Ratna's Story

Ratna's Chicken Supplier

This week, Ratna shares her experience with Zero Waste in China. I always enjoy getting a point of view from far, far away;) Thanks for sharing with us, Ratna!

"I am from Bali but have been living in Beijing for almost 12 years. I have seen how bicycles are replaced by cars, aluminum containers by plastic ones, water thermos by bottle water, home style cooking by McDonald, traditional snacks by packaged biscuits, reusable chopsticks by disposable wood ones, traditional market by Carrefour, saving food by wasting food and early morning Tai Chi by late noon hangover. I have also read about the rise of diabetes, cholesterol, obesity, heart attacks and other life style related illness. In Bali I have seen the river and beaches filled by plastic, more of them every year.

Then I came across you in Second Act and I thought wow… that is kind of extreme. I have always thought that our household is quite environmental conscious. We only take the car for groceries shopping to the market and one of the days on the weekend to take the 3 kids to their gymnastic class. During the financial crisis we had to forgo the taxi (privilege 1 in Beijing) and it is normal now to take the bus and subway or simply walk. We are never keen on shopping, which is limited at the change of season if the kids outgrown their clothes or when ours are getting too discolored (from black to grey). What 10 years old girls can wear we try to pass to our 5 years old son the rest we donate. We always take our bags to the market, our part time helper (privilege 2) cooks most meals. We limit boxed fruit juice and cookies, we don’t eat canned food. We only fly twice a year to visit family (in France and Bali) I fly more for more work. I thought that was pretty good.

After I watched your video and checked on your blog via VPN (all blogs are banned in China) I started to look at what we already do and try to do better. So for the course of a few months now we have gone back to soap bar for washing but still have shampoo & conditioner bottles, toothpaste, deodorant and cosmetics (for work only). I started to take my Tupper ware that are usually sitting in the cabinet to the market and put the meat as well as cheese, bacon, croissant from deli/bakery in them. I made clothes bag from old Halloween costume for the rice, egg (carefully) and beans. I use the Nutella jars for the nuts. Kids refuse to forgo Nutella for now, but we agree to limit the amount we consume monthly, let me know if you have the recipe. Clothes that are no longer appropriate to be donated became rag to clean floors and counters. I am using soap nut when I do the laundry on the weekend, I still can’t convince my helper to do so during the week days. I am now checking on how to make jam as we have a lot of jars from those strawberries and blackberries jam and getting those spray bottles for green cleaning solutions.

My husband and I are taking it one step at the time; we change a few of small habits and make sure the new one is becoming a habit instead of an effort. I can’t for now commit time to jar tomatoes, making jams and other things as I am working full time, but I am making an effort to bake more cookies on the weekend, kids are having fun and love the taste.

There are a lot of obstacles to do zero waste in Beijing as it is embracing consumerism. Second hand clothes shops are uncommon (and not allowed by government), buying in bulk for vinegar, soy sauce and liquid things is not easy. Dry ingredients are easier to buy in bulk. As we are not sure of the quality of the milk, we have to stick to milk in bottles or brick. We can’t refill our wine bottles, so have to recycle them. We still have lot of paper, books, crayons etc, but we are committed not to buy anymore crayon until they are all done with. It is a process and we are trying.

I just came out of the closet to my friends here, received a lot of surprises face and comments like “See how long you gonna last”. I am hoping that by showing that reducing waste is not that painful maybe they will follow suit. The other day in the market some of the other shoppers took notice of my container and said, “ That is a very good idea, we should bring ours too’. Thank you for your weekly story, they remind me on the goal and keep me motivated."

Our new look

Those of you who haven't picked up our latest issue yet may not know that we've undergone a bit of a redesign, courtesy of the lovely team at Inhouse Design. We've put some of the opening spreads from the features in this issue below as a tease. The first is a story about the artist Andrew Barber, with photography taken at his Auckland studio by Jeremy Toth.

On the western shores of Lake Taupo is this bach, a former dental clinic sensitively adapted by architects Rick Pearson and Briar Green, and photographed by Simon Wilson.

Some people have been asking, what's the difference? Good point, as we have opened stories with two full-page images many times in the past. The difference on these pages is our new fonts, but in the body of the magazine we also have a new five-column grid (the underlying organisational structure for the layout), as well as different treatments of small devices like bylines and picture captions. Not enormous changes, and the intention was for it to be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary - so if you haven't noticed, that's OK!

Brian MacKay-Lyons: Tickets on sale now!

The international member of our Home of the Year jury, Canadian architect Brian MacKay-Lyons, will visit New Zealand in February to help choose the winner of the Home of the Year award (the award results will be published in our April/May 2012 issue).

