As you’ve probably noticed, we haven’t had a lot to share with you lately. We’ve been thinking about the reason for this, and we came to the conclusion that in terms of living consumeless and sustainably, things have been quite uneventful the last couple of weeks/months! Most of the things that changed in our lives since January 1st have become normal to us, and we’ve discussed most of those things on our blog already. Apparently, we’re getting used to this new lifestyle.
But since it’s December now, it is time for some evaluations. And for looking forward. In this post, we’ll evaluate 2010. We’ll reconsider the rules and see how we did. In a next post, we will talk about how we will continue (some of) the rules in 2011.
So, how did we do living consumelessly and sustainably in 2010? In general, we think we did quite well. Let’s have a look at our rule categories.
Clothes
Eise didn’t buy any clothes this year (I did bring him an Icelandic hand-knit sweather though). I bought a pair of hiking shoes, a winter coat (for the long waits at the train station every day), a pair of winter shoes (which I didn’t have anymore) and one pair of jeans (since two of my old pairs were worn with age beyond repair). Not bad!
Food & drinks
Quite some changes to our ‘previous’ life here. We have been buying all of our food organically (except for some minor exceptions which are not easily available), in stead of buying about half of our food organically (as we used to do before 2010). We didn’t eat any meat or fish this year. Meat was no problem (although Eise was a bit envious of my father’s venison steaks last week), but I did miss fish every now and then (sushi!!!). We did not have ready-made or take-away meals one single time this year. When we were at home, we (read: Eise) cooked our own meal every day. So no pizzas or Indonesian take-away meals (we REALLY missed Gembira!). In addition, we didn’t buy cookies or sweets (or desserts). In stead, we made a lot of those ourselves. I think we baked more cookies and apple pies this year than we did in all of our lives before! Finally, we only went out for lunch or dinner when we had no other option or when we were invited by others. I did use my business lunch allowance every month though.
Household
We did really well regarding all of the rules we formulated in this category We even sold our dryer and I don’t think we’ll ever buy one again.
Leisure
We hardly bought any books and magazines (which we used to do a lot before). We went to the library almost every week for books, and we also read magazines and newspapers there. We did buy a few books and magazines which contributed to our DiY/creative activities (and hence to a more sustainable lifestyle) and which were not available at our library. Also, we didn’t watch TV this year. We did watch some programmes online (De Wereld Draait Door mainly), and since we still receive a signal, our hard disk recorder has recorded many series we used to watch (but honestly, what is the difference between watching recorded shows, or borrowing the same shows on DVD?). What we did miss in this category are some cultural activities, such as going to the cinema or the theatre. We’ve been to two theatre shows this year, and we didn’t go to the cinema one single time.
Transportation
No big changes in our private transportation habits here, but a major change in my work-related transportation, since I’ve been traveling to work by train in stead of by car. And despite the long (and cold!) waits at the station every day, I’m quite satisfied about this change. I’ve read so many books the last couple of months!
Travel
We only went on holiday by public transportation this year. I went to England with Dees (by train), and together we went to Ameland and to London (both by train as well). Next week we leave for France for two weeks, to the holiday home of Eise’s parents in France. This time we have to take the car because we’re taking the dog (not allowed in Thalys and TGV) and because Eise is bringing loads of tools to do some home improvement with his dad. But all in all, we did pretty well! Unfortunately, for my job I have to travel quite a lot to places where traveling by train really is not an option (Iceland, Finland, mid-Italy). This remains a difficult issue in a sustainable lifestyle!
So overall, we’re quite satisfied. I think Eise in general had less problems with not buying anything (except when it came to tools) than me. Especially the last couple of weeks, I’ve found myself wanting some new clothes (en extra really warm sweather wouldn’t hurt in this cold winter). And I’m really going to appreciate having a cup of coffee in a café when we’re in town next year!
