products. And with these, plus a lot of elbow grease, we've been able to get everything pretty clean.

Vertical Blinds. Ours are vinyl, and were pretty dusty and a bit mouldy. We took each vinyl strip down, removed the plastic inserts, and soaked them in boiling water with a tiny bit of bleach (we got half a bottle of laundry bleach with a second-hand washing machine we bought once). When the water cooled, we scrubbed them with a sponge and then hung outside to dry. They look like new!

Curtains. These were already very faded, but had some water & dirt marks from open windows. We took them down and hand washed in some hot water and laundry detergent, and then carefully hung out to dry without getting wrinkles. They're still faded, and the stains didn't disappear, but it's good enough for us.

Oil spots. Luckily, there were some oil spots on the garage floor when we moved in, so the ones from Andy's car don't stand out so much. But, there was an obvious distinction between old and new oil spots. We had a bottle of floor cleaner (from god knows where) which claimed to cut through grease and grime. I squirted that onto the spots and scrubbed (and scrubbed) with a stiff brush. After rinsing and drying, all the spots look old and some are barely visible.

Carpet stains. We only had one - a cat puke stain, from when Nacho ate a shoelace, and we were a bit too busy and preoccupied to clean the carpet properly. I got this up with just a bit of bicarb soda and vinegar. First, I made a paste of bicarb soda and water, and scrubbed that into the carpet with a brush. Then we sprayed with vinegar water and let it fizz up. Blot with paper (or rags) and let dry over night. In the morning, it had dried and was a bit crusty, so I just used a dry brush to break up the crust, and then vacuumed. Be warned, though, that this will leave a clean spot in the middle of an otherwise kind of dingy carpet.

General cleaning. I made a mix of dish soap, vinegar, clove oil, and eucalyptus oil, and that has been a really effective all-purpose cleaner. This is going to be my go-to cleaning product from now on, I think. It cuts through soap scum in the shower, kills mould (from the clove oil), and disinfects (from the eucalyptus oil). Spray it on, let it sit a minute, and then wipe or scrub (depending on how dirty!). Leaves bathrooms shiny as, and gets regular smudginess of painted walls and doors.

Windows. This is hardly original, but vinegar + water sprayed on glass, and then wiped until perfectly dry with newspaper gets windows crystal clear. I do it with one wet newspaper, one dry newspaper, for maximum efficiency.

Outside tiles. Our pavers were covered with something green - moss? algae? I don't know what. But it happens every wet season, and our real estate has been cranky about it before. So we've gotten good at this one - all it takes is scrubbing. With a stiff brush. Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, and then washing the dirty residue away with water.

Kitchen bench top. Our counter top gets a bit dingy, so every few months (and especially now) I clear everything off of it, sprinkle dry bicarb soda all over, and scrub it in with a damp sponge. Pay particular attention to any stains (around our tea pot is a bad spot, and near the stove where turmeric-stained spoons get set on the counter). After it's all been scrubbed hard, spritz with vinegar, and then rinse off.

A few more things... Those gimmicky "magic erasers" work only sometimes, but where they were really effective for us was on greasy things - the inside of the oven-window, the top of the cabinet above the stove (which was surprisingly grotty!). Andy's parents washed down the walls, using a mop, with sugar soap, and then washed it off with methylated spirits + water. This made the walls look really good. Some bits of wall had caked on sticky tape - WD40 and a scour-y microfibre cloth got rid of this. Window tracks came clean with a rag stuffed down into the track with a pen cap.

Basically, it was mostly elbow grease and natural products, with a few chemical-y things thrown in that got our place sparkle-arkly.

New Home Resolutions

Today is moving day - the removalists are scheduled to arrive at the moment this post goes live (whether they are early or late remains to be seen, however) to haul our biggest furniture items 5km down the road on our behalf. We'll be following with boxes and bags and bins full of all our stuff. Now seems like a good time, better than the New Year even, to make some resolutions for life in our new house.

Waste less
I'm keenly aware of how much stuff we just threw away in the process of moving - even though we donated all we could, there were a number of things we had that just weren't give-away-able. This is mostly because we have a habit of using things to death, which is kind of a good thing. But I would also like to take the opportunity of moving house to make an effort to reduce the amount of stuff that comes into our house, and the amount of garbage that goes out.


