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The Sustainable Hour no. 561 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Our guests are Cat Macleod from Friday Vigils for Climate, Phae Barrett from Geelong Tiny Home Expo, and Kirsty Bishop-Fox, director of the Zero Waste Festival.
In The Sustainable Hour no. 561, we continue the thread from last week’s conversation with Joseph Gelfer about what it means to act “in service to life on Earth” – a call that Mik Aidt describes as nothing short of the beginning of a world revolution.
Colin Mockett OAM’s Global Outlook brings us sobering updates: devastating floods and mudslides in Pakistan and India, wildfires and heatwaves across multiple continents, and stark new warnings for Australia. Coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef has dropped to record lows, WA has experienced its longest and most widespread marine heatwave on record, and South Australia’s coastline is suffering a major algal bloom. Meanwhile, UN climate leaders warn that Australia’s 2035 target will be a defining moment – with the chance to shine as a renewable energy leader if only we step up.
Our first guest is Cat Macleod, who has helped keep a gentle but persistent presence on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament every Friday for two years. The Friday Vigils for Climate bear witness to the grief of the climate crisis while offering hope, camaraderie and conversation with the public. In doing this, with their colourful flags and pleasant demeanours, they also have had regular contact with politicians. Cat reminds us: “If you’re throwing your slippers at the TV, come and join us instead.”
We then welcome Phae Barrett, organiser of the Geelong Tiny Home Expo, who takes us into the fast-growing world of small, movable, efficient homes on the Geelong Racecourse on 5 to 7 September 2025. Beyond being “cute and small,” tiny houses offer affordable, often off-grid solutions – and in some cases, a lifeline against homelessness and housing stress. Tens of thousands are already scattered across Australia, quietly reshaping how people live, share land and rethink consumption.
Next, Kirsty Bishop-Fox, director of the Zero Waste Festival, previews the upcoming festival at Federation Square in Melbourne early September. Tickets here. Kirsty shares the highlights – from children’s shows to repair cafés, cooking workshops and a youth panel – while also taking us into the global plastics debate. Despite promises of recycling schemes, she warns that without the infrastructure to actually process plastics, the only real solution is to cut consumption. “We’re not in a cost-of-living crisis,” Kirsty notes, “we’re in an overconsumption crisis.”
. . .
In the ‘B-section’ of the Hour, our guests suggest what we can be: bold, aware, and free. Bold enough to spark change, aware of the options before us, and free from consumerism’s grip.
We close with a clip from climate activist Clover Hogan, who likens today’s global economy to a rigged Monopoly game – one where corporations rewrite the rules in their favour. The video clip on Linkedin is a sharp reminder of why this “world revolution” is not optional, but necessary.
Songs
• Hush Now Little One
• Taste for Zero Waste
• I Heard It On The Sustainable Hour
More songs on www.climatesafety.info/music
Concluding statement
We thank Cat, Phae and Kirsty for all they are doing. Each of them have found their own way of making a difference, their way of joining the climate revolution. We’ll be back next week with more hopeful stories about how we can face up to the climate crisis.
“Almost every week there are students there, and they do ask what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. We don’t want to dispel their youthful enjoyment of life, so we don’t pull down the full gamut of the grief that is awaiting them, but we do talk about the climate and our government. Particularly for the students it’s like: why are you here? – you know, it’s like: ‘Okay, this is where the government is’, ‘This is what the government should be doing – it is your future’. Kind of trying to make it an empowering moment for them – to say: ‘Look, you know what? Those people inside that big house, they didn’t get there on their own, they got there because people voted for them.”
~ Cat Macleod, spokesperson for an Extinction Rebellion group of weekly women vigileers who have met every Friday for two years
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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A sense of belonging
Grief and despair is not weakness or madness, it is deep caring and compassion, said Joanna Macy
“Do not be afraid of the fear. Don’t be afraid of the depths of grief and the feelings of powerlessness and the feelings of sorrow. Realise that these are natural responses to the suffering that we glimpse. We feel these acutely because they come from a larger willingness to suffer with our world. And this capacity to suffer with – is actually the literal meaning of compassion, and in every faith tradition it is held up as a saving grace that you can be able to suffer with other beings.
Then as you open to that, instead of running from it, which we are very much encouraged to do by the centuries we’ve lived with this political economy and colonial mind. We’ve been told to identify ourselves as separate, master of our fate, captain of our ship, and we’ve been taught how to compete and how to dismiss others and how to climb to the top. Those have been ingrained in us, even honouring our separateness. So this is an incredible moment for us to overcome, if we possibly can, and I believe we can.
Meet your despair. Let it speak. And then see where it’s coming from. It’s coming from, not craziness, but deep caring. Now that’s a tall order in our [non-indigenous] culture because the political economy saves itself by pathologising our grief and fear and depression. A lot of the people in the positions of power, where their choices can be more effective, are literally terrified of expressing their grief.
Of course there’s hurt. of course there’s pain and suffering on our part, but that is just the other side of the same coin as our love for our world. Our pain for our world and our love for our world are two sides of the same coin. We don’t need to turn from one or blame one. It’s a natural thing.
