Last week for class we had to do a Lifestyle Analysis project. I know.. what the hell is that? Well, we were asked to choose three areas of our life that could be monitored and where we could potentially consume less. Of the list of choices we were given, I chose electricity, garbage, and eating more efficiently. Being the closet conservationist I am (or wish to be) I was thrilled to do this project. I wish I could say the same for my family but it was a learning lesson. Fact of the matter is, a household of 7 people consume a LOT of crap.. we eat a lot of food, we throw a lot of stuff away and we use a lot of resources. I have researched sustainable living for a while now and am intrigued by it. It's not a new concept.. people were self-sustainable long before I ever set foot on this earth.
I am still working on the write-up report, but I can already see where some of the things we did really made a difference and others would need some more work. Technically water consumption was supposed to be tied into Electricity section but in our case our meter wasn't very accessible so I left that part out. Unfortunately I think it skewed our results. For example, we take a lot of showers, and it takes a good amount of electricity to heat water up. I should have turned the water thermostat down, but I didn't. We could have taken shorter showers but didn't do that either. I did however, limit my dryer use. I only ran the dryer 2 times in the 5 days of reduction (for towels because I do not want scratchy towels) as opposed to 7 times in the first 5 days of observation. I literally had clothes strung all over the house, but it really wasn't that hard of a thing to deal with. It just required a little management. We also were very diligent about turning lights off and not having them on when they weren't needed.
Eating more efficiently. What is that? Well, its reducing waste, reducing how far the food we eat has to travel, reducing packaging material, limiting meat consumption. Locavore is a trendy new word for this, and it is something I have been leaning to for a while now. I am far from doing this like I should but the awareness this little project brought me was good. I found for me that it wasn't the fact that this stuff isn't available, because I have several sources for locally raised meat and vegetables. We had our CSA this past year, Brent hunts and fishes for our own meat. And really price isn't a huge issue either. When you eat less meat you are paying less, and local meat is everywhere. A lot of times price comes into play because you have to buy a lot upfront and in our case we don't always have that to play around with. I would love to buy a pig and a cow to last us a year. If I had the space, I would raise my own meat chickens, but that is just not something that we can do. I didn't feel this portion of the project helped me a whole lot as I am pretty knowledgeable as to where to get the things that would lessen the impact, we just don't do it like we should.
Where I did see a huge change in impact was with our garbage. We monitored everything! I made a makeshift compost bin out of a trash can, My chickens have been eating better than ever! And we double check everything to see if we can recycle it. Just by doing these things we were able to decrease the volume of the trash that went to the landfill by 2/3rds. I keep a bowl by the sink for chicken scraps and one for compost and every day I empty it. I have a recycle bin upstairs now as well so paper trash from up there gets to the right place. Really this was such an easy change, it took very little effort and it made a HUGE difference.
My goal now is to be creative and see if I can reduce the other things that were monitored. I want to use a clothesline, build a real compost pile, monitor the electricity more (if not for conservation, but for the cost!). Can you see if there is anything you can limit? Maybe participate in a Meatless Monday, buy from the farmers market, hang the clothes to dry that dry fast, dry 2 loads at once, turn lights off when not using, reduce your shower by a few minutes. The fact is these things add up and it isn't too difficult to cut these things back some. Our dinner tonight was about 90% local. We had elk meat from a friend, quail that Brent shot, potatoes that came from a few towns over, and apples from an orchard that we picked yesterday. It was all so good and it was the first meal in ages where there were no leftovers and everyone loved it all.
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