After wildfires crept dangerously near their Wamboyne property in 2020, Sid Crawford and Camille Goodman committed to changing their lifestyle.
Faced with the effects of climate change, they decided to drastically cut their carbon footprint.
“We felt a little helpless,” Crawford said.
“We knew the problem was climate change, so we thought, ‘What can we actually do to control it?'”
Dr. Goodman said trying to calculate the right amount of emissions they should be producing actually led them to try a zero-carbon lifestyle.
“The more I looked into it, the more I realized there was no right amount,” she said.
“We just thought, ‘We have to aim for zero, to get as close to zero as possible.'”
They installed solar panels on their property and now basically live ‘off the grid’ with the help of a rare source of recycled laptop batteries.
“[I] We bought old laptop batteries by the kilo, took everything apart, tested every battery, and cleaned every bad cell,” Crawford said.
“A laptop battery probably has 6 cells in it, and sometimes one cell fails and the rest are good, sometimes all are good.”
Crawford said he used 800 laptop batteries to act as one large battery unit for a rooftop solar system.
“[It’s] 44 kWh, basically the same as three Tesla Powerwalls,” he said.
“This is definitely not the easiest way, but [it is] The cheapest way. ”
The couple track their personal carbon footprint each year, but Crawford said the biggest change in his carbon footprint came from switching to electric vehicles.
“I have always been environmentally conscious, but I never thought the environment was a problem. [long car trips] Absolutely,” he said.
Crawford said his carbon footprint was just over 10 tons in 2019, three-quarters of which came from his cars.
“The next year we reduced that to 4.78 tons, reducing vehicle emissions to 1.8 tons,” he said.
“This year we have reduced to 2.26 tonnes, while vehicle emissions are 0.85 tonnes.”
“I did all the easy things”
Going carbon zero has presented some challenges for the couple, especially as they get closer to their goals.
They said they have been able to reduce their emissions significantly over the past year, but they have now done the increasingly difficult and basic things to reduce their emissions even further.
“It’s hard because we’ve done all the easy things,” Dr. Goodman said.
“We’ve got our cars done, we’ve got solar power here, we’ve made all our appliances electric, we don’t fly planes anymore, we’ve cut down on lamb and beef and dairy.”
She also started working in Wollongong, a few hours drive from Wamboin. This meant that the couple needed to quickly upgrade their newly purchased electric vehicle to one with a longer range range.
But she said making costly changes in the short term, overall, improved their lives in the long run.
“This has never made our quality of life worse. I would say it definitely improved,” she said.
When asked if he had any tips for others looking to reduce their carbon footprint, Dr. Goodman said the most important thing is simply to aim for manageable limits.
“We do the best we can, but everyone is different in what they can do,” she said.
“Just do what you can.”
