Month: December 2020

Episode 2 – Doing a carbon inventory

Posted on by Brian Loffler

Adventures with an environment-conscious inner-urban community

November 2017

I received an email inviting me to a meeting with the Carbon Neutral Adelaide team. They were scoping out a number of sites for selection as a possible “Carbon Neutral Showcase Site” and Christie Walk was on the list.

This was very exciting.

An important goal at Christie Walk is to act as a sustainability model, to demonstrate what’s possible, and to motivate others to take action. Close cooperation with Carbon Neutral Adelaide would enhance that outreach work.

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Episode 1 – In hot water again

Posted on by Brian Loffler

Adventures with an environment-conscious inner-urban community

April 2016

Our apartment building (Sturt Apartments at Christie Walk) was nearly ten years old. It was time to start thinking about sustainability upgrades to reduce our carbon footprint.

Lighting was an easy place to start.

We worked with Adelaide lighting maintenance specialists Globebusters, who replaced unreliable CFL lights in our atrium stairwell and entranceway with long-life LED oyster lights and floodlights. In the courtyard, twin LED sensor floodlights replaced the old energy-hungry incandescent lights.

May 2016

Hot water; one of life’s great privileges. But our little luxury comes at a cost for us, and a carbon-cost for our warming planet. It’s a particular issue in our 4-level block of 13 apartments.

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Aiming beyond NetZero at Christie Walk

Posted on by Brian Loffler

Adventures with an environment-conscious inner-urban community

I’m fortunate to live at Christie Walk in Adelaide. It’s a community of 27 homes and gardens on 2,000m2. It was initiated by Urban Ecology Australia in 1999 as a demonstration project, to promote ecologically-sustainable and community-enhancing urban design and development.

The buildings range from stand-alone straw-bale homes to a 4-level apartment block, all designed for comfortable high-density but low-energy living.

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Eco-city dreaming comes true

Posted on by Brian Loffler

The facilitator asked us to do some dream-work.  That’s normally not so hard, but there we were, standing in an awkward-shaped T-allotment strewn with bits of broken glass and featuring some derelict out-buildings.  The site had previously been a city recycling depot and in a way one of our goals was to continue that recycling heritage.  We were asked to dream of what the features would be for our ideal sustainable-living community on the site. 

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A ray of hope

Posted on by Brian Loffler

Today – the 11th anniversary of Nicola’s untimely death – I needed an extra ray of hope in the gloom of grief. It arrived from an unexpected source.

There’s another anniversary in December that’s also important to me. December 12th 2015 saw the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement.

I noticed that Nicola is included in the dedication to Kaveh Guilanpour’s fine photoessay on climate diplomats at the Paris negotiations.

Photo: Kaveh Guilanpour

It’s so heartening to see the faces and words of negotiators from around the world – from local activists to Heads of State – as they explain to Kaveh their motivation to fight climate change.

So many people working so hard to salvage the future. That’s a ray of hope for sure.