This is the journal of an experiment. We have decided to make 2010 a year of consuming less. We aim to consume as little as possible and to make our essential consumption as sustainable as possible. We want to explore how we can fit consuming less and consuming sustainably into our lives to a certain degree of comfort. To thoroughly understand the consequences of consuming less, we try to fully adopt to this lifestyle for one year. Of course, this involves many decision points and dilemmas. We keep this blog to discuss the decision points and dilemmas we encounter and to share our experiences. We hope that our blog will be an inspiring and practical showcase of how to consume less in a more sustainable way.
I was interviewed for the news paper of our university a couple of weeks ago. The interview was about people who have to travel far from home to work (I guess they sorted the personnel file on ‘distance to home address’ and I was in the top five in the descending view). They nicely added a reference to our consumeless experiment, and a spacey picture of myself! I was shocked to read that one of the other people they interviewed travels 2,5 hours from home to work! Four days a week!! You see, things can always get worse…
The interview is in Dutch, but it’s quite a nice read.
We still owe you a few stories, but here’s a short in-between one. I just stumbled upon an interesting website called RouteRank. RouteRank is an online travel search engine which you can use to calculate the cheapest, quickest or greenest route between point A and point B. By coincidence, I am traveling to Odense (Denmark) tomorrow, so I entered the route from Maastricht to Odense for a little test. The results:
The cheapest option is also the cheapest option, which is to travel by train (which would cost $138, take 14h50m and result in 38 kg of CO2)
The quickest option is to take the car to Brussels Airport, fly to Billund and take the car again to Odense (which would cost $517, take 6h43m and result in 188 kg of CO2)
I am taking the train to Brussels, flying to Copenhagen and taking the train to Odense. This takes (according to RouteRank) 8h21m, costs $281 and results in 171 grams of CO2. Definitely not the greenest option!
Another interesting comparison is my commute from Maastricht to Leuven:
The train costs $21, takes 1h25m and results in 3 kg of CO2
The car costs $22, takes 1h03m and results in 22 kg of CO2
I can definitely say the time estimates are quite right (in case of no traffic jams, and considering the fact that the train trip is from station to station, not from home to office). The costs are a different story for me, since my employer does pay for the train (almost fully reimbursed) but not for the car (nothing). And by taking the train, I save loads of CO2!
Just a quick link to the “Top 7 Tap Films” which appeared on Do The Green Thing, quite a fun website trying to inspire people to live greener lives. This post is a collection of videos on the use of tap water vs. bottled water (including a movie from our friends of The Story of Stuff) . Since I see so many people drinking bottled water, I thought it might be useful to share the message that tap water is just as good (in the Netherlands tap water quality is even better than mineral water quality – link in Dutch). Even if you re-use the plastic bottle a few times, the bottle still leaves a huge footprint, not to mention the huge plastic soup drifting in our oceans. So, buy a good aluminum bottle (there are loads of cheaper options out there than the usual (but beautiful) Sigg suspects), keep it clean and re-use it over and over again, with tap water! Greener, better looking, and more durable!
I finally found a book providing more answers to my sustainability questions than any other book I’ve read so far. Mike Berners-Lee’s book How Bad are Bananas gives information on the carbon footprints of (nearly) everything. Think text messages, drying your hands, e-mails vs. letters, ironing (don’t do it!) and, of course, bananas.
Below, I’ve listed the most noticeable, surprising, funny and useful facts I’ve encountered. I know, it’s a histerically long list, and this is even just a small selection of the notes I took during reading… I found many of these facts quite helpful for the dilemmas we often encouter though.
Two explanations to start with:
CO2e stands for carbon dioxide equivalent, being the total clilmate change impact of all greenhouse gasses caused by an item or activity.
Berners-Lee uses the unit of the 10-tonne lifestyle for a lifestyle causing 10 tonnes of CO2e per year, which is presumably a reasonable aim for people in the Western world to significantly reduce their carbon footprint.
