ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some of the resource politics of green technologies and domestic environmental labour. These politics can vary, perhaps ultimately unsurprisingly, in some ways reproducing elements of wider, dominant systems of resource use beyond the household. Off-gridding is a more radical and more overtly political type of domestic greening; far from being a dominant or mainstream activity, it is unusual in that it often recognizes domestic greening as labour-intensive. Suburban domestic water tank use has attained popular and political appeal in Australia: the model of state provision of drinking-quality water for all domestic uses with price based on access, is changing to one of deregulation, pricing based on usage, and diversification of supply. The chapter considers some of the socio-political effects of domestic environmental labour as a largely private act. As domestic environmental labour involves more complicated and sophisticated technologies, contractors are likely to carry out specialized labour in the home.