We belong to this world in a very deep sense. We are our planet. Every atom, every molecule, of our bodies, of what we hold in our minds, what we hold in our hearts and feelings and our relationships, come from this earth. We are our Earth. So the deep ecological view has been very healing for me and very explosive in the sense of, what I see around me are people awakening to a wider identity, a new sense of belonging, an incredible determination. And they don’t get scared. Because they know they’re here for good. Whatever happens, we’re home. We belong also to our universe.”
~ Joanna Macy, on the podcast Outrage and Optimism
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 561
Antonio Guterres:
We need to fight harder now.
Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Waddawurung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that tremendous honour in the future. We’re broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded. We are proud to acknowledge and praise the oldest continual nature on the planet and in the millennia that they’ve spent both nurturing their land and their communities, they’ve acquired an ancient wisdom – the exact ancient wisdom that we’re going to need to survive the climate crisis we are facing.
Mik Aidt: (01:14)
You may not believe me if I tell you that we are about to start a world revolution here in The Sustainable Hour. You may be thinking, ‘What?! Have they gone mad at The Sustainable Hour?’ But no, actually we haven’t. If anything, it’s… – in my opinion – it would appear that it’s the world that’s gone mad.
And what we’re talking about and what we discussed with Joseph Gelfer in a full hour interview last week is this realisation that the world really seems to be spinning out of control at the moment. It’s a world at war. It’s a world facing all these different levels of crisis and systems collapsing, extreme weather, hitting hard everywhere, intensifying hunger, water scarcity, conflict, people on the run. The old order of the world is falling apart. So if we’re honest, if we take an honest look at what’s required of us, it’s actually quite simple, even though it’s not easy, it is: to act in service to life on Earth.
That was what Joseph Gelfer told us last week: Act in service to life on Earth. That’s not a quick fix. It’s a journey. It’s a process. It’s a fundamental change of course that is going to take years, not just months. So, while we’ll continue to keep you up to date on this bigger thing, the bigger shift in The Sustainable Hour, we’ll also, of course, be highlighting all the good work that’s happening all over the place, the activities, the ideas, the inspiring initiatives that are lighting the way in our region and around the world – in service to life on Earth.
And that begins as always with our Global Outlook news bulletin. Colin Mockett OAM has been keeping an eye on the bigger developments since last week, haven’t you, Colin? We are all ears. What have you found for us this time?
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Hello, Mik. Yes, my roundup this week begins not in California nor the Grand Canyon in America, which are both battling wildfires, nor the Mediterranean coast from Spain through Portugal, France to Greece. They’re not only in a heat wave, but fires are counted as the worst in decades. There are hundreds of fires on Southern Europe.
But instead, I want to start in Pakistan and in northern India and the Kashmir region in particular where surging floodwaters and torrents of mud have caused death and destruction on a devastating scale with more than 300 people dead and hundreds more missing. All of these are credited to changing climate that is a result of our inability to address the CO2 emissions into the world’s atmosphere.
In Pakistan and India, the mudslides began in the ecologically fragile Himalayan belt, which is highly susceptible to extreme weather events during the monsoon season, which is now. They’re called cloudbursts – sudden intense downpours over a small area that causes the mudslides. They’re relatively rare, but they have become more frequent and intense in recent years, driven of course by climate change. The region’s steep terrain, unplanned construction and deforestation amplify the risks and now quite frequently turn heavy rainfall into flash floods and landslides. More rain and thunderstorms are forecast for the region during the coming next two weeks and authorities are bracing for even more disasters.
There are about 10,000 glaciers in the Indian Himalayas, and many of them are melting and receding due to the warming climate. Experts blame the scale of the disasters not only on the intensity of the rainfall, that’s part of climate change, but also to unregulated real estate development and poor infrastructure. It all exposes the risks of ignoring environmental safeguards in regions that are vulnerable to extreme weather.
Meanwhile, back in Australia, one of the world’s top climate diplomats has urged the federal government to commit to an ambitious 2035 target to cut carbon emissions, said Australia can reap ‘colossal’ economic rewards if it embraces clean energy.
The federal government is due to unveil its 2035 target by September this year, which gives it two weeks, while the coalition continues to be consumed by a furious internal debate on whether it should maintain its commitment to net zero by 2050. UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell who presides over the agency responsible for managing the Paris Agreement to limit global warming, was visiting Sydney and Canberra as part of a world tour where he urged countries across the globe to ramp up their climate ambitions.
He called the setting of new climate targets for Australia a defining moment and said the government had one shot to build a blueprint that protects Aussie workers and businesses by preparing them for fast changing global economy. Secretary Stiell’s visit coincided with the news that hard coral cover had dropped across the Great Barrier Reef following mass bleaching that happened last summer. New figures released showed that the reef experienced record annual decline of coral cover since monitoring began almost 40 years ago. That’s according to the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Now this happens as the West Australian scientists reported that the current heat wave that brought heat stress to coral reefs off the Western Australian coast was the longest, largest and most intense on record for the state, resulting in the most widespread coral bleaching event ever recorded for WA.
