Drivers in the passenger seat

Buddy the Little Taxi

Life in the shop is getting busier and my DH is working 11 hours a day, 7 days per week which is a challenge to the conventional way we think about work. February is a good time to take stock of what is in the shop, on the shelves and in the stock room. The decluttering process that happens in a household is ongoing in a shop environment. There are however items with a short lifespan that need to be sold or wasted and there is paperwork that cannot be destroyed for a period of 7 years.

Saying that, the shelves are still groaning with stuff that either does not sell, or is not ours.

We now have an idea of the space the shop provides and the clients that frequent our business and thus trying to find variety to keep them interested is an additional task.

We have staggered delivery days . Most stock gets carried through to the stock room where it is unpacked, priced and stored away. The packaging also gets packed away : plastic in a bag to be sent away, cardboard boxes for local businesses or recycling. Wooden boxed get used in the garden or broken up for kindling. Our aim is still to have only 2 bags going to landfill each week. I am pleased with that bearing in mind that my shopping list each week is for about 800 people.....

We have not yet ventured into the stockroom behind the stockroom which is the equivalent in the shop to your garage or loft ; a dumping ground for anything else you can think of that you do not know how to dispose off or display units that are no longer contemporary. Its a dark room, a bit damp, so anything that stays there is not likely to be in good condition either.

We have plenty of space. Our next job is to clear the stockroom behind the stockroom to make it into a better stockroom; that will release some space in the shop to extend the products we carry.

Starting a business is a huge investment in time, energy and commitment as well as the occasional pep talk to keep going. At times it is a tough existence but the plus points are that you really are able to make your own decisions and no one tells you when you can have a tea break.

What is the impact with regards to downshifting and carbon lighter living?

• no commuting
• we are not supporting supermarkets as consumers; no 20 mile round trip and no plastic bags
• encouraging people to shop locally and use their car less
• Buying locally means people get to meet people and this may reduce loneliness.
• supporting local food producers
  

After 3 months, we realise that 2 cars are no longer a necessity and we are finally committing to having just one car. Our mileage has reduced from 20,000 miles per year to 8000 . Having one car will cut the cost of repairs and maintenance, road tax and insurance. Selling a car may also release some capital invested in it to spend on the house.

I have to add that I am the one giving up my car : my DH is quite partial to keeping his. I have no longer a need to own a car; I am quite happy to share ownership and just top it up with fuel when I need to and be a passenger.

I am amazed at the change in my attitude : I loved my little car, polished it when I could and treasured the speed it could work up when required. I have debated about giving up the car before but it seemed just like depriving myself of local transport. When I started to live really locally, I realised that it is not a car I need to own but I need to look at my transport requirements and the way these can be fulfilled. I am happy to share and let someone else do all the polishing, car tax paying, road tax costs etc. I am going to become the driver in the passenger seat.

After all, would you spend £ 10,000 on transport over 3 years......

Crunch time

There are changes afoot in a variety of producing areas which will have an impact on the foodchain.

Our supplier of petfoods has advised us that the cost of peanuts has trebled due to peanuts being in demand as a fuel source and has passed the price onto us. The impact of that is that the kind ladies in our village who have been putting out peanuts for the birds during the winter months are thinking twice about how they will continue to do that and keep warm themselves. Pressure on everyone in that transaction. I was not aware that peanuts were a source of fuel and an ingredient of biofuel.

I understand that there is pressure in the world with sources of oil reducing and demand staying the same or increasing to find an alternative.

The second piece of news that disconcerns me personally is that our local beekeeper, who provides us with local honey is concerned that he has lost some hives and that the bees are reducing the amount of honey they are producing. Thus, honey is going to be a luxury soon. I touched on bees being an indicator of global change previously, and frankly most people would not pay much attention to the loss of pollinators because they may not be aware of its significance.

We continue to offer a local service. A customer amazed me this week; he had made a trip into the nearest town to buy some meat. The cost of petrol was £ 1.00 and then he had had to pay 50 p to park his car. He understood the equation that if he had shopped locally he would have saved money, time and hassle. It makes sense for suppliers to do the travelling once on the country lane instead of 10 cars doing the journey. Hopefully the word will spread......

Generally, the trend of food prices is up, because the cost of raw materials and transport is up. I expect that soon, suppliers will expect a larger minimum order to minimise their transport costs which will have an effect on small shop keepers like us.

