Anyone scrolling through social media or Instagram lately, or watching lifestyle television shows, would be aware of eco or small homes popping up all over the place.
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Some look like pods from Mars and others gypsy caravans on wheels, but the trend is being dictated by an awareness of a lower carbon footprint and a foreboding sense of our finite energy reserves.
The 1911 census registered the average Australian household as 4.5 persons, compared to the average today of 2.6, yet Australian homes have increased a staggering 40 per cent in size since 1984. The average family home has increased from 162 square metres to a whopping 227 square metres.
According to the WWF Living Planet Report of 2008, the Australian ecological footprint we have on the earth is 2.8. That measure in layman’s terms is that we are using 2.8 times more resources than the earth can sustain.
In Australia, we have one of the largest building footprints in the world and send out an average of 18 tonnes of carbon per household.
Certainly this luxury is a backlash from the last century where six or seven people packed in to a three-bedroom house. Today we’re not sure if the kids are even home!
We've over-corrected with our four bedrooms plus a study, our media rooms, walk-in robes of a Hollywood starlet, enormous butler’s pantries and three or four televisions per household.
If those stats aren't enough, Australians are also among the longest commuters in the world, above New York and LA.
Do we need to be in crisis to make changes to the way we live?
Architecturally-designed eco homes, solar-panelled, moveable, self-sufficient, it all sounds as new age as living in a yurt, but the benefits are manifold.
Imagine owning a home under $100k, living completely off grid, and moving it to a new location in retirement ... imagine being debt free in a flexible creative community, where we have an abundance of time.
Time to relax and enjoy the family, or grow vegetables, instead of being gridlocked in a traffic jam.
It's all possible. Most of us baby boomers have moved on from our gas guzzling cars of the 70s and 80s, to smaller, smarter economical cars.
Why wouldn't we do that with our homes when they are not sustainable?
I hazard a guess here, but I wouldn't like to be selling a 40-square home in 10 years’ time!
