Stay Tuned to Your Eco Behaviour

August 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Do you think about everything little action you take during your day? The Buddhists often refer to making your daily trivial activities into a meditation. The idea is that you can break yourself away from that automaton behaviour of bad little habits and turn them into good ones, both mental and physical.

Making sure your habitual life is sustainable requires a tuning in to your daily habits. Do you keep all the lights switched off during the day? Do you refuse that plastic bag when you are buying one item from the shop?

Is your mind tuned to Sustainable FM? Before you buy that car make the decision to put much more emphasis on it’s fuel consumption statistics. Before you order those nice looking river pebbles for your landscaping ask where they have come from. The man-made ones look exactly like the ones taken from mother nature and the price difference is small. This is a shift in thinking, a re-tuning of your mind to a sustainable one. This is smart sustainable thinking rather than habitual thinking.

The irony of sustainability is that it is so easy and so hard at the same time. Most of us are armed with more than enough knowledge to become sustainable but doing it is another thing. We all know how to lose weight - eat less and exercise more, but we don’t do it. Getting green is much the same as getting fit.

Many of us are becoming more sustainable, but is ‘more’ enough? Do we have the time to be slow changers? I’ve been a little slow at change I must admit. Breaking old habits takes time. Despite some good decisions and changes I have much more work to do before claiming to live a sustainable life. Most of that work is mental, from which the physical changes will follow. It’s about prioritising sustainable activities ahead of other things in life.

It is also about becoming brain fit when it comes to sustainable thinking. Making the right choices in the moment, at the point of sale. The right decisions such as deciding to walk or drive to the local shops, to buy the free range eggs or the cage ones. Lots of seemingly little decisions have huge knockon effects when accumulated over decades of behaviour and consumption.

Tuning in every day to your Sustainable FM station will help you create good habits.

Posted by marc | Filed Under August 08, Sustainability Space 

Simplicity is Sustainables Best Friend

July 1, 2008 | 4 Comments

Society has somehow decided that simple is bad in many situations. There is a fight to give simplicity back its good name. Simplicity is a very sustainable and freeing existence for people to undertake.

Engaging simplicity can mean the little things become bigger and more relevant in your life. Smelling that rose, having an extra hour downtime just to sit and play with your children are the pay-offs of the simple life. The secret is re-training your brain away from the ’should do’ and ’should have’ mentality.

The Should Do and Should Have Mentality

Why should you be doing X? Why do you need to have Y? In part it’s your survival instinct. It’s also guilt and reward. Whenever you fall for the ’shoulds’ it is usually reward related. A satiated feeling, desires fulfilled and the like. Your past experiences are also feeding your thinking. These often relate to survival instincts. Survival in this new world though, not the life threatening kind. All of those thoughts are about the past, not the present, not right now.

‘Should have’ and ’should do’ have costs. Apart from complexity in life, they bring more to deal with, to move, clean and lose. Then there is the big one, the cost to the environment and to your quality of life when you fill it with stuff. Stuff can give you satiated feelings. The getting of stuff feels good, but it wanes. New stuff feels old very quickly and that satiated feeling goes only to be replaced with things like guilt. Why did I buy that polo neck jumper? What was I thinking, what a waste of money. I can’t just throw it out, maybe I should give it to my friend. It can then become a burden such as storage, cleaning, lack of use, boredom. Think carefully before buying things. Having less stuff means you have less burdens down the track.

Simplicity has a bad name

Why has simplicity been given a bad name? Words like simpleton and descriptive phrases like ‘he’s a bit simple’ haven’t helped. There is a tendency to tie simplicity to stupidity. This has been born out of a form of intellectual and material elitism that society has somehow snuck into our characters in varying degrees (me included). Don’t be mistaken, complexity is good and so is simplicity. They each have their pros and cons for different situations.

image copyright 2008 Leah Maclean

Sea and Tree Changers

The sea/tree change revolution of recent years is a yearning for a simplicity in life. They are almost a manifestation of the human desire for simplicity that is within many people. They are fighting back, fighting for simplicities good name to return. The renouncing of the more complex lifestyle we wanted and created in earlier years of our lives.

