Organic Expo 2008

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks in the lead up to Sydney’s Organic Expo in Darling Harbour. There have been a few challenges to overcome in the quest to do things in the Eco Depot way, but it is all starting to come together.

The first trick was figuring out the layout of the stall – 3m x 2m is not a lot of space to work with. Once that was sorted we needed a way of making it a reality with recycled, reused and rejected materials. So where do you start? Well at home of course – use what you’ve got, then go from there.

We managed to find two old doors, 4 sawhorses a bunch of pins, some old labels and a rug that would cover the floor nicely. That left the walls, tablecloths and some way of holding it all together, to still be sorted…. Second stop, Reverse Garbage in Marrickville.

If you are in Sydney and you have not visited this treasure trove of second hand, rejected and reusable delights then write it on your ‘to do’ list. Reverse Garbage and The Bower have a couple of warehouses full of fabulous salvaged items that will help with anything from refurnishing to renovating. Check out their website to see what they’re all about www.reversegarbage.org.au

There is also a bunch of new products we have been testing out and it is time for them to meet their market. One of the new ones we love are the ‘Jewels of the Tile’ range, lovely old domino and scrabble tiles have been rescued from certain burial at landfill and transformed into one-of-a-kind, painted and covered works of wearable art. Raffaella, the local artist who makes them has such a passion for her creations, and we love a person with passion – especially when it is an eco friendly one. They are not on the website yet, they will be at the Expo though.

Coledale markets

Come one, come all ! Coledale Markets are on again this Sunday at Coledale Primary School. We'll be displaying our latest goodies - Tubeway Armie Warmers and Woolly coin purses, deliciously fragranced beeswax candles, Liana Kabel jewellery and some new treats from Tikimau.
Most scenic markets on the east coast - you'll also find yummy coffee, lunch (or breakfast) and loads of local treasure. Handmade delights, vintage pieces in fashion and homewares, and some that defy description.

The magic of shops

I think the magic for me started growing up in a general store in a small country town. Rows and racks of stationery, groceries, souvineers and not forgetting the lollies! So many delights! A well thought out store can truely inspire. How many of us have been so overcome that we've splurged on the impulse buy, being sure it would make a great gift and then not being able to part with it. (Happened to me recently)
From here I'll be keeping you updated on the treasures we find for EcoDepot , where we will be making guest appearances and what inspires us.

Be well, Sarah

This vision was from our trip 2 years ago whilst travelling along the east coast before jumping into EcoDepot with a youngster and another on the way.

Chapter 5 - Its Not What You Know, It's Who

In order to convert a diesel van to run on straight vegetable oil you must know more about mechanics and auto electrics than I do.

The basic theory is pretty easy. Set up the car/van to have two fuel tanks, one for vege oil, one for diesel (or biodiesel). Divert the radiator fluid through a heat exchanger in the vege oil tank (so the oil can get hot and flow more easily) and have a solenoid (switching device) to swap from one fuel to another.

Then there are a couple of extra little tricks. First, make sure your engine does not run on vege oil when it is cold or the oil is cold. Second, always drive the last 10 or so minutes of your trip on diesel or biodiesel to flush the vege oil out of the fuel lines. And finally make sure you are feeding your engine good oil. If it has too much water in it, is too acidic or alkaline or has not been filtered properly then you will trash your motor pretty quickly.

There is stacks of info out there on this stuff. The best book I found was Josh Tickell's "From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank". Plus the websites like Greasecar (www.greasecar.com) have links to everything you need to know.

This aside, it would take me years to learn all the skills necessary to manufacture all the bits I needed and then a few more years to work out how to install them. That's where friends come in. You gotta love friends.

Richard used to be a bus mechanic and now runs a team of guys designing and constructing mining machinery. He was definitely the man for the job. I called him up and after laughing at me for a while he eventually realised I was serious and said to leave it with him to do some research.

I knew I had sparked his curiosity and since I would be funding this folly I felt sure he would be happy to have a tinker.

A month later and he was ready to have a look at the van and figure out exactly what needed to be done.

Chapter 4 - The Good Oil

So we are travelling around the East coast of Oz and amazing things are happening. Serendipity is on overdrive and life is as simple as the van we are in and the stuff within it. I loved the fact that we were driving on biodiesel and yet I was amazed at how many people had no idea what it was.

As I kept explaining the whole biodiesel thing to those we encountered, I started to think more and more about trying to run on straight vegetable oil (SVO). We kept hearing rumours of people doing it, tractors running on it, old diesel cars, yet to actually find a person who we could talk about it with was not so easy. As always, the internet had lots of information, although a lot of it was conflicting, with many sites saying SVO is too hard and others saying it is too easy and totally do-able. Confusing.

The more I read about SVO systems the more it seemed like the truly carbon neutral way to drive. Sure there is the Prius Plus which you could charge from a solar panel, or even the solar panels that can now be fitted on the roof of a Prius but you have to fork out the stack of cash for the car first and then the extra options second (and these options will then void all warranties you had from the manufacturer). If you have a tough old indirect injection diesel engine and a source of relatively good waste vegetable oil, then this may be a way to go.

So we made the slightly irrational and totally emotional decision to sell the lovely comfy and rather expensive VW van and use the money to fund a vegetable oil experiment.


Question: How hard can it be to convert a diesel van to run on vegetable oil?
Answer: Much harder than I thought…

The fact that I’m neither a mechanic, auto electrician nor rev-head may explain a fair amount of the difficulties experienced though.

