Using what you have

S
I'm a fan of re-using things.  Perhaps not as much as some (like my wife), but a fan nonetheless.  Re-use or continued use of something old is actually much more 'green' and 'sustainable' than many things that are promoted as such.

I have a three examples:

My tractor
It's a 1992 John Deere 2250.  I bought it after it had already a very hard life working for a Western District Shire and a Kilmore contractor.  I spent $10,000 adding a new front end loader and got it back to John Deere green - instead of Shire yellow.
It's now in a condition where, if looked after properly, it should last forever.  I use it for what a real farmer might think of as 'tractor work' rarely, but I use it to substitute for muscle all the time.  Yesterday I used it to shift some timber on a pallet, move a rock bigger than I could lift, scrape up some dirt  and move it.  The first job needed bale forks, the last 2 needed the bucket.  No problem - everything done in half an hour including the bale fork / bucket changeover.  If I had to do it with hand tools, it would have taken at least a couple of hours - and I'd still be thinking about how to shift a 400 kg rock.  I might have used a quarter of a litre of diesel.
If I spent $50,000, I could have a new tractor and loader with the same capability - plus a few bells and whistles of questionable utility.  Why?

My car
My car is a 2002 Statesman.  It's now done a bit over 150,000 km - and I have no plans to replace it.  I bought it about 4 years ago with about 70,000 on the clock.  It was 'cheap' because it was a V8 and petrol had just spiked.  It suits me for a number of reasons.  First and most importantly ... I fit in it comfortably.  Then ... the V8 lets me tow big loads occasionally.  Then ... the 'inefficiency' of the 11 litres / 100 km fuel consumption is more than offset by the avoided cost of constructing a new, more efficient replacement.
If I spent $50,000 to $100,000, I could have a new car with the same capability - plus a few bells and whistles of questionable utility.  Why?

The Compost Yard
The construction of the handling area  of the compost yard has seen the re-use of a variety of materials including:

• fence posts from an old set of cattle yards;
• some sleepers left over from another project;
• some sleepers recovered from a railway line somewhere;
• some rocks sourced from where all the other rocks come from - one thing we don't lack is rocks!
• timber for the rails from a whole variety of sources - stored away under the trees for eventual re-use;
• corrugated iron from a shed we demolished when we built the extension;
• used Tek screws from the same shed; and
• dirt and rock from the post holes - which will reduce the amount of crushed rock we need.

In due course we're going to surround the whole compost yard with a cypress hedge.  Doing that also involves some re-use:

• carpet from our old dining room to provide the first level of mulching;
• chipped mulch from work on trees to provide the second layer of mulching;
• drip irrigation pipe from Alan and Sandy's vineyard to ensure the trees get away to a good start;
• that will be connected to a standpipe that was recovered from another location.

In the end, I think the result looks better than if we had used new materials.  Yes ... it cost less, but it still cost in labour anyway.  I think the integrity of re-use shines from  it.  But perhaps I'm biased.
F