Also in South Australia, the ongoing algal bloom that has discoloured the sea along long stretches of the coastline has affected about 400 types of fish and marine animals. They’re all being washed up dead. The government has announced a crisis response of $28 million support package, but the bloom continues unabated and they don’t quite know how that money is going to change anything.
All will be noticed by UN Secretary State’s visit because it comes as Australia is continuing its bid to host the next major UN climate conference in Adelaide next year. That’s the COP conference. If you remember, we’re competing for the event with Turkey. The UN diplomat said a deadline to determine the next host was now several months past. With the event is now less than 18 months away, it was imperative that the issue be settled.
“All I can say is that a decision needs to be made and it needs to be made very quickly,” he said. “The two proponents need to come together to make that decision and the delay in that decision is unhelpful to the process.” He added that he’d already visited Turkey on this tour where he gave the same message. Standing alongside Mr. Stiell, Australia’s Climate Change Authority’s chair, that’s Matt Kean, said the states couldn’t be higher for Australia. But the pursuing net zero emissions also presented an opportunity for our sun and mineral rich nation. ‘Shine, baby, shine!’ And ‘Store, baby, store!’ should carry an Australian trademark and be hollered from our rooftops, he said. Adding that ahead of the next international climate conference, “maximum ambitions should be the catch cry.”
The decision on where COP31 will take place should have been announced last week, but diplomats are still deadlocked between Australia and Turkey. Both are counted as, by the rest of the world this is, both are counted as fossil fuel exporting countries, just like the host nations of the past six COP conferences.
And finally, instead of our usual team news of Forest Green Rovers, the only eco-listed sports club in the world, it seems there’s a change of many other clubs and stadiums worldwide. They’re led by the Amsterdam Arena, which is home of the Dutch football team Ajax. Their stadium is powered by more than 4,000 solar panels, and in true Dutch style it’s got a wind turbine as well.
The main building uses an impressive energy generating escalator and the stadium has also installed an energy storage system that’s powered by second life batteries from used electric vehicles. Not only does it use second hand Nissan Leaf batteries when the cars have been decommissioned, these provide power for the stadium and also distribute energy to the surrounding neighbourhood when it’s needed to alleviate pressure on the grid. Rainwater from the stadium roof is collected and reused to water the grass, which significantly reduces consumption of fresh water. Residual heat is used to keep frost off the playing field, and that’s a move that requires no additional energy to be wasted. The stadium counts as a fantastic showcase of the Netherlands’ national push to get green and support energy efficiency.
It also ends my roundup for the week.
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Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony:
Our first guest for today is Cat Macleod. She’s been involved in a group called “Friday Vigils for Climate”, and they’re coming up to their second year. That’s every Friday, two years. And I’m sure she knows how many Fridays that is. So Cat, thanks for coming on. Tell us about that group and your involvement in it.
Cat Macleod (12:20)
Okay, thanks for chatting to us, Tony. Yeah, the Friday Vigil for Climate is a vigil happening every Friday on the steps of Parliament in Victoria, so the steps of the Victorian Parliament in downtown Spring Street, Melbourne. And it grew out of Extinction Rebellion’s Mother’s Rebellion gathering, which happens once a month, which is a group of women holding space for climate grief basically and bearing witness to what our children’s future will look like. So out of that we decided to instead of just meeting once a month we would meet once a week and stand on the steps of parliament and really bring it home to the fact that you know our government is not doing what our government should be doing to ensure a liveable future for our children. And it’s not just our children, it’s the possums’ children, the whales’ children, the god damn bloody ants’ children. No one’s children have a really good chance with the way our governments are taking action.
So that’s why we stand on the steps of Parliament. So we stand there basically to bear witness to the end of the beautiful Haleasine era and we’re standing on the steps, know, in trepidation, knowing we’re stepping into that next era of the Anthropocene which nobody really wants to look into because that’s an uncertain future.
Tony:
What are you doing while you’re there?
Cat:
Yeah, it’s a simple gathering. We just stand on the steps with banners and usually we have a different focus. we’ve sat with Ehab, who’s a Palestinian who was on the steps of parliament for a year. So we stand with and we join with all sorts of people who have other quips with the government, which obviously there’s a lot of people who have reason to take the government to task.
So we have a lot of banners, so we have, know, mostly they’re focused on climate, but social justice is another big issue. And then we talk to people. So we actually, we talk to all sorts of politicians who are trying to scurry in and out of the big house without having a chat to us. We talk to just random people on the streets walking past. We talk to a lot of tourists. In fact, we’re like a Melbourne Tourist Agency. We, you know, direct people to the hospital and things like that. We do a lot of community service, kind of outreach. Yeah, and we have, we wear placards which say, you know, “now, it’s now or or never” and things like that. Or “Think of the children”. Yeah, so it’s a very simple, direct climate messages, big banners, big placards that we wear and and conversations. We have some amazing conversationalists amidst this group. I am not there on a regular basis, but some people who are there every week are just chatterers and they will talk to everybody and that is a really amazing thing. It’s just being there is really powerful. What else do we do whilst we are standing there is I guess
We hand out flyers and leaflets and I guess if there is a particular issue going on, we will talk about that particular issue and we will have pointed messaging and tasks looking at those particular issues. It could be when Woodside was approved, so-called environment ministers first duty was to go over to Western Australia and shake the hands of the bosses of Woodside and give them a nice big opportunity to further destroy our planet.