In our regular, not-moving-house life, we don't throw away too much, thanks to the worm farm we've kept for a few years now. And with 770 square meters of yard, we will have space for a big compost pile as well - which will accommodate our weekly kitty litter dumps (we use recycled paper litter). So this will reduce our weekly trash already. But I'm also going to try to adopt strategies to avoid buying things with excessive packaging, short life spans, or things we just don't need. Suggestions in this area are more than welcome.

Grow All the Things!
Something I've been looking forward to since the remotest possibility of getting a house has entered our lives has been the future things we will grow. My dream, perhaps unrealistic, is to have a garden in which everything is edible. The house we are moving into has a few established plants, but plenty of empty space to play with. The things already growing include a hibiscus, which makes me happy because I love hibiscus tea. There are some things we'll need to take out - like some small clumps of palms that will get big and annoying. I've also got short-term plans for papaya trees, pineapples, and herbs of all kinds. And down the track we'll branch into ginger and turmeric, citrus, bananas, and of course a veggie patch full of wonderful produce. To maximise our space, I am going to try out this rocking vertical garden for herbs and greens. We're lucky to have some very handy gardeners within our circle of friends, and have been promised seedlings and cuttings and small plants already, so that will be a good way to kick things off.

Become a more sophisticated Saver
Andy and I have been pretty good at saving money. First on two PhD scholarships, and then on one scholarship + 1 half-time salary, we managed to save a fairly sizable down payment.  We did it by not spending much - buying very little, getting things second-hand, eating out almost never. This suited our lifestyle, and didn't feel like we were being deprived in any way. But the fact is, for the last 5+ years, we have been saving for just one thing, and our only regular expenses were food, rent, electricity, and the car. When we needed to spend more than usual, for a trip, or for a vet emergency, or a new washing machine, we could just take it out of our pot of house-money.

Now, though, we have entered the world of regular fortnightly mortgage repayments. And annual home insurance bills. And bi-annual rates. And maintenance and home repairs. So although we'll be saving $13,000 a year in rent, we won't be $13,000 a year richer. And now, in addition to spending most of our money on paying back our home loan as quickly as possible, I would also like to have other pots of money working towards the odd holiday, home improvements like solar panels (and maybe a new kitchen, long-term plan), and things of that nature. So I think I'll need to learn about budgeting and being deliberate with money in more depth.

Talk to the neighbours
In the flat where we have spent the past five years, we barely say hello to the people in the same unit block, let alone people in houses next door and across the road. When we moved in, some of our neighbours would avoid eye contact when they bumped into us in the driveway, making it hard for me to say "Hi! Let's be friends!" even though I sometimes wanted to. After a while there, though, neighbours change and we have at least said hello to everyone, even though we're not chummy with anyone.


In our new house, I'd like to try to be a bit more social and community-minded. This will be easy with at least one of the neighbours, who I already know from work. And hopefully she can ease the introductions with other people nearby, so I don't have the constant tension between wanting to know and like (and especially, to be liked!) by everyone, and also being terribly shy around new people.

Get a dog
We're already working on this one...

These are the things I have in my head before we even get our stuff into the house.

Squeaky Clean

I was a bit misleading when I mentioned that I had some homemade cleaning products to share - they aren't products for cleaning houses, but rather for cleaning yourself.  Here's the thing: I've given up on shampoo, and soap.

In January, I was home alone and screwing around on the internet, and I followed a few random links and stumbled across some websites discussing the No Shampoo Method, and the Oil Cleanse Method.  I read up on them.  I was intrigued.  I did some research, finding out the best ways to take up these soap-free, super-cheap, and gentle self-care techniques.  I found lots, and lots, and LOTS of websites, blog posts, YouTube videos, and forum discussions.  And I discovered that the only thing that can be concluded is that you have to work out what is best for your skin & hair.  So here's how I do it, using these ingredients...

Hair
I haven't used shampoo since January.  Instead, I wash my hair with a bicarb soda (baking soda) paste, and 'condition' with apple cider vinegar.  Some  people seem to use heaps more water than bicarb, and pour it over their hair.  I tried that, but prefer a runny paste.  I fill up a little container with bicarb...