The Cost of Going Green.

OK, so you feel bad about driving around in a gas-guzzler (even if it does look fantastic) and you decide to do something about it. Step one would be to find something that guzzles less and still meets your needs. In this case it had to be something that would fit both a surfboard and the family, so a decent sized hatchback was as small as I was willing to go. I knew of biodiesel and after doing some research it seemed the most carbon neutral way to go. I’ll explain…

Biodiesel is basically vegetable oil and alcohol mixed together with a couple of bits then removed after their mixing and reacting. The actual process can be done by anyone who’s not afraid of a few chemical symbols and is able to follow a recipe. In brief, the oil and alcohol (either methanol or ethanol) are carefully measured and mixed in the presence of a catalyst (potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide) and then the by-product of glycerol removed. What this does is it essentially makes the resulting mixture behave more like dino-diesel, (that’s the stuff you buy at the servo) so you can shove it in your tank and cruise off, just don’t try putting it in a petrol engine – diesel engines only.

Personally, even though I used to teach chemistry I have no interest in making this stuff. The alcohols are toxic, the hydroxides caustic and the mess involved is just not my scene – best left to the professionals I reckon. Biodiesel is becoming more common in this country and is pretty popular in Europe with most diesel being sold there having a 5% biodiesel 95% dino-diesel mix as a minimum standard. This is known as B5 and the proposal is to have diesel as B10 (10% Biodiesel) by 2010.

Unfortunately there are some complications. Some older diesel motors are not ideal to run on biodiesel because it is such a good solvent that it will slowly dissolve rubber parts of the motor and hoses so you need a car that has only synthetic parts in it, which is most of them made after 1993. There are a few more issues, which are discussed on a heap of web sites – just choose your preferred propaganda slant; positive reports from biodiesel manufacturers and subtle rubbishing from oil companies and their mates.

The biggest hitch for me was that if I wanted to run biodiesel, I needed a diesel motor, which meant I needed a new car. Now for me a ‘new’ car means a second hand car and after a lot of hunting around, I settled on a VW Transporter TDI. Her name was Bo and she was once a country ambulance. After some serious renovations she was kitted out with a bed and was ready for a tour of the East coast.

I found a couple of sources of biodiesel, got a stack of old 25 litre chemical containers and we set off on a low impact research tour hunting for eco-products that could be sold via our planned online store – EcoDepot. It felt good to be driving around in an eco-friendly way, you wanted everyone to know, to spread the word, to get people pushing for this option to become mainstream.

I had come a long way since that day at the conference and felt I was doing well. Then I started thinking about how I could go further and that is where the whole ‘SVO’ or Straight Vegetable Oil system reared its head…

Gas, Green or Gone?

Chapter 2 – Gas, Green or Gone?



The conference is over and my mind has been altered whether I like it or not. I sit on the train, heading home and look at all of the cars motoring along. They remind me of my new desire – to know the facts about what my car is really doing to the world. I knew that it was not good, the question was how not good?

When in doubt, ask the Internet. Just remember to ask it a few different ways, check the sources and read more than the first search result….

This I did and the results all said pretty much the same thing. A car takes a bunch of energy to make and an entry in Google Answers reckoned the average is 70 – 75 Giga-Joules, we’re talking 70 billion Joules. Now according to the Canadian government 1 Giga-Joule equals the amount of energy contained in about 30 litres of petrol, so making a car uses around 2 100 litres of petrol worth of energy - if that makes it a bit more comprehensible. It also works out that the amount of energy used to manufacture a car is usually less than 10% of the energy it consumes in driving around during its lifetime, depending on how long the car lives of course.

OK, so my shiny, lovely, stylin’ car was not the planet’s best friend, what were the options? After a bunch more of research there were three viable choices; Convert to gas (LPG), sell the car and not drive anywhere, or get another car that was more eco-friendly.

The gas option is a pretty good one. Rebates for conversions are helping people chose this slightly-better-than-unleaded-fuel option (although the Australian Greenhouse Office reckons it’s only about 3% better in terms of carbon dioxide emissions). Also LPG is often burnt as a waste product of oil mining and it is a by-product of oil refining, so using something that could otherwise be wasted is always a good thing. Unfortunately though it is still taking Carbon molecules that were innocently locked away in the ground and pumps them into the atmosphere. So the verdict was: better but perhaps not best.

Sell the car and walk/cycle/public transport everywhere was another option. Great if you live in the city where there is some decent public transport infrastructure, no good if you live where I do. Cars cost a heap of cash when you add up insurance, registration, fuel and mechanical stuff, and when you're talking a 40+ year old car, you get to know your mechanic well enough to invite them to you BBQs – true story.

A 2006 study by the NRMA (http://www.mynrma.com.au/cps/rde/xchg/mynrma/hs.xsl/2856.htm?cpssessionid=SID-3F5768EC-B646E169) reckons that when you take into account all the costs of having a car it works out to be between $110 and $370 per week. Obviously little cheap-o hatchbacks that run on the smell of an oily rag are at the lower end of the scale and chunky 4WDs are at the other. Mine worked out around the $150 mark as depreciation was no longer an issue, in fact it was heading up in value due to collect-ability.

I guess the moral of the story here is; would you spend more than $110 bucks per week getting around in buses, trains and cabs?

So that left the option of finding a more eco-friendly car…. Bugger.



Tune in for Chapter 3 – The Cost of Going Green.