Where we are now
- Choosing seasonal produce over forced - locally produced if it's energy efficient, going without things if they are only available from a very long distance out of season - such as apples from NZ, SA etc during the British summer
- Getting our fruit and veg from a local organic farmer who comes to our 2-weekly farmers market and an organic veg box scheme
- Growing our own veg in our garden and allotment
- Re-using everything that's possible
- Composting food waste
- Buying local and, if possible organic, meat (and eating only a little meat)
- Buying grains and other 'staple' goods from a wholefoods cooperative which delivers to a fairly local shop
- Walking if possible
- Trying to move from a 2-car household to 1 car
- Car sharing where possible
- Having a water meter fitted (we're renting a friend's house)
- Reducing our water wastage
- Keeping down our electricity usage
- Buying second hand items from charity shops
- Buying/obtaining 'rubbish' from the local refuse centres
- Baking and cooking if we can avoid buying things
- Buying fairly traded goods
We've taken more than a year to get to this stage. I've been on this path for some years now, starting with footwear and clothing (sweatshops etc). The food side of things has taken me quite a long time to work up to.
It started with fast food (Hamburger Nation anyone?) and then meat - I was vegetarian for humanitarian reasons for 4 years or so and 'fell off the wagon' because I like meat.
I never felt particularly good about it and ate a mostly vegetarian diet anyway. However, I do like meat... and started choosing organic meat where I could. But it was SO expensive. Or so I thought at the time. This was when I was still shopping in the major big supermarkets. I wasn't really paying attention to where the meat was from either. Although I had been looking at where the supermarket veg I was buying came from and only buying European (or close to) produce for a while.
I'd been reading a few 'political' books and I'd had "Shopped" by Joanna Blythman on the shelf for a while. Then I read it and it was like a watershed.
My conscience would no longer permit shopping in the large supermarkets. We started using the farmer's market and gradually stopped buying from the supermarket, ordered the veg box and here we are.
I started reading wider and deeper in the areas of local, organic etc etc and that led me to read about permaculture and then I found a Permaculture magazine, I'd already discovered The Ecologist.
Permaculture mag had an article about the Transition Initiative and then a whole new area of reading (and doing) opened up....
Where are we going next
We don't really know, we feel we're still on a path to a lower energy lifestyle. We've done a lot of things and can see the need for some significant changes in the way everyone lives. However we can also see that what we're doing doesn't necessarily scale up... not to the scale that's required.
