Except for the nebulizer (a tabletop appliance resembling a small flying saucer) sending a mist of geranium essential oil over the living room and a toilet in one of the bathrooms that has an odd little sink popping out of its tank, nothing screams at you that there’s something different about this house.
Likewise for its occupants — a couple of upwardly mobile thirtysomethings, Sadhu Aufochs Johnston and his wife, Manda Aufochs Gillespie, and their 3-month-old daughter, Zella Rose. Add two dogs and thousands of worms in the basement (we will explain later), and you have Chicago’s First Family of Eco Consciousness.
Johnston is commissioner of the Department of Environment for the City of Chicago. He also is one of those uncommon public officials who walks the talk.
At work, Johnston oversees a staff of about 100 — and Mayor Richard Daley’s vision for turning Big Shoulders into the greenest city in the U.S., a city flowing with green roofs, green buildings, green businesses, rain barrels, composting bins, ex-offenders planting community gardens and a citywide recycling program that isn’t tragically flawed, among other programs.
At home, Johnston implements his personal green agenda. He and Manda, his eco soulmate whom he met at Oberlin College in Ohio 10 years ago, live a green life that is radical in both its breadth and simplicity.
“People have this perception that you’ve got to buy a hybrid car and build a solar system on your house in order to be green. You don’t,” says Johnston, who was 29 and running a Cleveland non-profit focused on promoting green building and energy-efficient construction when Daley met him 3 1/2 years ago. “You can do some things that are way more efficient just by monitoring how you use your energy.”
And your water. And your head and heart.
Eco for the masses
Although they have a hybrid car and shop with the privileged at Whole Foods Market, Johnston and Gillespie are not eco elitists, a burgeoning class of environmentalists with money and showmanship.
They don’t have the hardware to qualify — the photovoltaics on the roof, the geothermal heating. There isn’t even a dualflush toilet in their green life, which unfolds in an airy vintage three-bedroom condo in Rogers Park. Instead, they are role models for something more accessible when it comes to good Earthsmanship.
They are eco deliberate.
It’s about lifestyle. The two exercise extreme consciousness in the routines of daily living. Or as Gillespie, a writer by profession, likes to put it: “It’s a whole bunch of sensible things” that add up to a very green whole.
Allow us to enumerate:
They are plastic-bag vigilantes. They bring their own (reusable) canvas bags to the grocery store. They reuse plastic storage bags. Dry-cleaning bags become kitchen trash bags. And any stray bags that enter their lives are used for dog-walking.
They likewise shun the use-and-toss habit of paper towels — of which they indulge themselves in two/maybe three rolls (unbleached, recycled paper) a year. In its place: a kitchen cleanup system that consists of sponges and rags.
There’s a system for Zella’s diapering, as well, and it includes cloth diapers and hybrid diapers (called gDiapers), which are part reusable/part disposable.
They use compact fluorescent light bulbs. And rechargeable batteries. And power strips to reduce phantom loads from their electronics.
They are religious about turning lights off as they leave a room.
They turn off radiators, too, in rooms they don’t frequent, such as the guest bedroom.
They have no central air conditioning. Fans and window units — used only when they are actually in the room — are their cooling agents.
Keeping things in check
And as for major appliances, they get used judiciously too. They run the dishwasher only when it’s full and on the lightest options, forgoing an extra rinse and any heat drying. They do their laundry in cold water. And they don’t fire up the dryer for small loads. There’s a clothesline in one of the bathrooms.
In their closets: organization that’s a marvel.
See-through plastic storage bins and boxes (all clearly labeled) dominate the closets and corral everything from tape to essential oils, light bulbs, wrapping paper, art supplies, etc.
“Containers are nice — from a green perspective,” says Johnston, who is the family organization guru and label maker. If you know where your stuff is and you can see it, you’re not apt to buy things you don’t need or already have.
The rest of the story
There’s more:
They shop locally and organically. (See accompanying story.)
They buy green cleaning supplies. Products containing bleach and phosphates are not welcome in their home.
They compost their food scraps.