And then add an equal amount of water (give or take a bit).  Then I stir and stir, until it is a smooth paste.

Then, once a week, I take a big scoop of this paste and massage it into my head.  I try to keep it to the roots, because it makes the ends of my hair a bit dry.  I rub it in, and leave it on for about a minute, and then rinse.  Be sure to rinse thoroughly - I've gotten out of the shower a few times and found a super white patch on my scalp.

I also keep a little jar of apple cider vinegar in the shower, next to a small plastic cup.  After all the bicarb paste is rinsed out of my hair, I tip 1 to 2 Tablespoons of vinegar into the little cup, and then fill it up with water.

Then, I dip my hair into the cup, to make sure the ends get their fair share of the vinegar.  After that, I tip the rest of the vinegar water over my hair.  Again, rinse thoroughly.  I like to end with a quick blast of cold water - it may be ineffective, but in my head it makes my hair shinier.

Once I get out of the shower, I towel-dry my hair and dab a bit of coconut oil on the ends.  All of this works best, for me, if I wash my hair in the afternoon or evening.  Then I let it air dry, and sleep on it.  For some reason, this gives me smooth, shiny, and easy to work with hair.  If I wash it in the morning, it goes a bit fuzzy.

As I mentioned above, I only need to do this once a week.  On the other days, I keep my hair dry for my morning shower, and rinse with plain water for my afternoon or evening shower.  My hair only smells like vinegar until it dries on the first day - after that, it's fine.  And it doesn't get sweaty or greasy, even though I ride to and from uni each day.  My hair is still as soft as it was when I was washing with shampoo, so I'm happy to save heaps and heaps of money by using cheap kitchen supplies!

Face
The Oil Cleanse method is based on the notion that "like dissolves like", which may or may not be scientifically true.  In any case, it involves using oil to clean your face, and surprisingly, it works really well.

I mix my oils in a plastic bottle, which lasts for a few months.  About 1/4 to 1/3 of the bottle gets filled with Castor Oil (which is available from the chemist - but behind the counter).  I put a few drops of eucalyptus oil, for its antibacterial qualities.  Then I top up the bottle with olive oil.  The ratio of castor to olive oil depends on your skin type.  If you have very dry skin, you can go up to half-half, but if your skin is on the oily side you should use more olive oil.

So, every evening, I pull back my hair and get maybe a teaspoon, at the most, of oil in my palm.  Then, for 5 or 10 minutes, I rub it all over my face.  It's great for dissolving makeup, and I can literally feel my pores unclogging while I rub.  After a few minutes, I rinse.  With the hottest water I can stand, I rinse and rinse with a cloth, rubbing the oil off.  It takes a few rinses, and it's not finished until your face feels un-oily.  Then I dry my face.  I still use moisturiser after I'm finished - some people on the internet said they don't need to, but my skin gets too dry without it.  I do this at night, and in the mornings I just rinse my face with plain water and then moisturise before putting on makeup.

Why bother?
To be honest, I had no problem with the facial cleanser and shampoos I was using before I started these homemade options in January.  I was buying from Plant Essentials, which makes its products right here in Townsville, using certified organic plant ingredients.  And they're not even that expensive.  In fact, I still use their moisturisers and make up, because I truly love that shop.

But, (and this is an indication of my supreme laziness), I was home alone in January and the thought of going in to the city when I was running low on shampoo was unappealing.  So I decided to try out these methods I had read about.  And it turns out I like them.  Neither method has revolutionised the quality of my skin or hair - some people on the internet seem to suggest it has for them, but for me, I haven't noticed much difference at all compared to soap and shampoo.   Except, of course, for the price difference.  Bicarb soda, apple cider vinegar, and oil are cheap, and since you don't use much, it really is very cost effective. The results look something like this:

So there you have it - my cheaper-than-chips, easy-pants homemade self-cleaning products.  If you're interested and I haven't answered your questions, let me know in the comments - or do some googling, since there is a boatload of information on the interwebs.

