EcoHome is a typical Newcastle weatherboard home that has been retrofitted to show householders how they can reduce their environmental impacts through simple changes at home. The home is owned by the Newcastle City Council and rented by members of the community group management committee.
The project originated in 1990 when John Sutton read a book about an integral-urban house in California, which was initiated in the 1970s and sought to educate the community about living in a more energy efficient manner. John discussed the project with Bruce Peterson from the Hunter Water Corporation and between them they developed the idea for an eco-house in Newcastle.
By January 1992 a working group was meeting regularly to develop a plan of action. Six task groups were established to focus on the following areas of responsibility: energy efficiency, water efficiency, funding (including sponsorship), lifestyle (including recycling and waste minimisation), permaculture and organic gardening, and communication and education (to develop programs to publicise the project). Each group was to report back by the end of April so that a formal approach could be made to council and the State Government.
John Sutton was elected to Newcastle City Council in September 1991, and in 1992 he was able to gain council support for the project. A council owned house which had previously been used by the caretaker for Harker Oval became vacant and council gave a "peppercorn" lease to the Integral Urban House Project. This was on the condition that it be used to help educate the public on how to live in a more sustainable manner.
The house was acquired in 1992 and much of the renovation was done by people under the Landcare and Environment Action Program (LEAP) scheme. Much of this work involved the laying of a thermal slab, in order to keep the house cooler during the day and warmer at night. In September the Newcastle Times reported that the first residents, Kelly Boyle and Bill Hersel, would move into the house in November 1994.
The current residents are Sue Hill and her young daughter. "Simplicity is the best way. It's not about having wandangled technology. It's about trying to make your life as simple as possible. We've got everything that a normal household has." Sue estimates that her total energy use, including transport, is about one third of that used by an average Australian household.
Any home is ecologically sustainable if it can comfortably house its occupants and exist in total harmony with the global ecology indefinitely. Ultimately, sustainability means securing our own future, our children's future and the future of the bio-diverse ecology on which we all depend.
EcoHome at 67A Hobart Rd New Lambton
EcoHome demonstrates viable options for minimising urban impact. Although a vast quantity of information already exists, there is a gap between this information and the many people who need it. Information may be too technical, ill-adapted to local conditions, or difficult to locate. EcoHome plays a vital role in relaying practical information to the community. The motivation behind the project was the need to provide the community with a working demonstration of sustainability options, in order to assist people in making changes in their own lives. EcoHome's strategies fall under the four banners: house design, garden design, product choice and lifestyle choice.
EcoHome's building design largely involves consideration of a floor-plan and orientation. It takes advantage of on-site conditions to provide superior climate control and people-friendly layout at low financial cost. It saves millions of litres of water and thousands of tons of CO2 emissions. The areas most used by the residents (living room, kitchen, and laundry) all face North, which provides the most sunlight for the house. The house also has a grey water system, which recycles water used in the house back into the garden.
EcoHome's garden design provides a beautiful, functional, low maintenance, low cost outdoor living area. The set up of the garden, which involves the grey water system and recycles the household water, is showing that even within your own personal water consumption it is possible to not only save but reuse water. Most food used by the residents is grown in the garden, and anything that needs to be bought is organic or local. There are chutes in the kitchen that lead straight outside for recycling and compost.
EcoHome's product choice involves choosing products that have minimal impact on the global ecology. It can save rivers, oceans, soils, air, and forests. Most of the furniture and utensils in the house are second hand. The laundry detergent used is made entirely of plant extracts.
EcoHome's lifestyle choice is about lifestyle options. It means we can often save the planet at the same time as we save money. This may involve riding a bike instead of driving a car, or for longer distances using public transport. EcoHome can advise on Eco friendly water use, land use, energy use, temperature control, waste management, personal hygiene, products and food.
The resident who occupies EcoHome provides the funding for the day-to-day running expenses for the house. Extra funding comes from donations by individuals and groups who visit the house, from money paid by members of the Friends of EcoHome club, and from selling products grown in the Eco garden.
