Interview with Graham Burnett published in the Southend Echo
Graham Burnett was interviewed by his local paper the Southend Echo, published 9th March 2007.
Let's live in harmony with the earth
By Rebecca Peppiatt
THERE'S no shortage of buzz-phrases surrounding green issues - ecological, organic, sustainable, biodegradable, carbon footprints, renewable resources, to name a few. It's enough to make your head spin.
Permaculture is the latest word to come to prominence - and in many ways it is one of the most important.
"It's about finding ways to live in the future," says Graham Burnett, of Rayleigh Avenue, Westcliff, who has written and illustrated two books on the subject.
"Permaculture is about recognising the way we have consumed. It's is about taking responsibility for our actions and for our planet, then turning around our behaviour."
The idea was pioneered by two Australians in the Seventies and is now being adopted all over the world, although its principles are hardly new.
"It's about living in harmony with the earth," explains Graham.
"Climate change is happening, that's accepted now. One way or another, we are suffering from an energy descent and we're hitting the peak. We've reached the point where we're using more energy than we have."
Supporters of permaculture grow their own food, use pushbikes as their only form of transport and recycle waste.
"The despondency and hopelessness of inner city destructoculture can be replaced with a low-input, high-yielding, self-sustaining, ecologically harmonious human-scale community," suggests Graham's first book, Permaculture A Beginner's Guide.
It goes on: "This is the essence of Permaculture - literally a permanent culture'. But it is not a static culture - more and more elements and concepts can be added as time goes on: community meeting places, collectivised back gardens, grey water recycling systems, compost toilets, holistic health care centres, reed-beds, ponds, forest gardens, eco-schools, solar greenhouses etc."
Graham works with adults with learning difficulties and lives in a terraced townhouse with partner, Debby, and four children.
"When I left school I was inspired by the punk thing," he explains.
"A lot of songs were about injustice, so that made me aware of big protests. Animal rights was my background - I wanted to make a difference."
Graham spent 15 years campaigning and admits: "I got to that point where it didn't matter whether we won or lost on a particular thing.
"There would always be the next thing that came along.
"Permaculture was the big thinking switch. It enabled me to make a shift and work towards what I was in favour of, rather than always being against one thing or other."
Graham's family grows some of its own food in the garden and more on a nearby allotment.
"We try to avoid supermarkets," he adds. "If we don't grow the food, we buy it from local suppliers and at farmers' markets.
"We're vegans too. Vegans support the environment, because the argument is land grazed by animals is land which could be used for our direct consumption. If everyone was a vegan, we could feed the world on just 25 per cent of the Earth's land.
"We also try and catch as much water as w
