The possibility that human societies can
achieve environmental sustainability has been, and continues to be, questioned,
especially in light of environmental degradation, climate
change, overconsumption, and societies' pursuit of
indefinite economic growth in a closed system.
A sustainable future for La Fieffe can only
be achieved through adopting sustainable living arrangements. Don’t be disheartened that you can’t adopt
all of these or that you feel trapped in your current living arrangement. You should be able to identify from the
following ideas even the smallest action that will help you live a more
sustainable life.
ENERGY - Most of us don’t have the money to
buy land and build an Earthship on it.
This shouldn’t discourage you though from identifying small incremental
actions that will lessen your impact on the greater ecosystem. There are easy retrofit ideas that can be
carried out immediately. Think of your
house as a user and store of energy and it becomes easy to identify ideas; additional
insulation in the loft, or (in our case) re-puttying the windows, fitting
larger/thicker curtains all reduce your energy loss and thus reduce your energy
use!
Consider the need to have things “on”
constantly especially the scourge of “standby”; it doesn’t take long to learn
new habits of turning it off when not using it.
Consider choosing only energy efficient goods for your house. Yes the outlay is greater than say SPASDA’s
own, but the savings in energy use over time will pay for itself. Regardless of how much you THINK this saves,
you ARE reducing your energy consumption.
FOOD – Consider where you get your food
from; how much is produced under existing industrial agricultural
technique? This system is highly
resource and energy intensive, requiring extensive irrigation, pesticide use,
fertiliser application to produce a concentrated monoculture of low nutrient
crap! Long distance transport of food to
enable all year round supply, which ignores seasonality, is estimated to cost
10 calories of oil to produce 1 calorie of food.
Adopting a more regional, seasonally based
diet is more sustainable as it entails purchasing less energy and resource
demanding produce that naturally grow within a local area and require no
long-distance transport. Local food
production ensures food security if potential transportation disruptions and
climatic, economical, and socio-political disasters were to occur.
Choosing organically produced food is a
sustainable choice, as the primary goal of organic agriculture is to optimize
the health and productivity of interdependent communities of soil life, plants,
animals and people.
The environmental impact of meat production
is high with regards to soil erosion, land degradation, depletion of natural
resources and the overuse of medicines like antibiotics. By simply reducing your meat consumption,
this alleviates the demand for environmentally damaging industrially produced
meat.
Preserving and storing foods reduces
reliance on long-distance transported food and the market industry. Home-grown
foods can be preserved and stored outside of their growing season and
continually consumed throughout the year, enhancing self-sufficiency and
independence from the supermarket.
WATER – Your water usage is excessive. Just the flushing of your toilet uses
probably more than 20 litres of fresh, drinkable water. Your obsession with being clean is using too
much water, whether through bathing or washing your clothes... cut it out! There are all manner of methods of reducing
your impact on water, from inserts in your toilet cistern, to composting
toilets and “tree-bogs”, low-flow showerheads, solar water heaters, increased pipe
lagging (reducing the amount of time in the shower), collection and
redistribution of grey water, rainwater harvesting, both for irrigation or
refilling flush toilet cisterns! Any of
these can be applied in any setting, regardless of your type of accommodation
and access to funding.
WASTE – Nature creates no waste, but oh my
god, humans certainly do! You should not
ignore the impact your wastefulness has on sustainability. Consider how you can reduce what you waste,
what you reuse and what you recycle.
Composting is a very effective means of recycling a lot of your paper,
card, kitchen and garden waste. Don’t
always recycle, try reusing some of your plastics and glasses as containers
(for example we have cut the bottom off of plastic bottles and use them as
ramekins).
This is just another reason why we do what we
do, but by no means should it be considered an exhaustive list of actions. What I am trying to tell you is that you can
live more sustainably and reduce your ecological footprint, it’s your choice.
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