You may have read that you can save water and be environmentally friendly by converting to a water-saving shower nozzle - one which restricts the flow of water so you use less of it per shower. Is that true, or is it just a load of marketing propoganda used by tap companies to make money out of people’s concern for the environment? I have doubts about how green these low-flow nozzles really are.

I grew up with the old “water guzzling” shower nozzles, but when I moved into my current home I found it had a low-flow water saving shower nozzle. At first I thought this was a good thing - by saving water in the shower I’d be doing the planet a favour, and my green halo would shine brighter. Alas, it didn’t work like that.

By limiting the water flow to what seemed like a pathetic trickle, it was taking me nearly twice as long to wash properly. Even after much practice, this didn’t reduce much. The saving in water flow was nearly being cancelled out by the extra time I needed to have a proper shower! So much for slashing water usage.

But isn’t even a small saving good? Not necessarily, because it’s not just about the water … there’s the heating to consider too. My water is heated by an instantaneous gas heater, which heats on-demand as the water flows through it (for very low use this is more efficient than a storage tank). It’s either on or off, and burns gas according to how long it runs. If the shower takes twice as long, then twice the gas is burned.

To put it in numbers, I estimated that using a low-flow nozzle might have halved the water flow rate, but led to an increase in shower times from 6 minutes up to 10 minutes. The result: I was using only 16% less water, but burning 66% more gas!

That’s not what I’d call environmentally friendly. Gas is a non-renewable fossil fuel which can’t be replaced, and burning it adds CO2 to the atmosphere. Water, on the other hand, is comparatively replaceable. What goes down the drain ends up as groundwater or seawater, which can eventually be used again somewhere.

But wait, there’s more! Often overlooked is the environmental cost of producing all this shiny new tapware. Materials such as iron ore have to be dug out of the ground, transported to where they are processed into stainless steel and whatever else goes into tapware, transported again to a factory for manufacture, enclosed in packaging materials (which have undergone transport and processing of their own), then distributed to the retailers. Simply putting a new shower nozzle into a shop consumes energy, fossil fuels and finite resources.

This cost may be justified if buying a new nozzle or tap is the only option - when the old one has failed, or when building a new home. But if the old one still works, the environmental cost of buying a new one probably outweighs the questionable benefit of saving a little bit of water.

In the end, my inherited low-flow nozzle deteriorated to the point where I had to replace it. I reverted to a high-flow nozzle and noticed a substantial reduction in my shower times and gas consumption. I use slightly more water in the shower, but still have a green conscience because I save water in other ways, like washing my car only once per year.

So are low-flow shower nozzles any good? If you have solar heating or a hot water storage tank (not instant hot water), AND you can somehow shower just as quickly and effectively with a lot less water, AND you need to buy a new nozzle anyway, then changing to a low-flow nozzle might be worthwhile and green. Otherwise we’d probably be doing the environment a favour by sticking with the plumbing we already have and not buying so much new stuff. There are other ways to save water which don’t have environmental costs … and if you really want to shower with less water, just turning the taps down a bit can often work.

One of my all-time favourite bakeries is in Augusta, a pleasant small town on the southwest corner of Western Australia. Having not visited that part of the world for about four years, I recently returned to see if the bakery is still as good as it was, or even if it was still there.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, as small businesses seem to close or change ownership with alarming regularity, and even when they don’t, high standards can sometimes fall. The bakery at Augusta has been around since 1948, and I couldn’t imagine it going downhill, but in today’s economic climate longevity doesn’t always mean a lot.

So it was with relief as well as joy that I found the Augusta Bakery to not only still be there, but still up to the very high standard it maintained when I first started eating there. In the interests of thorough research I sampled from across their range, and enjoyed their superb wholegrain rolls (without any fillings) just as much as the mini quiche and the perfect caramel tart. My original request for “One of everything, please” wasn’t taken seriously by the staff, which was for the best - the variety is large, as my belly would have been if I’d sampled everything!

The bakery has a small cafe attached which serves its own creations (which I didn’t try) as well as the bakery goods. As if the food isn’t enough, delectible edibles can be enjoyed with a coffee while gazing out the panoramic windows at the view over Flinders Bay. It’s a winning combination which deserves to succeed and endure.

The only change I noticed is that the Augusta Bakery now uses paper bags with their name printed on them, rather than plain unmarked bags. As a collector of printed bakery bags, it was pleasing to at last have a decent bag from my favourite bakery to add to my collection. You could say it was the icing on the cake … or the chocolate on the eclair.

Some people can easily throw things away. Others, like me, like to hang on to things which might come in handy one day - even if that day is a very long way down the track. I’ve just enjoyed one such example of delayed usefulness which justifies hanging onto things … for a long time!

Most years letterboxes in my area are graced with a few small promotional calendars given away by politicians or real estate agents. They are envelope-sized cards which have small magnetic strips on the back, for sticking on the fridge. I throw away most of the calendars, but not before peeling the magnetic strips off the back and saving them - because they might come in handy one day.