Tony:
Two years is a long time. What sustained the group during that time?
Cat:
Enormous camaraderie! Getting together and this is an interesting thing about this being in the city. It is meant that people from all different parts of the city are intersecting and gathering in this central place because in Melbourne we have a kind of like a centrifugal or a pinwheel kind of transport system so all roads lead into the city. So everybody… We have people from the country, people from down the coast, people from south side, people from west side, people from north sides coming in to the city and yeah, it’s an opportunity to get together and see each other and I think also there’s a point of saying well, this is what’s happening and if, you know, there’s a been particularly bad series of events happening, coming together and sharing that grief is really good, is really positive, or sharing that joy, when that is joy, or yeah, just being together makes it less despairing. And as soon as you are there on the street, you are not only taking the information that you’ve gathered, you’re actually doing something with it.
Even if it is just having a conversation with one person, you aren’t just throwing your slippers at the TV news, you know, you’re doing more. I don’t know whether it makes any difference to anybody else, but it probably it does to us who gather. Yeah. You referred earlier to interactions with the public. Is there any one of those that stands out for you?
I think there’s been, I understand there’s been interactions with school kids. Yes, that’s true. There’s a lot of times we have school kids and they will start off with things like, you you’re giving me a piece of paper, that’s bad, it’s cutting down a tree. And then we have a lot, we’ve got a stock standard answer to that one. But then they start off a bit like that, a bit challenging, and then they eventually do listen.
And they ask, sometimes we get really great teachers who come along and ask what we’re doing. And then we get an opportunity to talk directly to the students. In fact, I’d say almost every week there are students there and they do ask what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. you know, we don’t want to, you know, dispel their youthful enjoyment of life. So we don’t pull down the full gamut of the grief that is awaiting them but we do you know just talk about the climate and our government and particularly I guess for the students it’s like why are you here you know it’s like ‘okay this is where the government is’, ‘this is what the government should be doing-it is your future’ and it’s kind of trying to make it an empowering moment for them to say look you know what those people inside that big house they didn’t get there on their own, they got there because people voted for them.
You do have a choice. You do have a chance. You can influence this and they operate on social license and if they feel their social license is taken away, they have to act accordingly. So you aren’t powerless. I think that’s the thing that we tried to instil in them. Have hope, take heart, do something. Don’t just throw your slippers at the TV. You mentioned the intersectionality of it all and interacting with Free Palestine groups. What can you tell us a little bit about that, what that’s looked like or sounded like? Well, that was a really beautiful moment where this one individual sat up on the steps every, actually all day, every day at the start, he had legendary person.
And then he just gathered more and more people to come and came and sat with him. And so every Friday when we turned up, he’d buy us coffee and hold our spot and look after our banners and we’d look after his banners. And so there was a really lovely camaraderie and kind of, you know, collaboration going on between the two groups. Yeah.
And that was really good. And it was really interesting because there’s lots of fertile conversation about, you know, the intersection between climate and war, because, you know, they are, of course, are related, you know. A lot of war are about war for resources and war for land. And it’s the same thing. It’s what’s wrecking the climate is the desire for evermore. OK, is there any take home messages that you’d like to give to us, to give to our listeners. Come and join us. It is very simple. You just need to be able to put on your shoes and get into the city. That is all you need to do. You don’t even need to bring the banners or the pieces of paper to hand out to people. We have all that stuff. If you are just sitting at home feeling that you are throwing your slippers at the TV every single night, don’t do that. Come and get out on the street and have a conversation with somebody about it.
And you’ll find that actually it kind of lifts the fog from you if you can share that grief and that moment. It’s really, yeah, emboldening. And we also use this as a moment to plan other strategies. So we’re always planning something whilst we’re there. So you’ll meet people who are up to stuff.
And what time, what are the times that you’re there?
Friday 8am on to about 12. And people come and go in that time? People come and go. I’m a lousy attendee because I’ve worked full time so I’m not really always there but I will be there on this Friday because that’s the 104th day which I think is pretty goddamn remarkable really. So how’s that going to look? Will there any different, will there be any celebrating going on?
They will be celebrating most definitely they will be celebrating we will be standing there together and we will be holding forth on our usual platforms and But we will be chatting to people and then we will go and have a picnic afterwards or something like that some celebration for sure, yeah.
. . .
SONG:
“Hush Now Little One” (23:57)
Health authorities are warning Australians to stay out of the heat today as temperatures climb yet again after heat records were broken yesterday. Australia’s ongoing heat wave has been pushing temperatures to almost 50 degrees Celsius.
. . .