So here’s my list of noteworthy facts:
We don’t need to worry about Text massages
And we can relax about Web searchers too.
60 E-mails equals 1 paper letter, but we send much more e-mails than we would send letters. Spam adds much to total e-mail CO2e
The best option for drying your hands: let them air dry, second best: 1 paper towel (but who uses only 1 towel?), third best: Dyson dryers (because of cold air), worst: electric dryers (because of hot air).
Ironing is 5 times worse than watching TV (this should be a helpful argument for most of us!).
Boiling water on a kettle on a gas stove is better than on electricity.
Fruit: Rule no.1: eat local, seasonal fruit, definitely no greenhouse fruit or air freighted fruit (1 kg. of local strawberries cause about 150 gr. CO2e, greenhouse-grown or air freighted strawberries cause about 1800 gr. CO2e). Fruit that is shipped by boat, not grown in green houses and requires no or little packaging is surprisingly carbon efficient (bananas, oranges).
Buying a new TV only pays off CO2e-wise if you buy a much smaller TV (15”).
Coffee and tea gets significantly worse when adding milk. Black coffee/tea. 4 cups a day equals 400-mile drive in average car.
Only use re-usable diapers when you line-dry them and use them for at least 2 kids.
Packing fruit in plastic reduces the amount of wasted fruit. The CO2e of the packaging is lower than that of the fruit that would otherwise be wasted.
When buying fruit or vegetables, favouring misshaped items encourages supply chains not to throw those away (reducing waste).
Buying a quality newspaper everyday for one year equals a one-way flight from London to Madrid, provided that you recycle the paper.
Reading an online newspaper on a laptop saves about 50% CO2e compared to a paper version.
Cooking food in a microwave oven is more efficient than on a either a gas stove or an electric stove.
Taking a shower in Iceland is almost CO2e neutral (because the water is heated geothermally).
Dishwasher vs. hand wash: dishwasher wins IF it is full, turned on at night (low electricity demand, more efficient grid), runs the 55-degrees programme and taken proper care of. The worst thing of all is to hand-clean the plates before you put them in the dishwasher.
CO2e’s of red roses: from your garden: 0 gr., air freighted from Kenya: 350 gr., grown in Dutch greenhouse: 2100 gr. This makes an average rose equal 4 kg. of bananas.
Dairy and meat are both highly inefficient foods, mostly because animals eat plants (which we could eat ourselves, which would be much more efficient) and ‘waste’ energy on walking around and keeping warm.
Making a paperback book equals 12 hours of watching TV.
It takes twice as much energy to make paper from a tree than from recycled pulp.
Producing one eReader equals at least 100 paper backs, not calculating the energy it takes to download and read eBooks.
CO2e of a bottle of wine: 1/3 is for the bottle (carton is better), 1/3 is for the wine itself, 1/3 is for transport and storage.
Transporting 1 kg. of goods by plane equals transporting 100 kg. of goods by boat.
Beef and lamb have double the footprint compared with pigs.
Clothes of synthetic fibres usually have a lower footprint than natural fibres (mostly due to durability).
3/10 of the footprint of beef is related to nitrogen fertilizer applied to grass.
Organic eggs are 25% less efficient than battery eggs (due to fewer space per chicken). If you care about climate change and animal welfare, eat organic eggs and eat fewer eggs.
The most carbon-low shoe is a Croc.
For shoes the highest footprint impact comes from transportation (but there’s no way of knowing for customers how the goods were transported).
If you become a vegetarian and replace all meat by cheese, you’re note helping the climate.
For 1 kg. of cheese. 10 litres of milk is used (equalling the CO2e of 12 kg. of carrots).
One minute of mobile-to-mobile phone call equals 1 apple or 1 banana.
One hour of mobile phone usage per day for one year equals a one-way flight from London to New York.
Manufacturing a mobile phone equals 1 kg. of beef.
A mobile-to-mobile phone call requires 3 times the power required by a landline-to-landline call.