Poop-tastic

Mostly on this blog, I talk about food.  But today I'm going to talk about the by-product of that food -- poop.  Not human poop, but worm poop.  That shit (ha!) is awesome.

We live in a unit, with a very small, paved back garden.  A compost heap is out of the question in our space, but 90% of our rubbish is fruit & vegetable bits and pieces - carrot ends, soy bean skins, cabbage outer leaves, avocado peels, grape stems, apple cores, and so on.  Throwing that in the regular rubbish seems wasteful, and it makes our regular rubbish smelly, and much more voluminous than it needs to be.  So shortly after we moved into our current place (nearly 4 years ago now, woah) we bought a worm farm.  At the time, the Queensland government gave us 50% cash back, in 'water wise rebates', so it cost us something like $40.

We keep a small plastic container on the kitchen counter where we collect our scraps.

It's not too noticeable, but since it  doesn't have a lid it does sometimes attract ants, or cockroaches (but they are everywhere, anyways, whether or not there is food out in the open).  We've been meaning, for years, to find a bucket with a lid, but Andy is very choosy about how big it should be, and what kind of lid it should have, and we often forget to look for a new container, so we continue to use the plastic trays that they sell spinach and mushrooms and stuff in.

We put all of our fruit and veggie waste into the worm farm, except for onions, garlic, citrus, and avocado seeds.  We also put tea leaves and bags, cardboard, and non-glossy paper.  As long as you don't overfill it, it has no noticeable smell (it's hard to overfill, once you've let the worm population get big enough.  Just take it easy at the beginning).

The "Can O' Worms" we got has three trays for putting stuff in, and by the time you fill up all three, the bottom one is ready to use as dirt in the garden.

The stuff that comes out is very rich, and needs to be mixed with other dirt so that it doesn't become too cakey. 

It is, really, just a bunch of worm poop, so when Andy was up to his elbows in it the other weekend, I made sure to point that fact out.

Mixed in, it is a great seed-raising mix, and a good  general dirt for growing stuff.  This year, we also tried adding some to the top of already-growing plants, to give them a bit of a pep-up. 

Andy watered it in using our high-tech watering can (a plastic bottle with holes poked in it).

From what I have heard, worm farms can be difficult to keep in the tropics.  Between the heat, and the rain, a few of my friends have had mass worm die-offs.  We've never had a problem, for a few reasons.  First, we always keep a bucket underneath the spout.  Any water that comes through the worm farm ends up in the bucket (which you can use as liquid fertilizer!), and therefore doesn't pool up in the worm farm and drown our wriggly friends.  Second, Andy has taken a few special measures to ensure that our worms stay shaded, and in the very wet season, protected from the water.  Behind the worm farm, you can see a black sheet - that provides shade for them, as does a white sheet attached to the clothesline above, which you can't see.  In the very rainy times, we put a big sheet of bubble wrap (anything plastic will work) over the top, to keep out some of the rain.

That, plus their excellent diet, keeps our worms happy and healthy (as far as we can tell).  It's a good symbiotic relationship, it keeps our contribution to the landfills minimal, and it keeps our plants growing.

Who knew poop could be so cool?

Eco-friendly

I've often wondered which is better for the environment--buying new, energy- and water-efficient products, or using old ones. While the newer products may have higher energy star or water star ratings, those values don't account for the amount of energy, raw materials, and transport that goes into making new products.

Thankfully, I haven't had to agonise over this too much, as finances have made the decision for us. So it was two years ago, when the techie in my department sold her washing machine for $120. It was about ten years old, she told us, but worked beautifully--she was only getting rid of it because she traded it in for a front-loader. We snapped it up (anything beats handwashing and laundromats) and it's been with us since then.

But in the end of September it just... stopped working. Out of the blue. Like, I washed a load of clothes and hung them out on the line and it worked fine. When I came back in to load up some sheets and towels, it made all kinds of funny noises and wasn't filling with water. Andy and his dad figured out what was wrong with it, but we just decided we would keep using it as is. Afterall, it worked fine so long as you filled the wash basin directly from the hose (rather than letting it come through the machine).

That started to get old in December. Plus, we learned that the Queensland government's waterwise rebates were ending at the end of the month. We'd kept an eye on bulletin boards and classifieds and found no used machines that were affordable... so we took the plunge and bought a front-loader.