He'll be giving talks in Auckland (on February 8) and Wellington (on February 9) when he's here, and tickets are now on sale at the link here. Brian is a leading proponent of regionalist architecture, as well as being a sheep farmer and sea kayaker, so his talks promise to be fascinating (Architects get 10 CPD points for attending.) Thanks to our Home of the Year partner Altherm Window Systems for making Brian's visit possible.

That's Brian below, and a shot of one of his buildings by Greg Richardson. For more information about Brian and his work, you can visit his website here.

Our new cover

Our new cover features an outdoor room on Great Barrier Island, designed by Lance and Nicola Herbst of Herbst Architects and photographed by Jackie Meiring. We really like it and hope you do too - subscribers should receive their copies today, and the magazine will be on newsstands on Monday December 5.

Our new issue also features a slick black cottage by Fearon Hay Architects on Great Barrier Island, a colourful, 50s-inspired bach on the Kapiti Coast by Parsonson Architects, New Zealand-born architect David Howell's glamorous New York apartment, a former dental clinic reinvented as a bach at Lake Taupo by Rick Pearson and Briar Green, and lots more. The graphic design boffins among you will also be interested to know that this issue features a redesign led by Arch MacDonnell at Inhouse Design. Let us know your thoughts on it...

Frustrating yearly tally, cheered up by Solar

Yep! By the look of the blog, you’ve guessed it! We are getting solar!

Solar has been on our wish list for years but with Scott quitting his job in 2008 to take on a sustainability start-up, our financial priorities have laid elsewhere (mostly survival and mortgage) and our dream put on the back burner. But the incredible cumulative savings that this lifestyle offers, has finally afforded us a solar installation! And I am so excited about it.

It comes at a perfect time in our ZeroWaste journey.

I looked at our yearly landfill tally last month and realized that we hit a plateau. Compared with the previous year, our solid waste reduction is no longer dramatically getting smaller – and thankfully, not getting bigger either ;). There are things we simply cannot refuse, reduce, or find used. There are things that create waste simply from maintaining a house and tending our bodies.

Our tally this past year (Oct 2010-Oct 2011), comprised of:

• State Farm car insurance cards (laminated paper).
• Five tiny paint rollers and masking tape from a fall paint project (stripes in living room)
• An 5-year old plastic toothbrush that I have used/worn-out for cleaning grout.
• Packaging of home repair/ electrical items
• Plastic cork wrapper of some wine bottles
• Photo (from a birthday party invitation)
• Backing of postal stamps
• Plastic sealers from Scott's contact lens solution
• Couple of itchy clothes tags
• Plastic tie from a pair of shoes
• Plastic hanging straps from a dress
• Plastic casing from Romex wire used in an electrical repair
• Scotch tape bits
• Plastic"size" strip from a new pair of jeans
• Plastic warning tag from an electrical cord
• Plastic wrap from a friend's leftover dish (could not refuse her generous lasagna gift, am weak!)
• Plastic price tag ties from clothes
• Some fruit stickers (from occasionally missing the farmer's market, where I can avoid them)
• Few bubble gums from guests
• Tiny other things that do not really have names ;) The bulk of it being soft plastics from home maintenance.

As with our previous tally (which Sunset took away in October last year), the jar obviously does not include the "active discards" of the few things that I have sent back to manufacturers with a suggestion letter, or the occasional candy wrappers (including 10 from last year's Halloween) that people have given our kids and I have sent to Terra Cycle (TerraCycle, Inc, Attn: Candy Wrapper Brigade, 121 New York Ave, Trenton, NJ 08638).

Apart from State Farm insurance cards (who have switched to cardboard cards since our last complaint!), much of our waste is recurrent and will undoubtedly recur. As we all know Zero Waste today is not technically feasible, and I can say that my family is definitely stuck on this plateau. Plateauing is a natural part of the process, I guess. But energy efficient transportation and solar offer ways of improving other types of waste and provide me with much continued waste reduction satisfaction! ;)

We had heard that solar had dramatically dropped in price, and so with our finances in recovery, we took estimates from two different providers last month. Both considered our current and future energy consumption, our finances and space available for the panels. One of them repeatedly mentioned the “free” included Ipad2 as a sales pitch, the other offered a better financial deal given our parameters. Guess which one we chose? Refuse, Refuse, Refuse. Shopping is voting. And I love it when my refusal is rewarded by financial savings from choosing the opposing option.

We are just in the beginning phases (I found out that solar is not an overnight installation), but I already dream of eliminating TP!