Tony: (27:45)
Our next guest is Phae Barrett. Phae is right into tiny home [expo]s and she organises them all over the country. And there’s one coming up in Geelong in the near future. So we thought we’d a talk to Faye about what we can expect to see in Geelong in a few weeks.
Phae Barrett:
What would you see at the Geelong Tiny Home Expo would be we have a big variety of builders in Australia that are building tiny houses, albeit most of them on a commercial basis. But the popularity of tiny homes has meant that this industry’s kind of boomed in Australia, especially in the last four to five years. And so as an event, what we’ve been doing is getting the tiny home builders to bring their tiny houses to one place and we set them all up. There’s a lot of off-grid information as well. There’s a lot of information actually throughout the entire event and this will be our 26th believe tiny home expo and the houses are on display. The information is there and we also help people to try and untangle some of the mess that the rules and regulations have made for people that want to live in tiny houses.
It very much started as a movement, I would say, definitely, you know, 10 years ago, where people were looking to live with less stuff and in a smaller place and with less impact on the earth. And by all means, it has moved forward a bit because of the housing crisis over here. It has become more popular and then people started wanting, they started off about 6 metres by 2.4 metres. So if you imagine a very small caravan sort of size, that’s how they started off and they were very much part of, I would say, the DIY market. But nowadays they range from that very small six metre benchmark all the way up to 14 metres long. They’re two storeys high. And although they’ve gotten bigger, of course, they’re still tiny as far as housing goes in Australia, which happens to have the biggest houses in the world. A lot of people think that that
That crown is for America. Australians take that crown. We have the biggest houses for the hell of it. And so these are incredibly small, but really efficient. And like I mentioned before, majority of tiny houses are built to be off-grid. So a lot of people are looking at going off-grid with generating their own power and their own water and being very careful with how they live.
The other thing that’s interesting about tiny houses is that they’re not fixed to the land. By their very definition, they’re temporarily attached to the land, which has all sorts of great aspects to it. One, you’re not stuck to a particular place to live. Two, you can rent land if you don’t have land. And three, if there was a bushfire or a flood, there is possibility for you to take that home away from the danger area whilst that passes, and then obviously come back and you’ve still saved your house. So there’s a lot of really interesting aspects to tiny houses other than they’re just cute and small.
Mik:
What’s the range in terms of economy? What do they cost the houses?
Phae:
They are more expensive than people expect. Even to DIY them in 2025, we are finding that people are struggling to come in under 80,000. But that’s with lot of bells and whistles because you find that when people go to live in a tiny house, they kind of feel if I’m going to live tiny, I’m going to live tiny in the most luxurious way that I possibly can. So a lot of them do have some, you know, some bells and whistles, let’s say.
So you could certainly bring one in, I believe, under $50,000. You need to make sure that they are that little bit smaller. And they go all the way up. Just make sure you’re all sitting down. They go all the way up to $225,000. And they’re still pretty small, but those ones are more, I would say, built for a showroom sort of setting, maybe a tourist sort of setting.
Colin:
Phae, you mentioned that they’re mobile and can be shifted in case of a bushfire. Can you tell us what’s the biggest difference between a tiny home that’s mobile and a caravan?
Phae:
I should be careful what I say as well because I have had a fire expert saying don’t tell people to to hoik a tiny house out of a bushfire so in let’s just put it that ahead of a bushfire coming it would be safe to tow your house out not during a a bushfire and it’s a good question because this is the reason why caravans are built to be moved on the road at all times tiny houses certainly are not, they are often more than 4.3 metres high and they’re not engineered to be on the road all the time. So they haven’t been brilliantly balanced. So they’re still moveable and they’re legal to go on the road. In most cases though, they weigh four and a half tonne. And so you would want to prepare to move a tiny house. Whereas a caravan, I should imagine you’d be able to just hoik it up and tow it off. Plus you’d be able to tow it with a pretty average ute.
Whereas with a tiny house, you’re going to need either one of those ramps that you mentioned before, or you’re going to need a professional tower.
Colin:
In regards to living in the tiny house and the caravan what would be the big difference that you would notice?
Phae:
They are so different. If I could visually paint for you, first of all, they’re about twice as high. You’ve got a lot of headroom and there’s very little of that. You know, when you go in a caravan and you’re kind of, I know, I come out bruised because I’m a big lady and you do feel relatively cramped in them. Tiny houses look and feel like normal houses and they have furniture just like a normal house does. They feel way more permanent and very, very homely. There’s no fixed benches.
Very rarely do you have tiny houses where you’ve got to move the dining table and turn it into a bed and all that sort of stuff. It’s all the same materials that you would use in a normal McMansion. It’s just done on a small scale and sometimes really cleverly.
Mik:
The expo coming up now in Geelong, tell us all the details for listeners. Where do they find more information? What are the dates and what are we expecting to see there?
Phae:
Okay, so this is the second time that we’ve been to Geelong when we were there in 2023. It’s at the Geelong Racecourse. We open on a Friday, which is a slightly shorter day, 10am to 3pm on the Friday, on the 5th of September. And then on the Saturday the 6th, and Sunday the 7th of September, we’re open 9am to 5pm. You’ll find a range of tiny houses on display, a lot of builders to talk to, information along the lines of going off grid, solar power.