Even simplicity has its negatives. The tree change can cost you proximity to family. Not having any stuff can cost you experiences. If I didn’t have my digital camera or my iPod I definitely wouldn’t be as happy about my life.

Stuff, Lots and Lots of Stuff

The trend towards a complex life in the last century is having its costs. The want for stuff to create experience and entertainment. Just buy what you need and the odd thing you want. Re-use, re-cycle and delay buying things when you can. I think this is about balance, about discerning purchases and decisions about the stuff in your life. If anything sings simplicity loudest to me its the phrase ‘quality not quantity’.

Thrift is a tool you can use to create a sustainable life and it also conveniently leads to less stuff and a simpler existence. Even if you have (or make) a lot of money in your career or business it doesn’t mean you should spend it. Give it away, enjoy the experience of helping others who need the money more or better still invest in philanthropic projects that recycles the money for use again and again.

Food Simplicity

I think one of my personal favourite experiences of simplicity is making pasta from scratch. I do this quite often with the kids. One egg and 100 grams of flour makes a pasta dough. The kids roll it through an old style pasta machine (you can buy them from most kitchenware shops very cheaply). This flattens the dough into sheets a bit like lasagna sheets and then a second run through a separate roller on the machine cuts the sheet into ribbons. Let them use blunt knives to cut the dough, roll it. Who needs all that play dough?

When you experience the simplicity of making food from the basics you are also being sustainable because you aren’t creating consumer pull for products like packaged pasta (and play dough machines). If you’re really keen you could even have some chickens in the backyard and cut the egg manufacturers out of the cycle.

This approach can be extended to your normal daily life. Changing you food style to a first principals approach is very rewarding. Experience what you eat, the taste, texture, smells - the whole food experience. A symptom of this approach is that you will buy less packaged foods and buy more fruit, veg and meat produce. When you cook from first principles you’ll notice you consume less packaging, the food tastes better, your fat intake may drop, the flavour of foods can become earthy and rustic. Food becomes an appreciation not a chore, it’s no longer about heating but about creating. Sustainability through simple, healthy, low carbon footprint ingredients.

Learning about simplicity from nature

Nature often demonstrates ways of existence the human species ignores. Nature is a contradiction. It is so extremely simple in many respects while at the same time being very complex. Simple strategies are enabled through complex bodily functions and in the context of a complex ecosystem. The lesson here is that just because society, the economy and life appears so complex you can create a simple life. After all animals remind us that life is really about making sure you eat, sleep and keep warm at its simplest survival level. Everything else is a bonus.

I don’t know where to start?

Don’t make it a project or a change, it’s unlikely to happen. The second you do that you will also find reasons not to make the change to a simpler life. Why not just keep living how you are and make better choices as you go. That’s all, just make better choices. Choose not to buy that extra pair of shoes. Choose to give someone a living plant as a gift instead of flowers which will be dead in a week. Choose to work a normal day and earn a little less.

The choice is yours all through your life and in my opinion it’s a simple one.

Posted by marc | Filed Under July 08, Sustainability Space 

A Lasting Freedom

June 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment

What is it to be free? In it’s simplest form you could say it’s simply free will. Physical, mental and spiritual free will being a base human experience of Freedom.

Sustainability is all about lasting indefinitely. Anyone or anything oppressed or without freedom is not likely to have a sustainable existence. Be it a species, a minority group or you stuck in a life you may not fully and wholeheartedly love.

To obtain a sustainable existence socially, economically and environmentally you really need to operate from a space of freedom. It’s actually not that hard to get to this point, a big piece of it is seeing what it is that oppresses you.

Freedom from Benchmarks

Do you suffer from keeping up with the Jones syndrome? Are you climbing the corporate ladder? Are you constantly comparing yourself to other people you know or read about in magazines? Well if you are doing these things you are benchmarking yourself. Benchmarking might be owning you, enslaving you.