Reducing your carbon footprint is exactly about that, reducing it, changing the way we do things, the way we use the resources we have available. If we do not reduce consumption, and resources reduce, then the prices will go up and obtaining basic foods will become more difficult.

Every day we get bombarded with bad news about global warming, or some other strange phenomenon. When the financial markets are volatile, food prices go up, your bank increases its rates, the credit card company stops you from purchasing any more items on credit; there has to be a message in there that things are going wrong somewhere.

The way things seemed to fall into place is changing; if we are all connected and our actions have an effect then, all these vibrations and shifts have to have an impact somewhere. Its a shaky foundation for the moment, a delicate balance.

And yet, the consumer is making different choices. There is support for organic which has evolved into ethical resulting in every high street company now offering a green alternative to make you feel better when you shop.

If you consider being on a carbon reducing diet; if the shops offered you a slimming bar that tastes as good as the real thing, but would not cause you to gain weight, you would buy it right?
If they can produce biofuel and it means that you do not have to stop driving then ofcourse you would go for that. That means no change for the individual and just a change of resources. The thought of giving transport up completely is too hard to contemplate and yet that is the shift that is required in the long term just as giving up sugar would be the direction to go into if you found out you were diabetic.

That sort of shift is unpleasant, probably not for the fainthearted. I want to ask you to take that step with me. This is the toughest thing we will be asked to do.

Moving from Berry Cottage was a wrench for me. I loved the house, the garden; but it was no longer manageable with a lack of resources. Yes I traded a comfortable cottage with all mod cons for an old house that leaks, that is hard to keep warm but that provides an opportunity to not travel, to work from home and to grow a large proportion of our food on the premises.

I find myself wanting a new bathroom, a new kitchen, a warm room and occasionally I also want to just run away, usually when the power cuts out. I am no different, I want all my stuff, I just choose to not want it so much and to start reducing my carbon consumption. I expect it is no different than dieting. Hard, very very hard to do but it can be done.

Anyone want to be my carbondiet buddy?

80% reduction in CO emissions

Simple living reuse and reduce have started in June to reduce their emissions to 90% of what the average american uses. I have copied Sharon's text and made amendments where possible. Go check out how she is doing.

As a way of comparing what we can achieve, we have decided to join the experiment and comment on how its going here in the UK. We may be deluding ourselves that we are reducing our emissions and yet it is useful to continue on this path and support eachother.

I have therefore taken Sharon’s list and worked on 80% reduction. Not all figures are available so if you can add to them in any way, feel free.

1. Transport and petrol/diesel consumption
The amount of miles driven by a car is averaged at 10,000 miles per year. An 80% reduction would reduce that to 2000 miles per year. That is a tough target when you live in the country but I am going to check it out and report back on how we are doing with that one.

2. Electricity. Average UK usage is 4900 kwh PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR,( it is 11,000 KWH per household in the USA) . 80% reduction would mean using 81 kwh PER HOUSEHOLD PER MONTH
• Solar Renewables are deemed to have a 50% payback - that is, you get twice as many
watts.
• Hydro and Wind are deemed to have a 4 to 1 payback over other methods - you get 4
times as many.
3. Heating and Cooking Energy - this is divided into 3 categories, gas, wood and oil. Your household probably uses one of these, and they are not interchangeable. If you use an electric stove or electric heat, this goes under electric usage.
• Natural Gas (this is used by the vast majority of US households as heating and cooking
fuel). For this purpose, Propane will be calculated as the same as natural gas. Calculations
in therms should be available from your gas provider.
• UK Average Natural Gas usage is 20500 KWH gas PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR. An
80% reduction would mean a reduction to 4100KWH PER HOUSEHOLD PER YEAR
• Heating Oil . I cannot find any figures for the Uk so if you do, let me know. I am making a
guestimate here ( we do not have oil in this house)
• Average US usage is 500 Gallons PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR. A 80% cut would mean
using 100 gallons PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR. Biodiesel is calculated as equivalent.
• Wood. This is a tough one. The conventional line is that wood is carbon neutral, but, of
course, wood that is harvested would have otherwise been absorbing carbon and
providing forest. There are good reasons to be skeptical about this. So I’ve divided wood
into two categories.
• Locally and sustainably harvested, and either using deadwood, trees that had to come
down anyway, coppiced or harvested by someone who replaces every lost tree. This is
deemed carbon neutral, and you can use an unlimited supply. This would include street
trees your town is taking down anyway, wood you cut on your property and replant,
coppiced wood (that is, you cut down some part of the tree but leave it to grow), and
standing and fallen deadwood. You can use as much of this as you like.
• Wood not sustainably harvested, or transported long distances, or you don’t know.
1 cord of this is equal to 15 gallons of oil or 20 therms of natural gas.


