B No comment.
c No. but I got harangued by those really enthusiastic people in the street with the clipboards so I think I have a direct debit now to Oxfam or someone. Does that count?
How many items of electrical equipment do you have in your home?
A Enough to keep me self-sufficient. no more.
B Enough to keep a dozen wriggly teenage boys distracted for a week.
c Enough to keep me distracted for an evening.
How many items are there in your bathroom cabinet (including medicines and beauty products)?
A Enough to keep me looking presentable.
B Enough to furnish a small branch of Boots. C Enough to keep Christina Aguilera looking presentable.
Do you ever shop second-hand?
A Yes. Charity shops and car boot sales can uncover a host of bargains.
B I bought a pair of hoverboots off eBay once but they didn't work and the bloke wouldn't give me my money back. 270 down the bloody drain.
C Now and again. I know that eBay is highly addictive and there‘s a danger of buying stuff you don't actually need.
Do you take baths?
A Only in Highland streams or lakes.
3 Bubbles. boats. rubber ducks: the works. c No. I take a quick shower.
2499-70566
All As
You are a recycling GOD. Not so much low- impact as no-impact lifestyle. You're probably reading a second-hand copy of The List now. aren't you? There may be little use in you reading any further as you probably know it all already. Seriously though, excellent stuff. you just have to convert the rest of the world now.
Mostly As
Well done, you‘re definitely on the right track. living a more sustainable lifestyle than the average aerosol abuser. But there's room for improvement. You could make a big difference by eating more local food. switching to green electricity and recycling or composting your waste.
Mostly 88
It's time you had a closer look at the way your life impacts on the environment. You may be stopping short of chaining yourself to the reactor of your local nuclear power plant but there are plenty of easy things to do that will make you greener. as well as saving you money. Focus on transport. shopping and food. Stan sharing lifts or cycling, look for local food and buy goods that are made to last.
Mostly C:
You live like the average person in the UK. but this isn‘t the best news. given that our carbon emissions are four times higher than they should be if we were consuming our equal share of the world's resources. You've at least got some environmental awareness. but you're not always putting it into practise. Your fairly high-impact lifestyle could do with quite a few changes. Try putting out that fire of car tyres in your back yard and cutting down your shopping, use public transpOrt more often, switch to green electricity and buy more local produce.
OOIDS
A house built entirely of waste need not resemble Stig of the Dump’s ancestral pile. Allan Radcliffe visits the Earthship, a building of the future.
nyone who enjoyed a
misspent youth in
front of the telly knows how to construct a house. a stable or a mini-gym for their dolls and plastic figures out of discarded washing up liquid bottles and the inevitable sticky back plastic. But imagine building your entire home out of things that the everyday folks leave behind . . .
The once-bizarre notion of a house constructed entirely from recycled waste and powered by renewable energy sources such as wind. water and solar power has now been realised several times over. There are currently around 2()()() ‘Iiarthships‘ (the name inspired by the seafaring spirit of ‘making do' with whatever is to hand) around the world. And green-minded Scots need travel no further than Kinghorn in Fife to visit the latest of these ‘passive solar buildings with thermal mass‘.
I arrive at the Fife Earthship‘s beautiful lochside location expecting an angular. space-age bubble to rise forbiddineg from the ground. Instead I almost march
straight past an innocuous rectangular building with floor-to-ceiling windows.
I‘m greeted by Joeann Cantillon of Sustainable Communities Initiatives. the small charity that runs the Earthship. ‘We want to encourage people to think of waste as a resource rather than something to be thrown away.‘ she explains. To this end the charity operates the Earthship as a visitor centre and runs creative waste workshops for school parties and community groups. creating cushions. masks and puppets from rags and fashioning windbreaks. bus stops. even greenhouses from plastic bottles. Cantillon shows me around the house and illuminates its workings and historical genesis. The Earthship was the brainchild of American architect Mike Reynolds who. concerned about the squandering of natural resources. developed the concept of building with waste. specifically with cans. bottles and earth-packed tyres. As Cantillon outlines. there is no shortage of car tyres as a potential building block for future Earthships. ‘The last statistic showed we have a stockpile of 200m tyres in Britain alone. and there are two tyres being disposed of ev ery second.‘
The Fife Iiarthship is the
first of its kind to be located in such a wet climate. Yet the underlying principles are the same as Reynolds' blueprint — the ability for the building to store its own heat. passive solar design (that's south- facing windows to you and me) and autonomous systems (running electricity. heating and sewage treatment using natural. sustainable resources). The house catches its own water supply froth rainwater in a bowl-shaped roof and treats and contains its own sewage in planter beds. which can potentially nourish food for the household. The house blends in very well with its surroundings. which include a rustic mill. But there‘s no reason to confine Earthships to rural areas. As Cantillon reveals. a second. much larger. British Earthship is nearing its completion in Brighton. Inspired. I catch the train back to Edinburgh and return to my own rubbish-infested flat with the magical ‘three Rs‘ (‘reduce. reuse and recycle’) replaying endlessly in my head. Now. I’m sure I can find a use for that stockpile of old Coke cans . . .
www.5ci-scotland.org.ukl earthship.html
26 May—9 Jun 2005 THI LIST 1’