It was on sale, and it had a $200 rebate courtesy of the state, so in the end it wasn't much more expensive than buying a used machine. I'm not sure it was the most ecologically sound decision, but it is much quieter. Andy's not sold on it--I think he's still cranky that it was so much heavier than our old washer. It takes a lot longer than the top-loaders, but it really uses very little water. I think we made the right choice.

edit: Oh! I should mention that we're not throwing out the old one. We've offered it up on freecycle and it's being taken away and repaired by a school-leaver who is getting ready to move into her own house. So it will live on!

P.S. Hi from Canberra! I got in yesterday and it's been lovely and sunny--and so dry. My hair is so much straighter here than it is up in the tropics. I'm not doing much in the way of excitement here--just working in some libraries and archives, and getting some writing done away from my research site--but I'll keep you informed if any fun does come my way.

Last Exit...

Last exit for the Holocene ahead

Originally from here, but reposted by me because I think it's an interesting and important read. Thanks to Andy for sending me the article in the first place.

July 14, 2008

Gwynne Dyer
Independent
(Jul 14, 2008)

"Damn! I think we just passed the last exit for the Holocene!"

"I'm sorry, honey, I wasn't looking."

"We have to get off this highway. What's the next exit?"

"It's a long way ahead. Goes to somewhere called Perdition."

(Ragged chorus from the back seat) "Are we there yet, Daddy?"

The Holocene era is that blessed time of stable, warm climate (but not too hot) and unchanging sea levels in which human civilization was born and grew to its present size.

In 10,000 years, our numbers have increased about a thousandfold -- but we may be about to leave the Holocene, and that would be too bad. No other climatic state would let us maintain our current numbers, and massive diebacks are no fun at all.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in New York, is one of the most respected scientists working in the field of climate studies. It was his famous speech to the U.S. Congress 20 years ago that put climate change on the U.S. political agenda, and led indirectly to the Earth Summit and the Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.

Now he has something else to say.

For most of the past decade, Hansen adhered to the emerging consensus among climate scientists that the maximum permissible concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 450 parts per million (ppm). That was believed to give us a 50 per cent chance of getting away with an average global temperature only 2 C (3.6 F) hotter than it was at the beginning of the 1990s. Now Hansen doesn't believe in 450 ppm any more.

The 450 ppm concentration was chosen partly because it seemed impossible to stop the rise in carbon dioxide before that -- we're already at 387 ppm, and going up almost 3 ppm per year -- and partly because it seemed relatively safe. A 2 C rise in temperature would turn a lot of subtropical land into desert, cause bigger hurricanes and turn most of Asia's big rivers into seasonal watercourses that are empty in summer, but it would not melt the ice caps.

At least that's what they thought, although everybody knew that the numbers were soft.

You can do a lot with climate models, but the Earth hasn't actually seen a carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration as high as 450 ppm since about 35 million years ago. So Hansen and some colleagues went to work on exactly that period, and came back with some bad news. If you leave the world at even 425 ppm for very long, all the ice will probably melt: Greenland, Antarctica, the lot. And the sea level will go up 70 to 80 metres (240 to 270 feet).

How do they know? Because the world was very hot and completely ice-free for a long time before 35 million years ago, but the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was falling gradually. When it reached 425 ppm, Antarctica began to freeze over. So if that's where the first permanent ice appeared while CO2 was on the way down, it's probably where the last permanent ice will disappear when CO2 is on its way back up.

Now, there's a big margin of error when you are dealing with 35 million years ago: plus or minus 75 ppm, in this case. That means the fatal number when all the ice disappears could be as high as 500 ppm -- or it could be as low as 350 ppm. If that is the range within which ALL the world's ice will eventually melt, and you like living in the Holocene, then you probably should not put all your money on a 450 ppm ceiling for CO2.

So Hansen is now spearheading a campaign to get 350 ppm recognized as the real long-term target we should be aiming at. Tricky, since we are already at 387 ppm and rising fast, but recently, when I spoke to him at the Tallberg Forum's annual conference in Sweden, he explained: "To figure out the optimum is going to take awhile, but the fundamental thing about the 350 (ppm target), and the reason that it completely changes the ball game, is precisely the fact that it's less than we have now.