Off-grid battery setups, water tanks and all those sort of things. And probably the best part of it is that we have an ongoing speaker hall with lots of people who will speak on all sorts of subjects that you may well be thinking about. And I’m sure, you know, lot of your listeners will be going, what about council? Yes, we address all of the council rules and regulations at the speaker hall as well. So for somebody who wants information, it’s a really information heavy event.
Bearing in mind you held one previously, do you have any data about how many people took up Tiny Homes Ideal after that first exhibition here?
Well here’s the thing, because of the the issue with the council is a lot of people do what we call go under the radar. So how many actual tiny houses people are living in is a slightly guarded secret. However I will tell you this, across Australia there are 300 dedicated tiny house builders and they would be building anywhere between one and 20 tiny houses per month each.
Over the last five years, you want to grab out your calculator, I can assure you there are tens of thousands of people, in their tiny houses across Australia. And I talk to them every single day of my life.
Tony:
That figure really surprises me, I guess many people. So it shows that they’re increasing popularity. How is it sold to people? What are the advantages of living in a tiny house?
Phae:
I think once people come and see, a lot of people might have an idea in their head, but I once they actually come and see and they stand inside a tiny house and they think to themselves, I could live in this and originally, here’s a really interesting fact, the person who first buys a tiny house always looks for the biggest tiny house they can get, which is normally like 10 metres long, three metres wide and it’s got an upstairs loft room within a couple of years, they’ve often got that up for sale and they’re looking for a smaller tiny house. Because once you’ve lived in a tiny house, you very quickly learn you don’t need all that stuff. You don’t need all of that wasted room. once you get over the, the initial bit is getting over the fear. It’s the fear of, oh, you know, where am going to put everything? I’ve lived in a tiny house and you very quickly adapt, just little things.
I’ll go out to the shops and I’ll see a beautiful vase and I’d love to buy it. But I don’t because I’ve got nowhere to put it. And you just stop buying rubbish. And then people, I’ve seen them literally save people’s lives. They have managed to stop paying rent. And I cannot explain to you that the hidden joy of the tiny home movement is the mental health improvement of people who have a secure house.
in that kind of environment. You’d be absolutely stunned at what it does for people when they say, I own this house, I’m not going to be homeless anymore, I haven’t got to pay rent. Few of them have got any bills whatsoever. Maybe if you’re renting land, you may be to pay land rent of approximately $150 a week. But that’s its security and peace of mind, and it really helps people’s mental health.
Colin:
Phae, where are they mostly built? Are they put in urban areas, with people dividing their back gardens, or are they put out on new estates?
Phae (38:41)
New estates are really difficult with regards to council rules. It’s as simple as that. So you’ll find the majority of them are in more rural settings and regional places. However, they are, as you say, also in people’s back gardens. So I’d say anybody that’s got a back garden with 600 metres or more, there’s a possibility of having a tiny house. You kind of look at it, it depends on the situation, but some people may even rent out their back gardens. So say if they’re struggling with their mortgage at the moment, who isn’t in Australia, you can get $150 a week to just rent out your land to somebody who’s already bought a tiny house and is just looking for some land. So it’s almost like we’re going back to co-sharing. It’s got that real feel good feel to it. And that happens a lot on rural blocks as well. People think it would be hard to find land. I think you’d be quite surprised at how open people are to say, well, yeah, I’ve got 10 acres. There’s a little acre down there by the dam. You can park a tiny house there and pay me a very nominal amount to live in quite an amazing setting. It’s sharing. It’s kind of what we as humans are about.
Mik:
And Phae, there a website where people can go?
Phae:
Yes, there is: tinyhouseexpo.com.
Tony: (40:06)
Our next guest is Kirsty Bishop-Fox. We’ve had Kirsty on before talking about a number of things, but at this time of the year, it’s always talking about the Zero Waste Festival that’s coming up early in September.
Kirsty Bishop-Fox:
We’re kicking off with a children’s show this year. We’ve got Dirt Girl and her new found friend Sunflower Girl joining us for the kids, which is going to be a blast.
And then we’re going to have all sorts of topics, unpacking plastics, we’ve got textiles re-imagined, cooking with purpose, which will have really beautiful ideas of how to share food and cook from whatever you happen to have on hand. We’ll have Simon Toohey joining us. You might know him, he’s a Geelong boy coming down. And we’ve got a really special youth panel today, The Voices of the Future, which I’m super, super excited about.
Not to mention all the activities like the repair cafe, the clothing swap and loads of activities happening on the day.
And which days are we talking about, Kirstie?
It is Saturday 6th of September at Fed Square. So put it in your diaries and come along. If you’re excited about coming, you might have heard of it before or you haven’t, but you’re like, my gosh, if we’re talking about Zero Waste, there’s my people, I’ve got to join them. Just look up Zero Waste Victoria or Zero Waste Festival. zerowastevictoria.org.au you’ll find the website. And if you Google it, I’m sure you’ll find Zero Waste Festival.
