Retrofitting your home can make it more productive and resilient in an energy descent future. Environmental designer, ecological educator and author David Holmgren shares what you can do at the individual level.
David Holmgren and partner Su get most of their food from 120 fruit and nut trees, chooks and goats on their one-hectare property in Hepburn Springs, Central Victoria. Passive solar design, solar power, wood heating, cold-storage cupboards, composting toilets, grey water systems and other measures mean the couple have few household costs and a low impact on the environment. In a COVID-19 locked-down, energy descent and globally warming world, it’s a lifestyle many of us increasingly aspire to. “It takes a lot of work to keep it all ticking over,” Holmgren (the co-originator of permaculture), admits. “But no more hard work than the sort of things people pay money to do in a gym.”
Tours to Holmgren’s property, Melliodora (one of the nation’s best permaculture demonstration sites), are booked out. Holmgren believes the household non-monetary economy has suddenly become a priority for people. Feeding into this paradigm shift are the challenges of rising costs, shortages in energy, food and housing, economic recession and climate change. On average, our homes produce more than 18 tonnes each of greenhouse gas per year — over a fifth of Australia’s total contribution, according to the Environmental Protection Authority Victoria.
Modifying your behaviour is a central part of cultivating a more energy-efficient, self-sufficient lifestyle.
Holmgren, the author of RetroSuburbia: the Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future, suggests refocusing our energy to become more self-sufficient. “The modern pattern of living and our economic system constantly reward and encourage us to give up whatever aspects of self-reliance we have and outsource it, because it seems easier,” he says. “That’s good for the GDP, but it actually makes people very vulnerable and dependent.”
We can’t all build a new, fully sustainable home or relocate to the country. Retrofitting (modifying what exists) allows you to make more achievable, smaller, incremental changes where you are, Holmgren says. It can be applied to apartment living, renting and suburban homes. It also avoids a lot of the regulatory impediments, he says. “You can actually do small changes and not need to get a permit. Organic, incremental, small changes at a time also allow us to learn from each step.” Rather than applying for a big loan, Holmgren suggests starting with what you can achieve yourself, and what you can modify for the most gain and least effort and expense.
Analyse the property you live in as you would any business opportunity. “It’s a bit like a SWOT analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats,” Holmgren says. “Whether you own or rent, what are the opportunities? What are the hazards and key vulnerabilities you really need to address: the weak and strong points?”
RetroSuburbia includes many creative strategies for people to unite and share the labour, such as older people offering their gardens to younger folk renting down the road in exchange for crop sharing, multigenerational living and share housing.
To aid this complicated process, Holmgren developed the RetroSuburbia Real Estate Checklist (in the book and downloadable for free from retrosuburbia.com). Along with filtering out all the different things you need to consider, such as the regulatory freedom and climate of the area, available land, public transport access, soil fertility and house design, it helps people confront tougher decisions such as consolidating their household with others or moving. “You can be faced with decisions or realisations that are quite harsh,” he says. “But there is also that other side of people gaining huge boosts from what can be relatively small stepping stones or achievements.”
A home isn’t just physical bricks and mortar, but how you do things within it. Modifying your behaviour is a central part of cultivating a more energy-efficient, self-sufficient lifestyle, Holmgren advises. Examples include things like washing your clothes less often and air-drying them, rising with the sun, cycling into town rather than driving or choosing to work fewer hours in a paid job in order to garden more. With the way humans live based on deeply entrenched habits and values, it takes conscious planning to change. Learning new “old” skills like sewing or food preserving is another part of adapting your behaviour.
It takes multiple people to cover the different roles of a household. “There’s these economies of scale that we usually think of as out in the big world; how big a farm needs to be to be viable or a corporation to survive in the world, but often it’s our households that are too small to be sustainable,” Holmgren says. “At the extreme a household is synonymous with a single person. That’s very unusual historically.”
RetroSuburbia includes many creative strategies for people to unite and share the labour, such as older people offering their gardens to younger folk renting down the road in exchange for crop sharing, multigenerational living and share housing. Holmgren rents his studio out to people who work on the property in exchange for accommodation.
Growing your own food and organising the garden and kitchen is a natural core to start with and huge driver of empowerment, Holmgren says. “Consider any capacity you have to produce, forage or exchange some degree of fresh food at home or in your neighbourhood.” Like our ancient ancestors, observe the local sources of sustenance in your environment. It’s things as simple as knowing where the overhanging fruit trees, wild foods and edible weeds are. “Beyond that, think of the exchange,” he says.
RetroSuburbia includes many creative strategies for people to unite and share the labour, such as older people offering their gardens to younger folk renting down the road in exchange for crop sharing, multigenerational living and share housing.
Connect to local growers, community-supported agriculture, food co-ops and farmers’ markets. “Almost anyone who grows food tends to have a surplus of something. There may be something you can do in exchange for that surplus,” he says. “Those sorts of connections may also be sources of knowledge to help you get started.”
Tailored to your own unique situation, garden retrofits might include removing unproductive species and replanting fruit trees, bringing in backyard chooks or beehives, installing drip irrigation, growing food in pots, raised beds, on the street verge or rooftop, starting compost, enriching barren soil, growing windbreaks or installing trellises.
On a behavioural level, Holmgren suggests shifting from the mentality that we’re eating at a restaurant. “Move away from the ‘What are we going to eat today?’ to ‘What have we got; what’s in the garden; what’s in the cupboard; what’s left over from yesterday?’ It’s not being so phobic about the expiry date, actually trusting your nose and building that confidence in the way we eat so food is less of a huge project,” he says.
Cooking, heating water, keeping food cool, lighting the home and powering our electronics can be achieved in other ways besides the conventional use of electricity and gas, Holmgren says. The most p