They have a rain barrel. And a push mower.
Biking is their preferred means of transportation. Johnston pedals 12 miles downtown to work almost every day.
And they recycle — ad nauseam, in a tiny closet space (3 1/2 foot square) off the condo’s main hallway. In here, in plastic bins and Mason jars, they collect for recycling everything from the usual suspects (paper, cardboard, aluminum, plastic, glass) to corks, batteries, toner cartridges and even their Preserve toothbrushes, which get sent back to the manufacturer and turned into plastic lumber.
“Sometimes, it’s a one-upping of our own selves,” says Gillespie of their devotion to sustainability. “Sometimes, it’s more about getting each other inspired. Or, helping keep each other inspired. When I’ve been going with the baby all day, the last thing I want to do is figure out what to do with No. 5 plastics. Sadhu will come home, put them in a box and figure out where we can take them.”
Water conservation
And then there’s the more eyebrow raising stuff:
Like: the fact that they share each other’s bath water. (“We share everything else,” Gillespie says. “It doesn’t seem in any way strange to us.”)
And: They use not one, but two systems for composting their organic (food) trash. There’s the traditional composting bin in the back yard.
And in the basement, there’s the the worm bin. It’s a tidy system for indoor composting, starring the creatures. (See accompanying story.)
And last but not least, there’s the odd-looking sink (for washing hands, brushing teeth) attached to the toilet tank in one of the two bathrooms.
Contrary to first glance and horror, it’s not a tap to the toilet water. It’s a tap to incoming, clean water.
It’s “the same water you get out of this tap,” says Johnston pointing to the traditional bathroom sink and noting that he bought the system online and installed it himself. The water, he explains, is “just going somewhere else when you’re done with it.”
It’s going into the toilet bowl — a kind of informal graywater system for reusing sink water.
Life in the Eco Lab
“They push the boundaries,” says Peter Nicholson of Chicago, a friend of theirs since college, noting a recent telephone conversation with Johnston at home in which he heard water noises in the background. “I’m thinking, `Is he in the bathroom?’ ” says Nicholson, with a laugh. Turns out, Johnston was using spent bath water to wash out Zella’s diapers.
“He’s always experimenting — let’s try this, let’s try that,” says Nicholson, also a green type, who works as executive director of Foresight Design Initiative, a Chicago-based sustainable design firm. “He’s not a hypocrite. He knows what it means to live a green lifestyle.”
Both Gillespie and Johnston were born into their eco-centricities.
Gillespie, a native of Ohio, grew up “quite poor” and with “a real sense of conservation by necessity” — along with maternal grandparents who were role models for a sustainable lifestyle, she explains.
Johnston had a different path.
“The short version is I grew up on a series of spiritual communities,” says Johnston, who was born in England to a German- Jewish mother (who was born in South Africa) and Canadian father and was raised in India, Europe, Oregon, California, Colorado and etc.
The even shorter version: His parents were hippies.
Role models
“One of the ethics of these communities was growing a lot of your own food and recycling,” Johnston continues. Environmentalism was “part of a way of life.”
As a teen, he worked in a construction/recycling yard in Oregon, sorting materials for reuse.
“Definitely, those kind of experiences gave me a sense that we don’t need to throw everything away,” Johnston says. And out of that “came a stronger sense of . . . how I wanted to spend my life energy, particularly at work.”
At home, a lot of life energy goes into stopping the tide of general stuff, which comes with living in a society of plenty.
Gillespie and Johnston practice conscious consumerism — and are proactive about it.
They specified “no gifts” for their wedding three years ago.
Their furnishings are largely of the reused sort — a mix of exotic antiques (his grandparents had an auction house in South Africa); rustic finds from Dumpster-diving expeditions; and pieces handmade by Johnston himself. He dabbles in furniture- making and uses wood from fallen trees in Chicago.
And up went the flags — quite literally — with the arrival of Zella Rose.
“We really both were freaked out about having a kid and all the consumption that goes on,” Johnston says. “We didn’t want a bunch of junk made overseas that some person is suffering making.”