Mik:
Kirstie, what are the global news at the moment on the plastic scene? We heard here in August that the world met and they discussed whether we should have like a treaty on plastic and we didn’t get it. How did you feel and what’s your comment to this?
Kirsty:
Well, look, that’s not what I was expecting. I don’t think that’s what anybody was expecting at all. I don’t even know how to put it into words apart from maybe shocked in terms of where we’re going. But the reality is, think what it really is opening up is that plastics is a very, very big industry. And we see plastics as being part of things, but it’s a big industry. And it’s…
Sometimes it’s cheaper than it is, but it’s more than cheap, it’s convenient and it’s incredibly problematic in so many ways. There’s just so much we’ve got to consider with reducing it. And when I’m listening to Faye speaking, and I know it’s not directly related, but in many ways it is like with the tiny homes. I don’t live in a tiny home. I feel like I’m doing a constant declutter.
And I think that really, you know, often we hear this is sort of going off a bit, it’s, you know, a cost of living crisis that we’re going through. Really we’re going through an overconsumption crisis and that overconsumption crisis is part of the cost of living. And if we tie it all together and think, wow, I really think the issue with plastic is a really big issue, but it’s also the symptom of something much bigger as well.
And you can also take on board their curtsy, the dragging of their feet by the fossil fuel industry, because the fossil fuel industry doesn’t only sell petrol or send coal to coal-fired power stations. The fossil fuel industry makes plastic. And it doesn’t recycle plastic, and it should.
It should be mandated by governments worldwide that if you’re selling plastic, you recycle it too. But it isn’t. And plastic is the biggest polluter of the world. We’re we’re swirling about in a sea of the stuff. And when you’re really talking about zero waste, if you’ve got to be serious, you’ve got to say zero plastic waste.
Yeah, you absolutely do. the real challenge is it’s very easy. And I really like the idea is that if they sell plastic, they have to recycle it. The problem is that in theory, everything is recyclable. All these plastics are recyclable in theory. But in practice, we don’t have the resources or the infrastructure or the capacity to do it. So when you look at soft plastics, which is a massive, massive issue, and I’ve actually just gone deep into a deep dive right now because of an application that’s been put in to the ACCC with the major supermarkets and big brands forming a not-for-profit organisation called Soft Plastic Stewardship Australia. And while on the surface it sounds like a great initiative, it really does, it sounds like they’re taking action, it doesn’t matter how much plastic they collect. If we do not have the capacity to recycle it, it’s not going to be recycled. And it goes back to Red Cycle to bring them up again, I’m afraid, but it just reminds us the reason they collapsed is not because Red Cycle weren’t doing great at what they were doing. Red Cycle’s job was to collect it, but they didn’t have the processes to manage it. And that was what made them fall down. And that has not significantly changed.
We do have some processes and they are, they absolutely are. We’ve got APR Plastics in Dandenong who are doing some really great things. And there are a number of others around the country, but they are small and buy small. don’t have the capacity to, if 50 % or even 20 % of the plastics was collected, they just don’t have the processes to manage that. So we really do need to reduce our consumption, but it’s a challenge when we’re up against supermarkets who are increasing. Supermarkets and big brands are increasing the plastics. And that’s just single plastic. That’s one plastic. It’s very relatable because we see it, but there’s plastic in everything that we have, whether it be our medications, whether it be the products that we buy clothing, there’s plastic in the clothing that we wear. It just goes on and on.
Mik:
However, Kirsty, couldn’t governments also just put more pressure on legislation about plastic in the sense that we do have alternatives. There are organic, biological ways of producing materials that have the same function as plastic, but which doesn’t have the pollution aspect that the plastic does. How do you see that?
Kirsty:
I see as a really big challenge because although there are plastics that aren’t petroleum based and they sound really great, often the disposal of them is equally problematic in the sense that if they don’t go into compost and they go into landfill, then they’re going to break down just like any other organic material in landfill and you want to keep that out of landfill. And often these products like the plastic bags or any packaging really,
I don’t know of any councils of very rare exceptions that they take the plastic packaging. I saw somebody in the Zero Waste Victoria Facebook group going, I’ve got all these biopac containers, so where can I take them offload them? Because they don’t know how to manage them. So while I do think that there is some merit in them,
If they don’t end up in being recycled, if the manufacturers and the users of them, by users I mean that the people who disperse them don’t have the correct facilities to manage them, then it’s just creating a different problem. So I don’t want to say they’re all bad, but we certainly do need to look at the full life cycle.
SONG (47:40)
“Taste for Zero Waste”
I thought it was going to be quite a lot more demanding.
It never tastes better.
That’s something that I’m so excited by.
Take a stand Say no to plastic Get the planet a hand Feel the joy, feel the grace Living like no money to waste Join the wave, it’s taking place Lots of things happening in this space Zero waste Can feel a brighter taste Of life in a nutshell When you do it well Less in the bin More in your soul
There’s so many different things that we can do. It’s like a choose your own adventure. And there’s no better adventure out there than working together to save the planet.