4. Rubbish collection - the average UK generates about 1.64kg of garbage PER PERSON, PER DAY. An 80% reduction would mean 328g of garbage PER PERSON, PER DAY.
5. Water. The Average American uses 100 Gallons of water PER PERSON, PER DAY. A 90% reduction would mean 10 gallons PER PERSON, PER DAY. No idea on the UK average so I am going to stick with the American average here and limit it to 8 gallons per person per day ( in our household that would be 40 gallons)
6. Consumer Goods. The best metric Sharon could find for this is using money. A Professor at Syracuse University calculates that as an average, every consumer dollar we spend puts .5 lbs of carbon into the atmosphere. This isn’t perfect, of course, but it averages out pretty well.
The average American spends 10K PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR on consumer goods, not including things like mortgage, health care, debt service, car payments, etc… Obviously, we recommend you minimize those things to the extent you can, but what we’re mostly talking about is things like gifts, toys, music, books, tools, household goods, cosmetics, toiletries, paper goods, etc… A 90% cut would be 1,000 dollars PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR ( 80% cut therefore is £ 400 per year per household in the UK)
• Used goods are deemed to have an energy cost of 10% of their actual purchase price. That is, if you buy a used sofa for $50, you just spent $5 of your allotment. The reason for this is that used goods bought from previous owners put money back into circulation that is then spent on new goods. This would apply to Craigslist, Yardsales, etc… but not goodwill and other charities, as noted below. This rule does not apply if you know that the item would otherwise be thrown out - that is, if someone says, “If you don’t buy it, I’m going to toss it.” Those items are unlimited as well, because they keep crap out of landfills.
• Goods that were donated are deemed to be unlimited, with no carbon cost. That is, you can spend all you want at Goodwill and the church rummage sale. Putting things back into use that would otherwise be tossed should be strongly encouraged.

I am going to go with this and find a way of reporting the facts for the downshifting household. I will need to put my thinking hat on that one.

7. Food. Sharon says : This was by far the hardest thing to come up with a simple metric for. Using food miles, or price gives what I believe is a radically inaccurate way of thinking about this. So here’s the best I can do. Food is divided into 3 categories.
#1 is food you grow, or which is produced *LOCALLY AND ORGANICALLY* (or mostly - it doesn’t have to be certified, but should be low input, because chemical fertilizers produce nitrous oxide which is a major greenhouse contributor). Local means within 100 miles to me. This includes all produce, grains, beans, and meats and dairy products that are mostly either *GRASSFED* or produced with *HOME GROWN OR LOCALLY GROWN, ORGANIC FEED.* That is, chicken meat produced with GM corn from IOWA in Florida is not local. A 90% reduction would involve this being AT LEAST 70% of your diet, year round. Ideally, it would be even more. I also include locally produced things like soap in this category, if most of the ingredients are local.
#2 is is *DRY, BULK* goods, transported from longer distances. That is, *whole, unprocessed* beans, grains, and small light things like tea, coffee, spices (fair trade and sustainably grown *ONLY*), or locally produced animal products partly raised on unprocessed but non-local grains, and locally produced wet products like oils. This is hard to calculate, because Americans spend very little on these things (except coffee) and whole grains don’t constitute a large portion of the diet. These are comparatively low carbon to transport and produce. Purchased in bulk, with minimal packaging (beans in 50lb paper sacks, pasta in bulk, tea loose, by the pund, rather than in little bags), this would also include things like recycled toilet paper, purchased garden seeds and other light, dry items. This should be no more than 25% of your total purchases.
# 3 is Wet goods - conventionally grown meat, fruits, vegetables, juices, oils, milk etc… transported long distances, and processed foods like chips, soda, potatoes. Also regular shampoo, dish soap, etc… And that no one should buy more than 5% of their food in this form. Right now, the above makes up more than 50% of everyone’s diet.
Thus, if you purchase 20 food items in a week, you’d use 14 home or locally produced items, 5 bulk dry items, and only 1 processed or out of season thing.
Ok, let me know what you think and if you are still in!

lets stick to this formula and really check what we buy, where it comes from and how we are supporting the locally produced factor.