The electricity emissions of a computer only equal the emissions of the manufacturing process after 5 years of 10 hour/day use.
3 Return flights London – Hong Kong equals one 10-tonne lifestyle or 340.000 disposable carrier bags.
A new car costs 3,5 years of a 10-tonne lifestyle before you even drive in it. It makes sense to drive your old car as long as you can.
Building a new energy-efficient house is an expensive way to save the climate. It is better to improve existing houses.
“Unless you will ever contemplate lighting a bush fire, the decision to reproduce is probably the biggest carbon choice you will ever make.” Building a community swimming pool is slightly worse.
A university costs about 8 tonnes CO2e per staff member per year.
Of course, we have been thinking about our lifestyle after ending this consumeless experiment. The goal of our experiment was to try living a more sustainable and less consumption-oriented life.
The sustainable part of our experiment had to a large extend already been part of our lives before 2010. As a part of the experiment however, we have been trying to be even more sustainable (I am starting to dislike the word sustainable though, it has become an overused, hollow term) and this is something we’d definitely like to keep doing, especially by extending this to non-food items.
As for the consumeless part of our experiment, the story is slightly different. In 2010 we are trying to buy only what we really need. As is turned out, ‘what we really need’ is quite an ambiguous term. It is difficult to assess if we really need something or not. For instance, we’d probably survive with a very limited wardrobe of 2 pairs of trousers, 3 t-shirts and 2 sweaters. But this doesn’t really fit in a comfortable, socially accepted lifestyle. So where do we draw the line after our experiment?
Thinking about how we experience our focus away from a consumption-oriented lifestyle, I think that we are gradually adopting a more do-it-yourself-oriented lifestyle. Compared to our ‘previous lives’, we are now making, creating, modifying and repairing many more things than we used to. Eise is growing our own fruit and vegetables, we are cooking things we used to buy off-the-shelf (jams, quiche dough, deserts, cookies), Eise has repaired quite some things (my water bottle, the espresso machine) and made things from stuff he found (tile paths in the vegetable garden, bird houses), and I am working on some DIY pieces of clothing. Most of this longing for DIY is really a result of our experiment (not in the least of not watching TV anymore). Eise wanted to make a vegetable garden for a while already, but now he really did it. I had been making a few (very few) pieces of clothing myself, but now I created a working space in the attic where I can leave the sewing machine instead of carrying it downstairs all the time (and in practice hardly ever doing so because it was too cumbersome).
I started reading Mark Frauenfelder’s Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World (thanks Jane, for the tip!), which really appealed to me. Frauenfelder talks about his experiences after changing his lifestyle towards a more DIY-oriented lifestyle. And I recognized a lot of what he said. He compares a DIY lifestyle to the slow food movement, where the end product of what you are making shows the effort you put into the process of making the product. And where the process of making something, and the fun and satisfaction the process gives, is at least as important as the final product. Frauenfelder even links DIY to the concept of mindfulness, something I thought was a very spiritual thing (yikes!), but turns out to be something quite down-to-earth, meaning that you thoroughly experience what you are doing, and how much fun it is. And I guess that holds for us as well. It is fun to make stuff. Eise is always happy to work in the garden, or in his workshop. And I’m really starting to enjoy making stuff like customized backpack compartments, clothes, etc. In addition, the final product becomes much more valuable. When baking your own cookies, you enjoy them much more only because you made them yourself. Wearing a dress I’ve made myself gives me much more satisfaction than wearing a dress many others wear too.
Also with regard to the question of how we should continue our consumeless lifestyle after 2010, Frauenfelder has an inspiring view. He says it is not about living a fully DIY, self sustainable life, but the important thing is to find a balance. For us, this would be a balance between finding sustainable off-the-shelf products and making our own products. So after this year, we’ll probably start buying more stuff (sustainable stuff that is) than we did this year, but we would definitely keep making a lot more stuff than we used to do before this experiment. Just for the fun of it and for the satisfaction it would bring us. As I am writing this down, I’m thinking that in the end, our drive to consume less is becoming a much more intrisic motivation (since making stuff ourselves instead of buying stuff gives us much more pleasure and enjoyment) compared to how we started this consumeless experiment.