Mik:
That’s all we could fit in one Sustainable Hour. Once again, highlighting some of the great solutions and activities that are coming up very soon. yeah, we will continue not only talking about what’s happening, but also how we can trigger or start this world revolution that we’re talking about since last week, since the interview we had with Joseph Gelfer from Our Fair Future.
If you didn’t hear that podcast, really recommend you go and listen. For me, it’s been a U-turn. It’s been a very, very significant moment where I’m beginning to rethink what it means to be a climate activist. More about that later. Any last comments from our guest, Phae?
Phae:
You were talking about the recycling of plastics and being used in tiny houses. Because tiny houses are so small, many people are experimenting with this kind of thing because they can do it on a small scale. Does that make sense? And so we have found a lot of really interesting builds made out of unusual products that are coming out because they’re going to risk it on a much smaller build and not on a big mansion where they’re going to have invest millions. So it is a place where you will find that sort of thing.
Mik:
Kirsty, a last comment for our listeners?
Kirsty:
Look, that’s just wonderful, I want to build on from Phae. No, I’ve seen, well see a lot of things too, like some of the places like apparel and the plastics, actually remanufacture them into tiles and the insulation and all types of things. So there are really a lot to do. So I guess I can feel people being torn between tiny houses and zero waste, but you know if you’re ready for a tiny house or not. And if not, we’ll see you on Saturday, the 6th of September at Fed Square.
Mik:
We have reached the B section of The Sustainable Hour. The ‘Be’-section is when we look for what to be. And we can be creative.
Phae:
I think people nowadays need to be bold. They need to be bold.
Mik:
I like that. No world revolution will begin if we’re not bold.
Colin: (51:55)
And be aware too. Be aware of the options. Be aware of things that are going on, like exhibitions and expos and festivals on tiny houses and hero waste.
Mik:
Kirsty?
Kirsty:
I think we should be free. We should be free of consumerism.
Colin:
that would be nice wouldn’t it?
Kirsty:
Yes, free, free, free of the drudge, free of the, just be free. Yeah, be free.
. . .
SONG (52:26) “I Heard It On The Sustainable Hour”
“Unite in a national effort to save from destruction all that makes life itself worth living”.
. . .
Clover Hogan – linkedin video clip: (55:20)
I want you to imagine that you’re playing a game of Monopoly. But in this scenario, there is one player who keeps changing the rules. They don’t pay taxes, they hide money under the board, they even skip jail. And they argue that they’re doing this, they’re changing the rules for everyone’s benefit. Because the more money and wealth and power they have, the better off everyone else will be.
Now, if this actually happened in a game of Monopoly, I’m pretty sure there would be a revolt, right? People would refuse to keep playing. Because what’s the point when the game is rigged? Yet every day we are playing a rigged game. Because while we have been sold on the idea of meritocracy, that if you work hard, you can climb the ladder and win big, the reality is our economic system concentrates wealth and resources in the hands of a few while distributing the costs, including pollution, ill health, job displacement, to the many. And every day, corporations work hard to change the rules of the game. One of the ways they do this is through corporate lobbying, influencing decision makers and policy. Now, I’m going to run us through a few quick examples.
Some of you might remember Dieselgate from 2015, when Volkswagen used special software to cheat emissions tests in cars they had marketed as eco-friendly. Now, this was blatant fraud, but the reason why this deception went on for so long unchecked is because of their aggressive lobbying. They had pushed for laboratory tests, which could be easily manipulated, and lobbied against real-world emissions testing which meant that standards were not implemented until after the scandal broke. Let’s take another example. Purdue Farmer, the producer of opioid prescriptions. From 2004 to 2018, Purdue spent millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers in the US to soften policies that would have restricted the sale of their highly addictive drugs. These actions destroyed communities and have led to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths that continue to this day. They even shaped laws that made it harder for patients to file lawsuits and seek compensation. All right, let’s go for one more. In 2018, it was revealed that Facebook had allowed the personal data of millions of users to be harvested by the political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica.
This data was used to target voters in ways that affected political outcomes, including the 2016 presidential election. This was an explicit violation of privacy law. Yet again, it tracked with their lobbying record, influencing data privacy regulations to minimize users’ rights to privacy and to maximize their commercial potential for advertisers. I could keep going.
Amazon lobbying to evade taxes and receive massive subsidies. Google lobbying to influence antitrust investigations. But these are just the ones that make the headlines. In 2019, the European Green Deal was proposed to make Europe the first net zero continent by 2050. I’m sure you guys can guess the next bit.
Automotive giants lobbied against emissions reductions and fossil fuel companies lobbied against the phase out of oil and gas subsidies. According to a report from Transparency International, these seven fossil fuel companies, along with a network of over 50 organizations, held a thousand meetings or more with European officials, backed by a budget of 64 million euros.
This is pocket change for these corporations. Indeed, for the 2022 calendar year, these same companies awarded their investors payouts exceeding $119 billion.
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Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour
Events in Victoria
The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.
Petitions
→ List of running petitions where we encourage you to add your name
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