All in all a tough target to meet and I am not certain that we are going to succeed on all fronts but I am going to give an accurate reflection of what is going on in this household and how we deal with the practical issues of reusing, reducing etc. Are you coming with us ?

10 ways to holiday flight free

Family Camping by Ocean, Have a Great Vacation

1. Stay at home. Visit your local attractions and view your home as a holiday cottage.
2. Stay in the Uk. It boasts many miles of coastline and fantastic countryside.
3. Support local businesses. Stay in local hotels,visit local producers and places to eat out, farmers markets etc. Find out about local recipes and ingredients. Use the internet to do some local research before you go. The reasons for supporting local businesses is that many in the UK countryside depend on your tourism custom to do what they do best. Choose local instead of the usual chains you know of.
4. Travel to organic destinations. , find out more by visiting organicholidays.com
5. Try out a working holiday in the countryside by volunteering on farms. This could be an excellent introduction to learning skills for downshifting, gardening and small farming. wwoof.org
6. Use seat61.com to find alternative ways of travelling in the UK and Europe.
7. Package holidays are giving profits to large companies....very little goes to the local people - search for other ways to have a holiday.
8. Whilst on holiday, save water when you can. Opt not to have your towels changed daily.The average tourist uses 10 times as much water as the locals when on holiday.
9. Try greenglobe21.com to find out which world airlines, hotels and travel agents meet environmental standards set by the World Travel and Tourism Council.
10. Get hold of a copy of Tourism Concern’s Ethical Travel Guide.


Further useful resources to check out :
greentravellers.co.uk - a forum for green travellers to discuss current issues and swap information.
greenbox.ie - Irish eco destination
britainbyrail.co.uk A guide to rail travel in the UK. All timetables are listed.
scenicbritainbybus.com - Download a guide to public bus and train services in the UK.
Countrygoer.org - offers car free guides to national parks and other countryside areas in the UK.
nationalexpress.com - low cost inter city coach travel.
traveline.org.uk - provides infor on regional public transport and allows you to plan journey and compare ways of getting there with approximate timings.
nationalrail.co.uk - train timetables and ticket ordering for all UK rail services
megabus.co.uk - low cost inter city coach travel.

April heatwave

I am back from Belgium. I went wearing a scarf and took layers off every day as the temperature rose to 27 degrees centigrade.
Confession time.....I had to compromise with the travelling. I allow myself 1 flight per year and this was it. In the past I would have used flying without a thought;the thought of having to use the trains in England at the moment, based on last experience was too much. I would have liked to use the train again, but the price of the flight was less than if I had taken the train to London and Eurostar. I am not perfect...one flight per year sounds reasonable in a world where people fly all the time. You may say that that is hypocritical based on what I have written in this blog previously, but in the end, change can only happen gradually, and I am still adapting. I would like to use trains more but quality and value are just not there at the moment.
On the continent though I have been happy with transport provided. Belgian railways even allows you to buy your ticket online and print it off at home. That to me sounds very convenient and saves postage, miles and trees.
Just for comparison, a 2 hour train journey standard ticket costs 16 euros, which is the equivalent of about £ 10. I travelled from one end of the country to the other end ( must have been about 150 miles) return for that price. A ticket to London from my station is at best about £ 45.00. A buspass in Gent for 3 days costs £ 10 allowing me to use any tram, bus etc in the city. One journey from my nearest busstop to nearest town ( 15 miles), costs £ 7.00 in the UK. You can see we have a long way to go.
There were neat signposts in the cities, with clear timetables, and most busses and trams at about 6 to 12 mins intervals. Here you have to wait about 1 hour if you are lucky.
In the city the children take the bus and tram to go to school and it is not unusual for commuters to take 1 hour by train to go to work. I shared a journey with a teacher who every day takes a 45 mins train journey each way to work. Here you could be bankrupt if you attempted that. Over 65’s travel free after 9 am and pay about £ 1.50 for a train journey.
I can see some other advantages : If the public transport system is reliable, clean and on time, you may not need to move home so often. Were there still cars...sure.

