Welcome to the Sustainable Living Project
Welcome to the sustainable living project. Most of what we get up to takes place here at this little lock-keepers cottage on the canal. To get regular up dates please visit the blog. This is a place that has forced us to think a little differently, to think sustainably, about the way we live and the way in which we use resources.
Pretty though it looks, there is nothing here to even hint at the modern comfort we’ve all become used to. There is no mains electricity here and certainly no mains gas. There is no mains water supply and no mains sewerage. Perhaps most importantly, there is no road access to the property, this tends to complicate things more than anything else – think about it – no doorstep deliveries, no refuse collection, every bulky item we buy entails a major logistics operation and it’s really hard to persuade workmen and builders, even at a price, to come and do stuff. (And nice shoes are a thing of the past!)
But our programme of sustainable living is not just about this place. Sustainable living is not about where you live, but how you live and most importantly how you think. Believe me, once you start thinking sustainably it’s hard to stop. Small incremental changes soon gather their own momentum and you wonder how you could ever have been so profligate!
We are no eco-saints, sins range from buying strawberries from Egypt in the middle of January, to driving pathetically short distances in the car and continually forgetting to take reusable bags when we go shopping. We’ve done much better since starting the sustainable living project, but from a personal perspective life has become more interesting, more fun and more rewarding.
What on earth is this? Click image for more!
We’d like to think that wherever we lived, even a small urban flat with no garden, that we would still be growing herbs and bee friendly flowers in a window box. Maybe we would have an allotment or take up Guerrilla Gardening. We hope we would still be cleaning our house with vinegar and bicarbonate of soda and checking out all the latest eco-friendly cleaning products. We would be reducing, reusing, recycling. Where there are consumer choices to be made, hopefully they would be thoughtful ones, like buying from ethically sound fashion retailers such as People Tree. We would be careful with water and electricity consumption, and maybe switch to a green energy company and unlike people who choose to live in the middle of nowhere, we could probably catch a bus!
So what do we have here, besides a bill free existence? We have an 18 kilowatt generator, a Trace inverter and a bank of twelve forklift truck batteries, more about these in more detail in later posts. In addition to this, we have a kerosene fired Rayburn which heats water and some upstairs radiators. There are two fireplaces downstairs. There is a hole in the ground out of which comes reasonably clear looking water, it is pumped into the house via some filters and it exits into a septic tank. The house stands on a third of an acre of land. To use the word ‘garden’ would be misleading, it is a north-facing slope struggling to be seen under the sort of brambles normally reserved for imprisoning princesses who can’t get out of bed.
The first aim of the Sustainable Living Project is to make better use of all of this. It is going to require some effort, a lot of research and at times probably some major investments. It won’t be a weekend makeover, so bear with us. The second aim is to convince others that sustainable living is both achievable and desirable, it’s about doing things better and enjoying life more in the process.
Find out how much we’ve actually got done with the regular post updates.
