Did you realise that we Australians are the highest producers of greenhouse gases in the world – even worse than the Americans!

We are also the world’s second worst creators of municipal waste per person, and the third highest consumers of petrol.
Ecology is a complex science describing the interaction between people and all living things. Our ignorance of ecological interactions has profound and unexpected effects upon our planet. Would you want a wedding ring if you knew that to produce enough gold for a single ring requires the mining of 3 tonnes of toxic mining waste?
We take some things as a simple wedding ring for granted. Because we can’t see microscopic organisms in the soil, or smell and see invisibles such as carbon dioxide in the air, our ignorance of ecological interactions has profound consequences.

Do We Need Bottled Water?
Take the case of bottled water which has worldwide sales of US$34 billion. Our thirst for bottled water is growing at 12% each year. To produce 1kg of PET Plastic actually requires 17.5kg of water just to make the containers. The transport of the bottle to our supermarkets requires huge amounts of non-renewable fossil fuels to be burnt. In the US 90% of these bottles end up in municipal dumps. Bottled water costs 1500 times as much as tap water, as it costs less than a cent to turn on the tap for every 10 litres.
This profligate waste of resources would be tolerable if in fact bottled water were safer than tap water, but in many places it isn't. In the US and India both Pepsi™ and Coca-Cola™ had their quality certificates withdrawn after high levels of pesticides were discovered. (Coca-Cola™ owns Mount Franklin, Pump and Deep Spring brands.) A water molecule travels the earth and is recycled globally, so how can they claim it is ‘made in Australia’? Although bottled water is a minor element in our consumer purchases, it typifies our environmental impacts.

Soft Drinks Replace Milk
The ecological and health case against soft drinks is even more damning than bottled water. Every small soft drink can contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar, which contributes to tooth decay and an epidemic of obesity. As worldwide sales of soft drinks expand, consumption of our most nutritious beverage, milk, declines. So much so that it is now predicted that soft drink sales will exceed milk in the next 5 years! To make this happen, Coca-Cola™ and Pepsi™ spend $2.4 billion on advertising. However we don't have to respond to advertising. We should revert back to drinking safer tap water and save $35.7 billion.
This saving would be enough to pay for clean drinking water for the world's poor, as well as helping with universal literacy and eliminate hunger and malnutrition. By simply changing from drinking bottled to tap water, we could improve nutrition and reduce greenhouse gases, not to mention the amount of garbage that goes into the landfill.
Remember you can buy 1500 litres of tap water for every litre of bottled soft drink or water.

Supersized Houses Cost The Earth
Most people are unaware of the huge wastage of energy that is embodied in the houses we build. The typical Australian house today is 221 square metres, which is 92% larger than in the 1950s. The house we just have to have is 26 times as large as a typical African home.
A huge amount of non-renewable fossil fuel is burned creating greenhouse gas when we produce the bricks, tiles and glass to meet our modern standards. Most houses are so poorly designed that 90% of the electricity used to heat or cool them is wasted, not just in the first year, but for the life of the house, which could be for 20-30 years. (A well designed and insulated house can keep indoor temperatures between 15°C and 23°C throughout the year.)

Our Cars Produce 46% of Toxic Pollution
Everyone is aware of the fact that driving cars and trucks burns vast amounts of non-renewable fossil fuels. Privately owned cars create 27% of total greenhouse gases and account for 46% of worldwide toxic pollution. Currently the Chinese are a nation of bicyclists with only 10 million cars on the road, but in just 11 years the number is expected to reach 150 million. This is greater than the number of cars in the USA, but it would still only represent 15% of the Chinese population owning cars!
We cannot continue to pollute our water, air and soil as if we were independent of the planet.
The escalation of greenhouse gas production seems almost irreversible given government inertia, but that doesn’t prevent concerned gardeners from setting an example
If you are not going to throw away the car keys or turn off the fridge, each and every one of us can take action to reduce our impact on our planet by 50%, simply by modifying our behaviour.

What We Can Do
1) Cut consumption of packaged food, processed and other consumer goods. These require high inputs of transport, energy, and timber for packaging. If you just buy raw whole foods like meat and vegetables, or grow your own, a 20% reduction in impact is almost certain!
• Shop with reusable shopping bags and save 7 billion bags being dumped in our municipal tips.
• Analyse the contents of your rubbish bin, if you fill up a 60 litre rubbish bin each week it's probably full of packaging. It only contributes to our environmental problem, when it should be recycled. If you led a fully sustainable existence you would only fill the bin every 6 months!

2) Recycle: If we insist on drinking tapwater rather than buying bottled drinks, for example, we eliminate the need to recycle. (See below.)

• If you do consume, then save energy by recycling, not just packaging but everything, ie clothes, cars and houses.
“Packaging literally strips the earth of soil, water, plants and minerals, and transfers them to landfills”...Eating to Save The Planet.

3) Buy Local: The problem with world trade is that it separates us from our immediate surroundings. Buying tropical pineapples and bananas in Southern Australia requires a 2,000 km trip, but when we buy garlic or oranges from California, its 15,000 kms. If you switched to locally grown apples and avocados, for example, you could eat as well, but reduce petrol consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 95%. Eat with the seasons.

We must live in harmony with nature by controlling consumption, rather than it controlling us.

Be part of the solution rather than the problem.
Cut consumption, recycle and buy local.