There have been changes by airline companies too. The flights to my nearest airport have been reduced to 2 per day. The plane they used was completely full to capacity and was a small plane. In the past I have been to Belgium in a half empty plane. They no longer provide food and meals on board which must also reduce the amount of packaging and rubbish generated. Its a bit tricky with security at the moment that you cannot take your own drink which leaves you at the mercy of expensive water but there you go, small sacrifice for safety.

The heat was palpable in the city, many students used bikes to get around ( it is fairly flat there), cafes and terraces were open and people sat and talked. The pollen count rose as many trees and grasses shoot up their pollen in a desperate attempt to behave as if it is July. ( Can we blame them for being confused). The temperature in Gent was the highest it has been in April since recording started in 1830 something. This is therefore an important shift.

How do you therefore find a balance between value, time and quality. It is a difficult dilemma, without investment and commitment to public transport it will never change to gain the interest and loyalty of the consumer and without people using the services provided, the transport providers will say there is no need. Yet, we need change and we need to be persuaded to change. Car emissions and flying are major contributors to global warming.

It has therefore got to be in the hands of the consumer...we have a choice. You may think that my choice was the wrong one and if the choice was purely ecological then I would agree with you. Having spent time searching my conscience and available alternatives, I did the best I could with the resources I have and made a choice. That in itself is an achievement; thinking things through and weighing up each option.

It was not really a holiday as such but I travelled love miles. Many families, as a result of cheap airtravel are settling around the globe and to travel to see them is going to require airtravel or more flexible working to allow you to take 3 months off while you take a boat journey to another continent.

Did my journey have a purpose.....It was not to sit in the sun, to explore foreign parts and soak up a different culture. I was born in Belgium and have many elderly relatives there. I spent time with them which may in itself be priceless. My life was enriched by the details they added to my personal history, their memories of what life used to be like, their fears about our future and the future of the planet and their anxiety about how the younger generation withdraw from society using ipods and MP3 players. You may ask how this is relevant.......Change is happening and faster than you and I think. There were real memories of skating championships on canals that entire communities took part in. These have not been held since 1997 as the ice has simply not been there.


I am human, therefore I am fallible. I try to reduce my footprint but it is hard. Alone I can achieve something but together we could do more. Temptation stands in the way, habits are changed slowly and yet I wish I could do more. What will it take for me to feel the pinch?

Downshifting week

An interview with Tracey Smith :
What is the story behind downshifting week ?

In 2002 my family traded a mad-rush lifestyle with limited family time, for a more peaceful, self-sufficient one. We work harder now than ever before, grow our own organic fruit and vegetables and raise chickens, ducks and guinea fowl for their eggs and the table. We live very simply and buy most things we need from the charity shop, with pride I might add!
The 3rd National Downshifting Week, an awareness campaign, takes place between Saturday 21st and Friday 27th April 2007 and is designed to help participants slow down and lean towards the green.

You are using different means this year to promote downshifting week, can you tell me how and why you came to this decision?

I’m promoting simple, green living and leaving as light a carbon-footprint as I can. I will be using public transport, Shanks’ pony and car sharing to get me to my destinations and if I physically can’t get somewhere, I’ll use another method to communicate my point!

We can be more effective in business if we travel less and focus our energy on getting our message across by another means, saving time, money and carbon emissions; corporate giants would do well to follow this lead, instead of flicking employees onto planes for 10 minute meetings.

Tracey will be using her local radio and TV studios, video conferencing, the Internet, email and the phone to spread the good, green word.

What can people do and how can we encourage children to take part ?

Everybody can slow down a gear and the benefits are endless; more time to spend with our children and loved ones, improved health, less stress, better food by cooking from fresh and supporting local producers, being just a few. Also, many enterprises are exploring energy/money saving ideas and investing it directly in their employees. Examples include encouraging unused equipment and lights to be turned off and having fresh local fruit in the lunch areas, or Fair Trade and organic beverages for tea breaks.

Simple communications technology can provide cost effective, eco-friendly solutions. It also keeps sole-driver ‘gridlockers’ off the road and gets people home to their families after a day in the office, not in the air.

Children are the leaders of the future and we should nurture sustainable attitudes for everyday activities, like composting, recycling, even volunteering in our communities.

National Downshifting Week’s slow down top tips are targeted at Individuals, Companies, Children and Schools and include: -

· Cut up a credit card - “Learning to live within our means is key to downshifting and positively embracing living with less is better still.”

· Plant something in the garden you can cultivate and eat - “Grow a few tomatoes or chillies on a windowsill if you have no garden; pesticide-free produce tastes amazing. It also breaks the myth that all food comes from the supermarkets!”