They bought an Americanmade glider off Craigslist. They got a wooden cradle from one of Johnston’s colleagues, who made it for his children. The crib came from another friend/colleague.
And once again, they told friends and family “no gifts.” Instead of a traditional baby shower, they had a “hand-medown party.” They asked for “people’s hand-me-downs — things that were really important to them when they had kids . . . things they weren’t going to use anymore,” Gillespie explains.
Things like clothes, blankets, books, dolls, toys.
Along with that, Gillespie sewed a bunch of fabric flags (inspired by Tibetan prayer flags) or gave others the instructions for doing so, sent them to friends and family members, and “asked people to bless them in their own ways for the baby.”
They now hang as a colorful banner across Zella’s room.
“In a sense, this is our religion, our sense of how we connect to something greater,” says Gillespie of their eco life. “For Sadhu and I, it didn’t start when we had a child, but it makes it more profound now, now that we have this very real connection to future generations.”
– – –
GREEN SPOTS
The worm bin
The technical term is vermicomposting. It’s a composting bin system that relies on worms to break down food scraps and turn them into fertilizer.
Sadhu Aufochs Johnston and his wife, Manda Aufochs Gillespie, have one (in the basement of their condo building) because “what the worms produce [the castings]” is so rich and “far superior to compost generated outside,” Johnston says. “Plus, I kind of like worms.”
Another plus: It allows them to compost year-round.
“Thirty to 35 percent of the waste we generate as a culture is organic,” Johnston explains. “It’s a lot of material. It stinks in your trash can. You have to empty it more often. And this is a great way to keep that out of your waste stream.”
Here’s how vermicomposting works:
“At first you buy worms and then they multiply,” says Johnston, opening up the bottom compartment of his bin, which has three tiers (all of them lidded; no worms in plain view unless you open a lid and peer inside; no bad smells wafting about, no fruit flies) and stands no taller than a Weber grill.
Once a week, Johnston comes down to the basement to empty the organic trash from their kitchen countertop composter (a pretty little white ceramic container) into one of the three tiers in the vermicomposter. That “trash” includes vegetable peels, greens, tea bags, eggshells, food scraps — no dairy products or meat, though.
(As one layer in the composter fills up, you move up another tier. And so do the worms.)
Johnston adds shredded paper and the worms take it from there, taking months to turn the food scraps into deep, dark castings.
It’s a high-order fertilizer that they use for the building’s herb and container gardens. They also make a “tea” with some of the castings and use the nutrient-rich liquid to water houseplants.
Shopping locally
Food is one notable exception to Sadhu Aufochs Johnston’s belief that it doesn’t cost more to be green.
He and wife Manda Aufochs Gillespie are adamant about shopping locally and organically — and for that, they pay.
They “try to support smaller grocery stores,” Johnston says. (Newleaf Natural Grocery in Rogers Park is their local organic market of choice.)
And they have, in the past, purchased their organic produce directly from the farm, through a community-supported agriculture program (in which one pledges financial support to a local farm at the beginning of the season. That entitles the “shareholder” to a weekly box of produce, generally from June to November — as well as a part of the risk inherent with farming. In a bad year, “shareholders” get fewer crops.)
But for their organic dairy and meat, they go straight to the source. An Amish farmer from Indiana delivers their organic eggs, milk, yogurt, butter, chicken and beef on a biweekly basis. (They save the egg cartons and give them back to the farmer for reuse).
Gillespie estimates that prices are at least twice as much as standard grocery-store fare. A gallon of milk from the Amish farmer costs $7. Ground beef costs about $3.75 a pound. A dozen eggs is around $3.
Neither she nor Johnston flinch.
“It’s like, what do you want to put in your body?” Johnston asks rhetorically.
“We don’t have to eat so much to feel full and to feel nourished,” Gillespie adds, “because we’re getting, I feel, more from the food that we’re eating.”
To find food cooperatives, visit www.familyfarmed.org and localharvest.org/food-coops. Gillespie also offers the name of the Amish collective they use: Green Meadows, 574-825-3843.
———-
kklages@tribune.com