"Even if the optimum turns out to be 325 or 300 or something else, we've got to go through 350 to get there.

"So we know the direction now that we've got to go, and it's fundamentally different. It means that we really have to start to act almost immediately.

"Even if we cut off coal emissions entirely, CO2 would still get up to at least 400, maybe 425, and then we're going to have to draw it down, and we're almost certainly going to have to do it within decades."

But there is time. The oceans and the ice sheets react so slowly to changes in the air temperature that you can overshoot the limit for awhile, so long as you get the temperature back down before irreversible changes set in. Stop at 450 ppm in 25 years' time, then get back below 400 in another 25, and down to 350 by, say, 2075. It could work: there is still one last exit for the Holocene.

Green bags

I hope that, by this stage in human evolution, everyone is aware of the importance of avoiding plastic bags (whether we do it is another matter). Of course, corporate evolution is never far behind human evolution (or is it one step ahead?)—so they sell reusable bags for about $1 each, always plastered with brand names.

Those mass-produced bags are good because they’re sturdy, plus their shape is perfect for packing groceries. But what if I don’t want to be a walking advertisement for one of the two major supermarket chains in Australia? Or what if I just don’t want to look like everyone else in the shopping centre?

Well, I have two choices. I can pay a bit more for bags with cool messages that I want to promote. Or, I can make my own. Then I can personalise them with different fabric prints (or just buy the cheap off-cuts, whichever), alter the size if I want, and I can choose materials that aren't made with plastics, like the mass-produced bags are.

So here is my step-by-step pictorial guide for making your own green bags....

What you need (for one bag):

2 squares – 30 cm x 30 cm
3 rectangles – 30 cm x 22 cm
2 handles – 10 cm x 60 cm
A bit of cardboard or stiff plastic - 28 cm x 20 cm
Needle
Thread
Optional: pins, iron, and/or sewing machine. These will make the process much, much quicker. But, even sewing by hand doesn’t take long for these simple bags.

What you do:

Cut your fabric (good luck doing this if you have a playful cat!) and decide which side you want to face out. Mark the OPPOSITE side with pencil or chalk to remind yourself later.

Take two rectangles. Place them together with both outsides facing in—you should be able to see the pencil marks. Line up the edges and sew about ½ a centimetre in along one of the short sides. Use a fairly strong stitch so the bag doesn’t fall apart when it’s loaded full of canned food or soy milk. Do the same thing with the other rectangle, and then with the two squares. Once you’ve sewn all four sides, you should have something that looks like this (forgive my uneven stitches, I was sewing by hand):

Next, hem the tops of each side panel. I didn’t do this on these yellow bags because I lined up the cutting just right and had un-cut sides of fabric along the tops.

Take two adjacent side panels and line them up, then sew them together. Repeat for the other four corners.

For the handles—Fold each 10x60cm strip of fabric in half (outsides in). Iron or press down with a ruler to make a crease. Sew both sides together along the length. Use your fingers or a pencil to turn the straps inside out.

Attach the straps to the bag—on the square sides, 2 to 4 centimetres from the corner, and 5 centimetres from the top. Sew these on strongly so the handles don’t break off when you’re walking home from the grocery store. Make sure the handles aren’t twisted before you attach the other end.

Once both handles are attached, you’re basically done. Stick the cardboard or plastic down in the bottom to make the bag sturdier, and go buy some veggies!

As you can see, we’ve been on a bit of a self-sufficiency kick lately, especially with the new bread maker, and with a few other things that I will reveal to you all shortly.

Multigrain bread baking in the bread machine.

In addition to continually reducing my reliance on corporations, I’ve also just been to a day and a half seminar on finishing my PhD on time... and spending so much time blogging isn’t the way to do it! So I’ll have to apologise in advance because I’m fully intending to get cracking on my work so my presence on other blogs will be noticeably declined, and my posting here may well become a bit more sporadic. I will still be around, just not as constantly. So keep your fingers crossed that the next 18 months go smoothly and I’m one of the few people who actually submits her PhD without extending beyond three years.