· Contact local food producers and re-think your vending machines at work – “Low mileage food and drinks and Fair Trade and Organic treats in the workplace…whatever next!”

· Book a half-day off work to spend with someone you love, no DIY allowed - “How can we have ‘quality time’ with great people, if we spend so much of it chasing the money? Money can’t buy you time.”

Carbon Gym

From time to time I check how our foot print is measured and measures up against the average Uk household and person.
Try out the carbongym which works out the amount of CO emissions you put in the atmosphere.

Reassuringly, we are doing about 20% of what the average person does which is a start.

I really enjoyed a sketch on the now show about transport and the fact that many people had added their name to the 10 Downing Street petition against road charges. If you have a chance you can catch up via the podcast or direct from radio 4.

Sally Lever's free newsletter has an interesting article about how to check that your business is sustainable.

If you’ve made the decision to live more sustainably and have left the Rat Race in order to set up in self-employment, it makes sense to incorporate sustainability into the new business plan. That way your business is run in alignment with your interests and values and working in it ultimately leads to a higher level of enjoyment, fulfilment and meaning.

So, what is a “sustainable business”? One official definition goes something like this:

“A Sustainable Business is a constituted organisation that takes full account of its triple bottom line – i.e. managing and contributing to social, environmental and economic improvements in its business practices.”

Simply put, a business’s “triple bottom line” can be expressed in terms of the three Ps – People, Planet, Profit, and, most importantly, in that order. So now, rather than taking the conventional view and running our business primarily for profit, we are running our business primarily for the welfare of society and of the environment as first priorities.

Let’s face it, for most of us there are a host of different ways in which we are capable of earning money, even if some of those ways, we believe, wouldn’t generate “enough” income for our current needs. When we set up our own businesses, hopefully there are reasons other than money and capability that prompt us to do so. These reasons form our Business Purpose and they stem from our Business Values. They are what’s most important to us in our business lives: the non-negotiable parts. Examples of business purposes might be “providing enjoyable education programmes for adults”, “helping others to improve their health”, “enhancing the lives of children/the elderly/new parents”, “making marketing ethical and easy”.

Let’s look at the elements of the triple bottom line in more detail:

People

Think about all of the people who are involved with your business. Even if you don’t directly employ anyone else, who else do your actions affect? Who else does your business depend on? Your answer might well include your suppliers, your clients, your associates and colleagues. A sustainable business treats all of these people in a way that’s in keeping with its business purpose and sustainability, for example, by employing staff who live locally and sourcing from local suppliers. You could reduce your clients’ needs to travel by providing your products and services local to them rather than centralised wherever possible.


Planet

Many of you will be familiar with the term “Reduce, Re-Use, Re-cycle”. Maybe you are not aware that those instructions are stated in order of priority. That is, it is more important for us to reduce our consumption than it is to re-use items and re-using items is more important than re-cycling our waste. So, uppermost in the sustainable business owner’s mind will be minimising the negative impact on the planet of running that business by reducing consumption of energy, fuel, water and toxic substances.

Profit

Just because profit has now been relegated to third in the business’s bottom line does not make it any less important as a concept. For a business to be sustainable in the sense of growing and surviving long term it will need to generate a profit (unless it was set up as a not-for-profit organisation.) What the triple bottom line does is to remind us to keep profit generation in perspective with the other elements. With our business accounts, as with our personal finances, if we keep our costs to a minimum and minimise our consumption, the income we need to generate to cover our costs and pay ourselves is reduced.

To help you in your business planning, Sally has produced a “Sustainable Business Checklist."

