Carbon Credit Collector

Apple pie tastes so good, even better when you’ve made it yourself. This weeks theme was shopping and packaging, ideas had been tossed around about minimising packaging, buying eco-friendly products and organics but not all of these went down well with the flat. A debated issue here at The Bunker was organics and was there really any merit to it? The general concensus was that (besides it being more expensive than other options), just because a product has oraganic written on the side of it did not mean it was more sustainably grown or environmentally friendly. Not to knock those who swear by the stuff but its just not for us. Instead, our approach was to minimise packaging and ultilise more of what we had locally avaliable to us.

We stopped buying any fruit to force us to make use of the excellent apple and peach trees in the back yard which are still teeming with fruit. We attempted to make apple pie twice which came out really well and was a big hit. We’ve also got our hands on some preserving jars and have got plenty of peaches stashed away to go on our weetbix for the winter. We have also inherited a fruit dehydrator with the intention of trying to dry some apples. All these things we have done are aimed at reducing our need on packaging and transportation of goods by doing it all ourselves.
Shopping wise, we use the fabric bags and do little things like not using those little clear plastic bags for fruit and vege. We’ve also looked at buying eco-friendly cleaning products although have agreed to use up what we already have first as simply throwing them away or leaving them in the back of the cupboard would be an even worse waste.

In the special project department we have managed to get the wind turbine up and running (see our previous blog), built a pedal generator which can power our TV or anything else under 300Watts and dabbled with producing our own biofuel. As a note on the biofuel section: We managed to distil enough ethonol to mix with the mower and leave a little aside to experiment with. The mower (which we got from SuperShed for $30) ran on the new mix although we hit a hurdle when oil started spurting from the exhaust. We’re thinking there was probably a very good reason why the mower was thrown away as it appears that the piston ring has split. Althoug we never managed to finish mowing our lawn we still think we achieved something pretty special and have proved the concept.

Eco-my-flat has been an interesting experience, when our group first signed up to it we agreed if we were going to do it then we had to make it fun. Rather than take a reactive response to climate awareness, we have tried to be pro-active by coming up with ideas that not only reduce our effect on the environment but actually do something to improve it. As three of us are training to be engineers we felt these projects were ideal as some day we might be developing these ideas further and doing it for the masses. Thanks to everyone who helped organise and run Eco-My-Flat and although we wont be at Canterbury next year hope that you keep this project going as it was well worth the effort.

Thanks again
The guys fromThe Bunker.