After a chance encounter with a run-down farmhouse and cottage in Balgowlah in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Felicity Stevens now runs the Airbnb Rangers Cottage from the property her family ended up buying – an environmentally conscious stay that has some guests coming back again and again with praise for its sustainability offerings.
But Stevens doesn’t want her property to remain unique, which is why she wrote a sustainability plan for other Airbnb hosts to follow after attending a conference in 2019 to recognise properties with sustainability considerations – something the organisation says it is still currently working on.
After speaking with other hosts around the world who were interested in making their properties more sustainable but confused about where to start, Stevens began documenting her work on her website. Stevens found a pool of like-minded, climate-conscious guests who understand the values of climate change, composting, and avoiding red meat, and asked where they could find similar accommodations.
However, it’s not an easy path to take, Stevens said, and most of the changes she’s brought about had to be self generated. There are “lots of qualifications” you can get, she says, but “some of them aren’t really worth the paper they’re printed on, so you have to be quite careful.”
“There’s a lot more to it than most people realise. While there are lots of tangible, simple steps that we can take, there’s also a bigger message here, which comes back to the actual home and the way it’s set up. Is the home energy efficient? What is powering the home? Is it renewable energy? Is it energy you’re generating on site…we can tick a lot of boxes, but we can’t tick them all, everyone will have constraints.”
A life-changing choice was the decision to switch out the gas in their kitchen at home.
It was during renovations to the house in 2017 that her husband, David McEwen, showed her a report linking childhood asthma to gas in homes – causing Stevens to switch out the gas stove, which she had already ordered, with an induction cooktop. One of her sons has had asthma since he was a year old. He needed a nebuliser and would “end up in hospital without fail” every year – so “it was a no brainer”.
“We moved back into the house, and we completely forgot about it – and then a year later, David and I looked at each other and said ‘hey, we haven’t been to this hospital this year, huh?’”
Other sustainability considerations included the choice of using natural fibres in bedding and fabric such as cotton, linen and wool, which can be composted at the end of life, cushions and decorations made from off-cuts of old curtains; furniture, including two lamps made from damaged old wooden dressers and other upcycled and rescued second hand goods. The house also has ceiling fans, which help keep warm air down during cooler months and reverse cycle during warmer months, as well as an energy-efficient split system that keeps the home thermally insulated during the year.