Rain rain, go away and come another day

I am not sure how much more rain we are due but most of my days are spent indoors.
Yesterday I had to venture out to town because my trusted vehicle needed its annual inspection, which it passed. As the garage offered me a courtesy car, I declined because I really wanted to explore whether in town I would be able to do my errands and visits using public transport.
If you have not travelled on public transport, I guarantee you have not seen life as it is. I realised how cushy it is when I travel in my car and how actually a lot goes on when you take a bus.
Timetables are not that familiar so required a bit of searching. My first visit was 3 miles out of the town centre and a direct bus would only go every hour as where a bus in that general direction was available very 30 mins. I waited in the cold and rain, getting wet and....wetter and.....wanted my comfy car deep down. I resisted.....I resisted.....and the bus came. I had to walk quite a bit from A to B but arrived on time and met some other wet people. The bus back was the direct one which was a lot smaller and had a friendly busdriver who insisted on telling me a story although it took time as he had a speech impediment. I felt humbled that he wanted to tell it to me and reflected on how patient I had become. At the end of it he suggested I should go and get a transport card which entitles me to free transport in the county. ( I was unaware that this existed being a mere usual car driver in my own metal box on the highway!). Buspass, me...?
How do you while away a whole day in town without wanting to buy and consume. ( Its hard...very hard....)
I have visited clothes shops ( just to see what the trends are and marvel at the sixties fashion which I am unlikely to follow with my earthy, rotunde figure).
I marvelled at the crazy prices people are prepared to pay.
Thought of having an eye test but that was on my desperation list.
Spent time in the library where you can sit, browse, read, knit etc and surf the internet for free.
Had my treat drink in starbucks and sat in the armchair knitting while life went on around me. well people stared but who cares......

At the garage, I got shocked again at the lovely price tag I was offered ( the danger of downshifting and not buying anything is that when you have to pay regular prices you are usually about to faint from shock). The car still needs work doing to it....but I have postponed it till next month.
Wet, shocked and horrified at prices, I drove back calmly into the countryside, telling myself what a lovely day it had been, people spotting, being different and out of flow with the rest.

The news today speaks of a crash of the Dow Jones and FTSE.....is this a new trend....is deconsuming going to upset the economy?

tranport 2007

Our aims in 2007 are to reduce our transport requirements. Having done a transport survey recently, I realized that 40 percent of our journeys were unnecessary, 40 percent off other journeys could be done using alternative transport , and 20 percent were essential journeys that could not be done in any other way than by car.

We live in a rural area and public transport is still not regular enough and cost effective enough to do without a vehicle. This does mean that we will not be selling our car. We will continue to be careful as to which car we use for which journey. When one of the cars is no longer viable it will not be replaced. I did look at getting a different car that would be environmentally viable like a Toyota Prius, which is an interesting family vehicle. If we were in town, such a car would be useful as it generates its own power by recharging a battery while you drive and switches to fuel when the battery is empty and your speed is above 28 miles. There is no doubt that technology offers possibilities in the future for cars that will be less dependent on fossil fuels, but the actual cost of the vehicle currently is prohibiting and is not possible for us. The diesel car which is now 4 years old, will be maintained, cleaned and looked after to enable us to do as many miles as possible without major repairs and costs. As mentioned in previous posts this does mean that the cost per mile we travel will increase but carbon emissions will decrease.
The unnecessary journeys are due to poor planning and wanting to do things on a whim. Better planning should result in less journeys.
We examined what we did socially and whether this could be done in a different way. We aim to live more locally and so in the next few months an exploration will include not only local food but local entertainment, leisure and sports activities ( not all for me but the children as well). The main question has been to look at the implications when for instance we want to go to the movies. That is a 30 mile trip. If we wait a few months for a movie, we could hire it at the local library, not only would the costs be reduced but also the transport to get there.
We will be exploring walking and cycling more, in particular with regards to the children as my mobility is limited however, there is no reason why my son could not walk to school with my DH, and he could buy the paper at the local village store and return. This would be a viable alternative to taking the car to school with the excuse that he needs to go to the village shop and then come home and take the dog for a walk. Both activities could be done together.
I am sure you get the picture. The only way to examine how and why you do things is to keep a journal. When your activities, money and travel requirements are written down you can examine what can and cannot be changed.
Having the car on the drive means that if for any reason we need to use the car, we can, we do not feel a sense of depravation but overall we can think before we leave home and how we plan our journeys.
A bus trip into town is quite expensive so scores low on financial sense, it takes 1 hour as where the car journey takes 30 mins, ( possible on time), then there is no parking to deal with and you have to carry what you shop for so that limits the amount of consumerism possible. The only drawback is that the bus stop is about 1 mile away. An alternative is to drive to the park and ride scheme on the edge of town, take the bus into town and pay less for parking.
I am not saying that every journey made can be changed, but if we think before we leave we can make choices in line with the values we hold dear.
We have bought a family railcard to enable us to take more train journeys at a reduced cost and journeys to visit family and friends abroad will be done using trains instead of planes if possible.
This is about the extent we feel we can work with this year.