Fifteen years after I started collecting these little magnets, I’ve finally found a use for them.

As shown in the photo, they help me to keep track of what types of green coffee beans I have in my cupboard, and roughly how much of each type I have left. Printed labels for each coffee are stuck to the magnetic strips, and positioned to indicate roughly how much is left in each bag. It’s much easier than sorting through a growing mountain of cotton bags piled on top of each other to see what’s there.

When I began collecting them I had no idea what the little magnets might be used for - just a conviction that their potential to be useful justified keeping them. Their usefulness may have taken many years to eventuate, but that’s no obstacle to a true collector. It just proves what I always suspected: as long as storage space isn’t an issue, nothing potentially useful should be thrown away in case it might be useful one day.

Even if that one day is a long time coming!

It’s the time of year for reviewing things, and after pondering the books I read in 2008 (48 of them - it was a good reading year), I’ve come up with my favourites. Here, listed in the order I read them, are the five books which were most memorable for me in 2008:

1. Going To Extremes: mud, sweat and frozen tears by Nick Middleton
The author - a rather adventurous guy - describes his visits to the world’s hottest, coldest, wettest, and driest inhabited places. It was an enjoyable mixture of travel, adventure and science: fascinating to learn how people have adapted to living in hostile climates, both physically and psychologically, and why they bother. Oymyakon in Siberia is now on my travel wish-list.

2. The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett
I never imagined myself enjoying a historical novel, but my quest to read all of Ken Follett’s books led me to this one. Centred around the building of a cathedral in a 12th century English village, this epic tale is one of Follett’s most popular. After more than 1100 pages, and a story spanning several decades, I found myself totally absorbed in the characters and also the well-researched medieval setting.

3. In Praise Of Slow: how a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed by Carl Honore
The book’s blurb says “The Slow movement is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace; it is about living better in the hectic modern world by striking a balance between fast and slow.” Honore challenges our culture’s assumption that faster is better, and shares examples of the many ways people have slowed down, and lived better because of it. I’ve often thought that an obsession with speed was counterproductive, so it was reassuring to read a book that explains why.

4. To The Poles (without a beard) by Catharine Hartley
Catharine Hartley was a 34 year old Chardonnay-sipping London girl with no previous polar experience, who wondered if an amateur like herself could walk to the south pole. Not only did she do it, becoming the first British woman to walk to the South Pole, but she followed it up by trekking to the north pole as well. Reading this humorous account of what can be achieved with willpower was inspiring, as you’d expect. The candid way she shared what was going on in her mind and heart made it delightfully different from all the other polar exploration stories I’ve read, which were written by men (with beards).

5. Dirt Music by Tim Winton
This was the first novel I’d read by acclaimed West Australian author Tim Winton, and I found it hard to get into. The style was easy enough to read; it was just very different from other authors I’ve read. But it was worth persisting, and the vivid way Winton describes characters and landscapes made me feel like I’d been to the fictional coastal town much of the story is set in. Some of the impressions from this novel lingered long after I finished reading, a bit like the aftertaste from an intense and really good espresso

If you live in a country which uses the Gregorian calendar - that’s most of us - today is January 1st 2009. Happy new year to you all! However, because the internet reaches all countries, and because I’m a little pedantic, I must point out that not everyone starts their year at the same time.

If you’re in Ethiopia, then today is Tahisas 23, 2001. Tahisus (approximate translation only) is the fourth month of the year in Ethiopia where the Julian calendar operates, and where new year happens on what most of us experience as September 11 (or September 12 in years prior to leap years).

Ethiopian coffee growers -
producing great coffee, but
not celebrating new year today

To people in east Asia observing the traditional Chinese calendar, today is just another day in the year 4706. The date of the Chinese new year varies with the new moon, the next one being January 26th 2009.

Residents of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura are still plodding through year 1415 of the Bengali calendar, and won’t start their new year until April 15th (April 14th for those in Bangladesh). The rest of India uses the Indian national calendar which starts on March 21st.

The northern spring equinox - March 21st - is also used as the start date for the Iranian calendar. This is observed in Iran and Afghanistan, where today is nearing the end of the year 1387. The Bahá’í calendar starts on the same day, though for them the year is still 165. Just to be different, Assyrians are currently in the year 6758, and celebrate new year on April 1st, whereas the North African Berber people start their year on what to most of the world is January 14th.

These are just a few examples of the world’s calendar diversity, and to further complicate matters, countries such as China and India observe the dominant Gregorian calendar as well as their own traditional calendars … good for international consistency, but could cause some confusion.

Even if today is January 1st, pinpointing exactly when the year began isn’t always straightforward. Consider the folks at the Antarctic research base on the south pole … at the point where all time zones converge. They use New Zealand time for convenience, but midnight must seem a bit meaningless where the sun neither rises nor sets.

If today is January 1st where you are, then I wish you a happy new year. For anyone else, I’ll draw upon my training from when I once worked at McDonalds, and just say “have a nice day”.