Have you ever met someone who doesn’t care what people think of them, their extrovert behaviour, their eccentric character? It’s refreshing, it has a freedom and a full of life feeling around their existence. A sustainable existence in character you might say.

If you constantly listen to that shoulder devil saying “you should have achieved X by Y and U haven’t” then let it go! Tell that shoulder devil to get lost. Be powerful about it. Freedom often comes from being powerful. A few people like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela spring to mind.

Have yourself operate above the level of the rat race. You will probably operate a little slower, with a little more relaxed attitude. No doubt you will consume less, need less, want less. This way of living will have you spending more time with family. For some it means working with the environment not consuming it. For others it’s about more time for yourself, living your life for yourself and not for everyone else sucking energy and life from you. Ironically as you gain more time for yourself, you find yourself wanting to help others in need, the environment, people and causes. You can create a very sustainable life, you are the creator.

The Freedom of Self Expression

Why do you have to do the job you are doing? Why do you have to wait for retirement to learn to paint? You don’t. Expectations of things needing to be a certain way, of life happening a certain way, of your story of your life going a certain way can stifle your self expression and oppress you to a point of never creating a revolution in how you live your life.

The rat race can steal your time away from you. Choosing to be self expressed in your choice of career, in your hobbies, sport or artistic endeavours can lead to a job that you love. All of a sudden you might just find yourself making a living doing something you love, that you are passionate about. Your work becomes your play, your work life balance becomes sustainable.

Make sure you’re the puppet master of your life. Recognise when others are pulling your strings or if it’s your shoulder devil benchmarking you against everyone else around you.

Freedom of conscience

Underneath many of us know we can do better in creating a sustainable life. I covered this in last month’s article. When you can operate your life knowing you aren’t a drain on other people, the environment or your bank account you will feel the sustainable existence that can bring happiness and self expression to your life. Making sure you don’t live at the expense of others, that you buy ethical goods, that you don’t throw the potato peels in the bin instead of the compost, will give you a freedom of conscience every day. Knowing you are being true to yourself, allowing your ’self’ to ‘express’ can and will alter your life.

Posted by marc | Filed Under June 08, Sustainability Space 

The ‘Sus’ in Sustainable

May 1, 2008 | 8 Comments

Praying for a Sustainable Future by Marc LehmannSociety holds much suspicion toward sustainability. In the back of many minds out there I’m fairly certain that life may not be quite as balanced with nature as we would all like it to be. This isn’t just about how society is impacting the balance in nature as a whole but also about our personal and our family’s impact. It is hard to live a happy and balanced life while a personal responsibility to mother earth goes unattended.

Balance is a symptom of how you live your life. There are work and home life balances. Body, mind and spirit balances. Create and consume balances. Balance will be a bi-product of how your commitment to these aspects are distributed in your life and in society. We will focus on the create and consume balance.

What are we suspicious of?

There is an underlying suspicion about businesses, consumers and the media around the topic of sustainability. Greenwashing is a term that has evolved from this thinking. It relates to the level of authenticity that exists in being green. Business is not alone in this area.

How sustainable is someone who composts 100kg of food waste each year but burns 20,000kg of carbon into the atmosphere through energy consumption? How sustainable is the person who feels good about installing a water tank whilst running a 2,000 watt air conditioning unit? We know in the back of our minds that this doesn’t balance. Guilt around our own actions and/or suspicion about others green credentials are present.

Removing the ‘Sus’ from sustainable. Getting real about sustainability.

In order to remove the ’sus’ from sustainable we really need a re-balancing in our lives where we consume less and create more for the environment. So installing a water tank is a great step in the right direction. However, lightening the scales on the consumption side is far more effective in re-balancing.

You can liken your life to a big elephant running through a jungle wildly wiping out a lot of small creatures with your big feet as you go and eating a lot of food. You can choose to tame that elephant in you, tread carefully on the earth and help the jungle and it’s little creatures survive. A balanced sustainable existence.

