Living in rental property we are confronted on a daily basis with unwanted junk mail. Some comes in shiny plastic envelopes under the guise of newsletters or advertorials addressed to previous tenants; birthdays are celebrated in the form of half price hair cut vouchers; flyers by local real estate agents desperate to acquire your home; warrants for unpaid transport fines and the same take away menus week after week. Some can be redirected or returned to sender, but most is a bundle of daily extrapolations to buy and acquire stuff that you neither want nor need. Most of it is regularly reposted in defiance of the 'no junk mail' sticker, in the hope that a more compliant disciple to the virtues of advertising will have moved into your property. None is printed with a thought to a more sustainable planet with less paper, water, carbon miles or toxic ink.

Being a tenant means you are unable to make any structural changes such as solar panels or water tanks to your property without the permission of your landlord. It can be very difficult for tenants to get basic repairs done, let alone innovations for environmental reasons! Renters aren't a homogeneous entity, some reside in houses with gardens, others in apartment buildings, some are single dwellers whilst others may have the challenge of share housing with people who do not share their passions for the environment. They are of course, a group that extends across ethnicity, age and socio-economic cohorts.

Nearly 30% of people residing in Australia are in rental accommodation. This is a statistic that is likely to grow, as many are increasingly unable to afford to access the property market, particularly in urban areas. Renters as a group are less transient than in earlier times due to the scarcity of rental accommodation and therefore keen to make improvements to their rental proprieties of their own initiatives such as veggie patches and energy efficient light bulbs and water saving devices. One policy we would like to see would be for tenants to have the option of longer-term leases of 3-5 years, giving a sense of security and stability. One of the difficulties at present is that the competitive, overextended demand for rental accommodation means that many genuinely fearful that if they request or undertake any improvements to their property, their landlord will see it as a reason to increase their monthly rent.

Green Renters started in 2009 after being tired of visiting Environmental exhibitions and conferences and finding that the bulk of the information was targeting those intended to build their own home from the ground up or owners of existing dwellings for green retro fitting. In many respects renters were put in the 'too hard basket' as we were considered a group who lacked legal status, cohesiveness, economic power and a sense of permanence.

Our website is full of simple, time and cost effective tips and ideas to turn your home, no matter how temporary, into a sustainable reality.

www.greenrenters.org
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