Thea Holm, environmental educator, lives in a low-impact, environmentally friendly way on the banks of Hartbeespoort dam, just outside Johannesburg.

“We must get the word out that we are now on limited time to prepare the damage caused by our everyday life styles, and it is not the responsibility of governments and industries, it is you and me, our actions placed the industries and chose the government of the day in the first place; each one of us must make this now our responsibility.”

My story started 34 years ago, although I became part of this family only 13 years ago and actively started living an alternative life style six years ago.

My father in law, Dieter Holm, built a house on a mountain overlooking the Hartbeespoort Dam and consciously made the decision not to get an electricity connection from Eskom, but to look at alternative ways to generate electricity for his home...

Water was also a crisis because the only place where an underground watercourse could be found, was a few hundred meters from the house, very deep with a very weak flow. The next step was then to build reservoirs on the corners of the house to harvest the rain water, which is still the only water supply to date.

Only half a year’s rainfall is needed to fill these dams and once full, will supply this house with water for one and a half years, without any rain falling! As we are very conscious of our limited water supply, we have tanks in the floor underneath the showers, storing the grey water to flush the toilets with. Gardening is also limited to drought hardened plants and pot gardening.

Dieter brought his first PV panels in from America, - second hand, bought at an old production plant in Arizona. In fact, these panels are still in use on the roof, doing their work. He used a flat plate collector to build his hot water system and a gas stove for cooking, which is substituted with solar cookers when the sun shines.

When my husband, Henning and I, together with our three boys, moved here six years ago, we immediately started making plans for enlarging the system. We came from town with grid connected electricity supply and wanted to use most of our electrical equipment we are used to, here as well.

Five things were immediately dumped for their inefficiency: the fridge/freezer, the stove (got a gas stove), the washing machine (used ridiculous amounts of water and electricity), the electric kettle (used too much electricity) and the clothes iron (also too much electricity).

The kettle was substituted with a kettle that boils water on the gas stove top, the fridge/freezer with a very efficient one that uses a third less electricity plus the motor runs 21/2 hours less than an average one because of good insulation; the current washing machine uses less water and electricity and the clothes iron has unfortunately been sourced in Germany, as in SA you only get electricity gobblers, this one uses a third of the electricity of its shelf partners.

We had a microwave oven that was efficient enough and required a dish washer only a few years ago, which was by the way at that stage, one of two in my comparison of eight brands and same range models, that used nearly half the electricity and water than the rest of the models in the comparison!

You must now remember that all of the above are in duplicate, as we are two households (with a guest apartment separate from the main building) that are equipped with these energy efficient appliances, running solely on solar power!

Up until two years ago I was happy to live my alternative life style, showing it more and more to interested parties visiting our house and we got used to having an ‘open house’ all the time. What really changed my attitude and mindset, was Al Gore’s movie an Inconvenient Truth where I finally ‘got it’! Not only that we are destroying our precious earth, but the rate at which we are doing it!

Three months later Henning and I were lucky to be in a group of 20 participants invited from SA to Germany on a Renewable Technology Seminar (April 2007), where the Germans showed us how they utilize everything from solar to wind, biogas, biomass and even after everything has been thoroughly recycled, the left over rubbish burned to produce electricity in the end.

There and then I realized our big problem in South Africa is the lack of awareness and I made my decision to start ‘something’ to bring this urgent message over to the man on the street. I compiled a presentation (which varies from audience to audience) based on the school curriculum from AIT together with my own lifestyle experiences. Since then I have been very busy doing presentations to every walk of life, showing people that you can be sooooo green and still wear shoes and live a modern life style, and not deprive yourself of any luxuries in this world!

My audiences cover pre-school, primary and secondary school children, women’s groups, business consortiums, professional organisations and on the Climate Change Summit 2007 with school children.

You can contact Thea Holm, environmental educator of Omnibus Engineering, on 082 824 8340 or email her: tholm@omnibussolar.com