We still have four and a half months to figure this out, but a balanced, sustainable DIY lifestyle sounds very comfortable!
OK, a new and challenging dilemma emerged today. In preparation of our consumeless city trip to London in November, I was searching for a second hand copy of the Lonely Planet city guide (the newest version of any London city guide available in our library is from 1998 I believe). I found plenty of second hand copies on Amazon, but the cheapest second hand guide is more expensive than what Amazon charges for a new version!! The relative difference is quite considerable, the new version is €13 and the cheapest second hand version is €16 (both including shipping costs).
So what do we do? Second hand is obviously more sustainable. Normally, I would be quite willing to pay a little extra for a more sustainable option. But usually, the more sustainable option gives me some extra value (such as organic food), or is more expensive to produce than the more common option (such as fair trade coffee). In this case, there seems to be very little added value. Or should the fact that it is the more sustainable option be exactly the added value I am looking for? And should I pay more for a used product? That seems odd, don’t you think?
Last week my friend Dees and I went on a holiday to England for a week, my first holiday in our consumeless experiment.
A short recap of our travel rules:
No plane or car
Sustainable accommodation
Self-made meals, if possible, otherwise order organic, seasonal and local food
The first rule was easy. We took the train to London, and in England we did all of our travel by train or bus. Quite expensive in England, but efficient and comfortable (except for the amazingly crowded and smelly bus from Bristol to Glastonbury).
For the second rule we really tried to find sustainable accommodation in all places we’ve stayed. The first few nights we were invited to stay over at a couple we had met online who would give us a tour through Wiltshire (the goal of the trip was to hunt for crop circles, for more info see our blog on this trip). Very sustainable (even more so because they turned out to live in an eco house, though they were not sure what it meant in the case of their house). After visiting Wiltshire, we went to Bristol and Bath, and we stayed in an organic B&B (The Greenhouse, highly recommended!), so that was fine too. The last two places we stayed were not particularly sustainable. In Glastonbury, we stayed in a B&B run by a local pub and in Salisbury we stayed in a hotel in the city centre. The biggest problem we had in finding sustainable accommodations was the fact that we traveled by public transportation. There are loads of organic and eco B&B’s in England (the website Organic Holidays is very useful for finding such places in the UK), but most of these tend to be located in the country side, far away from train or bus stations. And far away from places to eat too. For most people interested in eco friendly accommodation that makes sense probably, but not so much so for people not traveling by car.
I think I did worst on the food rule. Breakfast was always included, and we were never in places where we could have cooked our own meals, so we had to go out for dinner as well. However, I think we could have bought ingredients for self-made lunches more often. In stead, we went out for lunch most of the time. The reason for this though, was the fact that in all the places we visited, there were so many sustainable options for food! Especially in Bristol and Bath there were many restaurants offering vegetarian, organic, seasonal and local food. The highlights in this respect were Bordeaux Quay in Bristol and Demuths in Bath. Demuths was a quite famous vegetarian restaurant, using mostly organic ingredients. Bordeaux Quay is taking sustainability very seriously. They use organic, seasonal and locally produced ingredients where possible, have a sustainable interior, collect rain water on the roof, too much to mention (see photo left or check out their website if you’re interested to see what they do).