When it gets down to it, many of us are really committed to consuming

Most people living in industrialised countries live their life with a very strong commitment to consuming. Now that may seem like a strange choice of words but it is real. Your real commitments in life are displayed in your actions. Your consumption is witnessed and accounted for by the debit column of your bank account. At the level of society, it is the impact witnessed in the natural world.

The harsh reality is that if you want a large well furnished home, lots of nice clothes and world travel then you are committed to consumption. Don’t feel bad, consuming isn’t necessarily a bad thing, after all it is a requirement for survival. So the question we ask ourselves should be whether the level of consumption in our lives is too high?

If you can lead a life of buying, owning and consuming less then you are altering your create versus consume balance. The bi-product of which is a re-balancing to a more sustainable way of living.

Altering the Create versus Consume Balance

How sustainable your life is can be viewed as how much you consume versus your activities that give back to the earth and its creatures. What you create may be a business that is sustainable, it might be volunteer work cleaning up waterways or bushland, it may be in a scientific endeavour.

Weighing up what you create versus what you consume will help you observe your balance in this area. Let’s be realistic, it is a very tough balance to achieve and is not without effort.

The consumption fly wheel turns fast and with much momentum. It’s hard to slow and the nasty twist is that it is easy to accelerate with higher income facilitating that satiating feeling we get from fulfilling on our wants and desires.

Annie Leonard talks about consumption in the story of stuff in a wonderful and visual way.

It isn’t easy being green

Reducing consumption isn’t easy. Leah highlighted this last month in her post concerning the area of being green in technology. The world is geared to work against your efforts to reduce consumption. To add to our burden of change, consumption is a habit and could even be regarded as an addiction for some. Habits lead to an almost certain future for all but the strongest of minds. Tools can help break habits, one at a time. Radical changes are hard to achieve but small incremental changes in lifestyle over time can work well. WWF’s Futuremakers website is a classic example of a weblog, a social tool, being used to publicise new and better ways of living in a sustainable way.

To achieve a balanced life in the area of sustainability the aim must be put good environmental habits into practise whilst also reducing consumption.

This is easier said than done. Humans naturally don’t want to give up what they have. The creature comforts, those satiating feelings are very tough to say no to. So how do we break this almost certain future we are in? Setting yourself a new commitment or a new passion that drives you when you get up each day is the answer. Passion and commitment to creating a new life, a green change, a fresh approach has overwhelming power and excitement attached to it. The change isn’t always easy at the start but in the end it’s clearly worth it. Just ask all the tree-changers and sea-changers.

For some this passion or commitment is in activism, for others it may mean adopting a minimalist lifestyle with less possessions. The thing that will have this passion remain alive and well is being sure to choose a commitment that you love and can become who you are and what other people know you as.

Rewards are required, after all, the old addictions and habits of consumption have their rewards. So this is a battle.

Less Stuff Means Less Stress

The feeling of reduced responsibility is one such reward. Less stuff means less stress, less fear of loss, a simplification of life. By the nature of frame of reference, the things that you do have when you have less things will feel far more valuable. You can buy less but at a higher quality. A far more sustainable way of consuming.

Freedom from Eco-Guilt

We all peddle guilt. Some do it with others, but most of us do it to ourselves to some degree. By changing you lifestyle and re-balancing your consumption versus creation equation the guilt passes.

Less materialism ironically gives your life a richness

Seize the opportunity to have your existence on this earth occur more in your mind and spirit than in the stuff that you have. A liberation from materialism is one of the most powerful experiences a human can have.

So this is about a balance

Consumption brings much joy to life. It might not make you happy but it can help stop you being unhappy so there is a place for it in life. At its most basic level we have needs and to fulfill them we must consume. However the social habits of consumption we have created have gone far beyond the needs into the land of the wants and this is where the balance is lost, our life is taken away from our control and our very existence becomes so dependent on this earth and the stuff we make from it. Take ownership of your lifestyle and reposition yourself for a balanced life.

Posted by marc | Filed Under May 08, Sustainability Space