If you are thinking of building a new home, renovating an old one, or would like to make some changes in your life, EcoHome can advise you how to do it in an Eco friendly way. EcoHome can provide a user-friendly fact sheet and/or can refer you to more specialised advisers who can also help in creation of your own EcoHome. The home is open for public inspection on the first Sunday of each month, and at other times for groups by appointment.
THE ECOVILLAGE
Most environmentalists are not only concerned about threats to the natural environment. Many of them also see the obsessive desire for material possession, which characterises most societies in the twenty-first century century, stemming from the alienation and anxiety felt by most city dwellers. One response that gained considerable publicity in Australia in the 1970s was that of 'dropping out' of the proverbial rat-race in the cities and setting up communes in rural areas. The philosophy behind this included various elements such as getting back to nature, self-sufficiency, ecological sustainability and building a sense of community.
The desire for a sense of community remains strong in many people. This is especially so in people living in large urban areas where neighbours are often just nameless faces. In a paper titled "Keeping Community: Combining our skills, shaping our future", Professor V.A. Brown wrote: that "while we are becoming more and more aware of the need to maintain our individual bodies and our global natural environment, we appear to have lost some of our understanding about what each of us needs to do for the sustainability of our community. Yet communities are the catalyst for our identity, our sense of place, and our links with others".
While many people deplore the lack of a sense of community in the urban jungle, a few Novocastrians are doing something about it. One of them is John Campbell. He lived in the EcoHome for two and a half years with his partner and daughter, and he has been an environmentalist for most of his life. The EcoHome was a convenient way for him to do what he normally does, but the difference he says is that now people will notice what he is doing.
The starting point for the EcoVillage was the purchase of the land in July 2000. The land had a run-down house already on the block, which Mr Campbell and his family renovated and moved into.
The EcoVillage aims to promote sustainable living and to establish a model that other people can use. An example of this is to establish a food co-operative where the residents buy food which has been grown in their own backyards. They also want to create work and recreational areas on site so that people won't need to travel and use cars as much. Another idea is to make a car co-op in which 15 people can share 3-4 cars.
Before they started, John Campbell said he looked at 600 websites from around the world, to research other ecohomes and to get ideas from them. To establish an ecovillage you need at least two or more people with existing houses that they are willing to put on the line as assets. The village itself is owned by a large number of people. Eight to nine people are paying off the mortgage. Another small group of people within the village pays a lesser amount of money, around $30 a week, which is put away for use further down the track. In about three to four years they can use it to purchase another block of land or a deposit for one.
Already there are plans to make room for 15 households, (about 40 people) on site. Two thirds of the land is dedicated as open space and is communally owned. The remaining third is divided up by 15 households.
It is a fact that countries such as Australia and the USA use more resources than they should. John Campbell remarked in a recent interview that "[n]inety percent of people in the whole world don't own cars. The ten percent who do use up to forty percent of the world's resources. Being green is a whole lot cheaper than not."
For the village to work economically everything has to be cheap. Working fewer hours than the average person, Mr Campbell believes that 15 hours a week is enough to financially sustain him. He says his philosophy towards life frees him up, he is unburdened by the deep-seated guilt that society feels about their behaviours and how they affect the environment. The Eco Village plans to provide a range of services:
- EcoTourist bed & breakfast accommodation
- Passive solar design
- Shared electric-car ownership
- Organic locally-sourced food cooperative
- Community bank
- A co-housing sector
- Private and community food production gardens (including poultry)
- On-site energy systems, grey-water systems and composting toilets
- Pedestrian/cycle access to nature and major services and healthcare
- Infrastructure, social and organisational support for low consumption, high value lives
The proposed Eco Village will be:
- Built on 6750m² of degraded pastureland next to 'Wetlands Australia' in suburban Shortland, Newcastle.
- Low waste - with cyclic use of resources and using appropriate technology to get greater efficiency and comfort out of fewer resources
- Human scaled - so that people can get to know and care about each other
- A proposed medium-density housing development for 15 homes plus community, commercial and education facilities.
Ultimately, members of the ecovillage hope to challenge people to reassess the way they are now by presenting a better and more sane alternative.
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