Besides these rules, I obviously wasn’t supposed to buy anything that I didn’t need, or that did not add to our sustainable consumeless lifestyle. My, that was difficult at times. I saw so many things I would have loved to buy (see pictures left)! Loads of organic stuff too… In the end I bought quite some books and magazines. Mostly these were about self sufficient living, preserving home grown food, etc. But I also bought some Moomin books to finish Eise’s collection. And some magazines about creativity and design which are not sold at home, or are much more expensive (more about creativity in a later post). And I brought Eise some fudge, just because he has not been on any trip this year, while I have been traveling (and subsequently going out for dinner) for my work quite a lot, so I thought Eise deserved it…
So all in all Dees and I did quite well in having a sustainable holiday I guess. Two more short holidays to come for Eise and me this year. In two weeks we’ll go to Ameland (one of the Dutch islands in the north) for a week, and in November we’ll go on a city trip to London (we already found an organic B&B!). Of course we’ll report on our experiences of these two trips as well!
Remember our post about the film The Story of Stuff? Well, the story continues. A couple of new films have been made in the meantime, including the latest The Story of Cosmetics (see the video below). The film is mostly about toxic chemical ingredients in general cosmetics. Have you ever tried to read any of your shampoo’s, shower gel’s, hair styling product’s, lip balm’s (etc. etc.) list of ingredients? Really, I usually give up trying to understand that list after two ingredients.
My favourite quote from the (once again, very American) film: “Ooh, here’s Estée Lauder, offering me a chance to help find a cure for breast cancer. That’s nice. But wait…. They’re also using chemicals linked to cancer. Don’t you think the best way for Estée Lauder to fight cancer is to stop using those chemicals in the first place?”
We try to buy as many organic, or at least natural, cosmetics. But as the film points out, it is very hard to check whether the ingredients are truly natural. I use The Dirty Dozen Chemicals in Cosmetics list of National Geographic’s Green Guide sometimes. But I never carry that list with me to the shop (really, something like the Greenpeace wallet-sized red fish list would be quite useful). For most types of cosmetics, we manage to find sustainable and non-toxic alternatives (e.g. from Weleda, De Traay or Dr.Hauschka). The only product I still haven’t found is an acceptable alternative for my hair shaper (suggestions still welcome!).
It is time for the green stuff in our garden! Broad beans, snow peas, normal peas, and rocket make great ingredients for a simple pasta primavera. Raspberries and strawberries are still going strong, red berries have been plucked, as have the cherries. Eise has made quite some jars of jam already, and rhubarb as well. All herbs we’ve planted are growing quickly, as are the zucchini and lettuces. We could use some rain though, not a single drop since at least three weeks…
Of course, we have been thinking about our lifestyle after ending this consumeless experiment. The goal of our experiment was to try living a more sustainable and less consumption-oriented life.
Last week my friend Dees and I went on a holiday to England for a week, my first holiday in our consumeless experiment.
I think I did worst on the food rule. Breakfast was always included, and we were never in places where we could have cooked our own meals, so we had to go out for dinner as well. However, I think we could have bought ingredients for self-made lunches more often. In stead, we went out for lunch most of the time. The reason for this though, was the fact that in all the places we visited, there were so many sustainable options for food! Especially in Bristol and Bath there were many restaurants offering vegetarian, organic, seasonal and local food. The highlights in this respect were 
Besides these rules, I obviously wasn’t supposed to buy anything that I didn’t need, or that did not add to our sustainable consumeless lifestyle. My, that was difficult at times. I saw so many things I would have loved to buy (see pictures left)! Loads of organic stuff too… In the end I bought quite some books and magazines. Mostly these were about self sufficient living, preserving home grown food, etc. But I also bought some 
just because he has not been on any trip this year, while I have been traveling (and subsequently going out for dinner) for my work quite a lot, so I thought Eise deserved it…
It is time for the green stuff in our garden! Broad beans, snow peas, normal peas, and rocket make great ingredients for a simple pasta primavera. Raspberries and strawberries are still going strong, red berries have been plucked, as have the cherries. Eise has made quite some jars of jam already, and rhubarb as well. All herbs we’ve planted are growing quickly, as are the zucchini and lettuces. We could use some rain though, not a single drop since at least three weeks…