Riot for Austerity, End of Month 1
Jul. 3rd, 2007 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helwen1. Gasoline.
31 Gallons this month. We had the trips to the farm, baronial meetings, Chris and Elizabeth's wedding, the NY demo, Z's graduation. For this past month, we used 75% of what the average American uses.
I haven't been keeping good track of walking/biking locally, but we've probably gone 20-30 miles. Not much, but all of our local stuff is pretty close to home (1.5 - 2.3 mi. roundtrip), and it's all city roads so it's what the car is worst at doing.
Considering what we're doing, not bad. We'll probably be about the same for July, maybe a little better. August we'll go way over because of Pennsic.
2. Electricity. Don't have the latest electric bill yet.
3. Heating and Cooking Energy - this is divided into 3 categories, gas, wood and oil.
I don't have a way to figure out oil usage. So I'll track electricity, and charcoal if we end up using any this summer. The amount of oil we use over the summer is pretty minimal, since we don't need it for heat, just hot water. All else will have to wait until next year.
4. Garbage. A 90% reduction would mean .45 lbs of garbage PER PERSON, PER DAY.
We started at .028% of average consumption, and have maintained that level.
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.
We determined that our roofing doesn't have zinc in it; copper instead, but not harmful in small amounts to humans or plants. Large amounts of copper are harmful to plants, although generally that's in the form of several copper nails being hammered in (I had to do this once because we had a black birch too near to the house, and I wasn't able to dig it out. We cut it down but the base kept sprouting new growth. sigh).
Fortunately we had a fair amount of rain fall this past month, and one of my last watering was with town water, to balance the rain water I've been using.
Baseline for past year was 51 gal/person/day. This past month, we got down to 35 gal/person/day. It might have been even better if I weren't learning how to can. I haven't gotten the whole routine down yet, so definitely using more water than I should. Still, we're down over all, so our conservation measures are having an effect, since we're down from 50% of average consumption to 35%.
6. Consumer Goods.
Bought trash cans for rainwater catchment, new bike helmet (used will _not_ do), gifts, some other household stuff. Total of $352.79, or 42% of average American consumption.
7. Food.
#1 Local good food and produce. Around 30%? Local veggies and apples (overwinters, greenhouse, strawberries). Lots better than before.
#2 is is *DRY, BULK* goods. No change here, because we're still using up existing supplies. This might change by end of summer.
# 3 is Wet goods - conventionally grown meat, fruits, vegetables, juices, oils, milk etc… Not a lot of change here, either. Have started looking at local sources for meat. Mostly I've just cut down on the amount of meat we buy. But we're still eating out a bit more than we should.
Water usage is probably the most notable thing at this point. I don't expect to see huge changes until fall, as we slowly transition our sources for foods, etc. Also, I had plans for acquiring some things this year, and it would be silly and false to put them all off for a year for the Riot and then buy them all next summer.
Still, it's an interesting exercise and definitely worth doing. We'll bring down what we can, and the rest we'll work on over the next 2-3 years, as I believe that's how long it will realistically take for us to decrease consumption in certain areas.
31 Gallons this month. We had the trips to the farm, baronial meetings, Chris and Elizabeth's wedding, the NY demo, Z's graduation. For this past month, we used 75% of what the average American uses.
I haven't been keeping good track of walking/biking locally, but we've probably gone 20-30 miles. Not much, but all of our local stuff is pretty close to home (1.5 - 2.3 mi. roundtrip), and it's all city roads so it's what the car is worst at doing.
Considering what we're doing, not bad. We'll probably be about the same for July, maybe a little better. August we'll go way over because of Pennsic.
2. Electricity. Don't have the latest electric bill yet.
3. Heating and Cooking Energy - this is divided into 3 categories, gas, wood and oil.
I don't have a way to figure out oil usage. So I'll track electricity, and charcoal if we end up using any this summer. The amount of oil we use over the summer is pretty minimal, since we don't need it for heat, just hot water. All else will have to wait until next year.
4. Garbage. A 90% reduction would mean .45 lbs of garbage PER PERSON, PER DAY.
We started at .028% of average consumption, and have maintained that level.
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.
We determined that our roofing doesn't have zinc in it; copper instead, but not harmful in small amounts to humans or plants. Large amounts of copper are harmful to plants, although generally that's in the form of several copper nails being hammered in (I had to do this once because we had a black birch too near to the house, and I wasn't able to dig it out. We cut it down but the base kept sprouting new growth. sigh).
Fortunately we had a fair amount of rain fall this past month, and one of my last watering was with town water, to balance the rain water I've been using.
Baseline for past year was 51 gal/person/day. This past month, we got down to 35 gal/person/day. It might have been even better if I weren't learning how to can. I haven't gotten the whole routine down yet, so definitely using more water than I should. Still, we're down over all, so our conservation measures are having an effect, since we're down from 50% of average consumption to 35%.
6. Consumer Goods.
Bought trash cans for rainwater catchment, new bike helmet (used will _not_ do), gifts, some other household stuff. Total of $352.79, or 42% of average American consumption.
7. Food.
#1 Local good food and produce. Around 30%? Local veggies and apples (overwinters, greenhouse, strawberries). Lots better than before.
#2 is is *DRY, BULK* goods. No change here, because we're still using up existing supplies. This might change by end of summer.
# 3 is Wet goods - conventionally grown meat, fruits, vegetables, juices, oils, milk etc… Not a lot of change here, either. Have started looking at local sources for meat. Mostly I've just cut down on the amount of meat we buy. But we're still eating out a bit more than we should.
Water usage is probably the most notable thing at this point. I don't expect to see huge changes until fall, as we slowly transition our sources for foods, etc. Also, I had plans for acquiring some things this year, and it would be silly and false to put them all off for a year for the Riot and then buy them all next summer.
Still, it's an interesting exercise and definitely worth doing. We'll bring down what we can, and the rest we'll work on over the next 2-3 years, as I believe that's how long it will realistically take for us to decrease consumption in certain areas.
