By Kanina Foss
Worms are king in Riaan and Michelle Garforth-Venter's new house. The couple's unlikely housemates are going to provide essential garden and home services in return for their favourite meals - butternut and egg shells.
It's a working relationship born of the celebrity eco-couple's desire to walk their talk and live a green lifestyle, which has resulted in a reality show called Love and Mortar.
The show follows Riaan and Michelle through their busy lives as they build a bio-climatic house from scratch in a new eco-development in Muldersdrift.
The idea for the show originated after Riaan and Michelle converted their home to have as many green accessories as possible.
"Everything was born out of spending a lot of time in wild spaces, starting to realise the planet is in a desperate situation, and asking what can we do," says Michelle, an environment journalist and TV presenter.
They installed an insinkerator to dispose of food waste using their sewerage pipes; they changed their lightbulbs to LEDs; they began recycling, reducing the amount of waste they sent to municipal landfills to a shoebox every two weeks; and they installed a geyser timer, reducing their monthly electricity bill by R600.
When they decided to take things to the next level and build a bio- climatic home, they wanted to record the process to show South Africans that going green was easier than most people thought.
They describe the show as a mix between documentary and reality TV. It's a glimpse into their lives, what they argue about, what they agree on, but unlike Keeping Up With The Kardashians, it imparts useful information.
When it comes to worms, viewers will learn how Riaan and Michelle's pet invertebrates can be used in a grey-water system that recycles household water for use in the garden. The worms filter the water by eating debris like hair and food.
The couple will also feed their fresh food waste, like carrot tops, to worms kept outside in small tanks.
"Worms produce what we call liquid gold. It is, in fact, worm pee. If you put it on your garden, you will have no need for pesticide," says Michelle.
But the feature they are most proud of is going off the national electricity grid. The building lifecycle from construction to demolition is responsible for 40 percent of the energy consumed in a country. The couple's new house will have solar water heating and photovoltaic panels to produce electricity. "We want to save money for ourselves and the country," says Riaan.
Their tip to South Africans wanting to follow suit is to check out Safrelec, a company that offers financing for solar power.
They are also proud of their insulation features, which seal the air inside the house to minimise the need for heating or cooling. About a third of all the heat lost in a house is through the walls. Riaan and Michelle have used a layer of polystyrene in between two layers of bricks in their walls to act like a cooler box.
The estate they are building on, Avianto, is itself a green one, which will have recycling stations and rainwater catchments.
"We had to find the right developer. Many are doing green washing, jumping on the bandwagon to make a quick buck. You've got to know which questions to ask. The most important thing is to educate yourself, so you don't have the wool pulled over your eyes," says Michelle.
The couple has an association with the CSIR, but they've been doing much of the research for their new house themselves. Because they are pioneers in the field, they've had to put a huge amount of work into finding the right products.
And green building is not just about the way products function, it's also about how they're sourced.
It's necessary to think about how far your bricks have travelled, for example, and how many greenhouse gas emissions it took to get them to destination.
"I've said on TV I wish I could just build an ordinary house, everything is a decision, nothing can just be done," says Riaan.
It also hasn't been cheap to build green. "But the more people start going this way, the more everything will get cheaper. And the long-term cost savings are worth it," says Riaan.
"This is not living like a hippie, this is mainstream living. That's the point of the TV show, it's 100 percent accessible," says Michelle.
The house will be on show to the public until 2011. Viewers can go and pick up pamphlets for the various products used.
"One thing that's been phenomenal is how people are getting turned on by green building. Companies are realising that if they're not at the cutting edge, they're going to lose their foothold. It used to be all about money. Now with the green movement, you have a triple bottom line - people, planet, profit," says Michelle.
"It's about questioning the way we've been doing things and saying hang on, we can do things better. This is the only place in the universe we have that supports human life."
- Love And Mortar is a 30-part, half-hour series that will be screened from January 12 to August on the DStv Home Channel 182, with each week's new episode airing on Tuesday at 7.30pm.