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I have planted a pedestrian browsable food garden along a busy sidewalk. I'm probably 5 years out from actual full tilt production.
All my lawncare tools are manual or electric.
I ride my bike to work when I can, its only 5 miles and 4 miles of it are on a car-free bike path. Another half-mile will soon be on a protected bike path in 2027.
I have a subcompact car that gets ~42 mpg.
Remote working from the countryside, taking my electric car (second hand, cheap, low range but recharged daily) to the fablab to discuss our current projects:
Last weekend I went to a local non-profit event of resistance against the far-right. Yesterday I got a call to help form a citizen's list for the next municipal elections.
To think that I went as far as rural Japan to find the things that I was looking for and that they were waiting for me in my native country (France), just next to where my parents live.
I live in the most sustainable city on the planet, Gothenburg, Sweden. And one of the most environmentally friendly apartment buildings in that city. The building is a special project where they test new sustainability stuff and other cool tech and things. Not sure I'm comfortable linking to a page about the building, as it shows photos and the exact location, but I wrote more extensively about it a couple of months back so I'll go find that comment as soon as I have time and add it here.
Other than that, I'm vegan, only buy second hand clothes, furniture, kitchenware etc. I only walk, bike and use trams. Most devices I get secondhand and use till they're unrepairable (or at least would cost more to repair than get another secondhand one) and if I ever find like a phone real cheap before my current one is dead I give it away to family or friends that need it. There's a lot more minor things, and probably stuff I'm forgetting.
I've had and have a hard life where I can't do most of the things I want due to anxiety, so I'm extremely proud to have gotten to where I am with all the stuff above.
That's super cool and I hadn't heard of that city before. I'll look into it more. Congratulations on living life on your terms!
I live in the most sustainable city on the planet, Gothenburg, Sweden.
This sounds like Glenn-propaganda if I ever heard it!
On a more serious note, where did Göteborg get this award?
We live in a small village with a bakery and a local farmer store at walking distance from the house.
I'm working remotely in a repurposed train station. The whole station had been turned into a third space last year and quite a lot of events are happening there.
Today there was a presentation of different initiatives happening in the valley, i found two initiatives particularly interesting.
The first one is a cooperative ISP provider, I'll change my provider to join them.
The second one is another cooperative that is installing renewable energy and offering "collective self consumption". To simplify it: when my neighbor's solar panels are overproducing I can buy it directly from him. The rest of the time I'm using electricity from my regular provider.
Except that in this case it's organized in the scale of several villages.
We have solar panels and a backup battery for when the grid goes down. Our panels generate more than we generally use (we overbuilt on purpose) but we could run almost indefinitely as long as the panels are clear. There are two totes hooked up to a gutter on the back of our garage which provide 550 gallons of water storage that we use to water gardens and top up our duck pond. The ducks and chickens do most of our insect maintenance in the gardens.
I'm working on additional shelving in our cellar in order to be able to store more of our canning from the gardens; most of the material is reclaimed pallet wood from a nearby business. We've also got two slightly damaged solar panels that I'd like to use to circulate the water in the duck pond - pump and lift to flow through some uphill garden space back down to the pond after it's been filtered by the plants - and to provide some power to the bird coop for water heaters and maybe a light source.
I'm curious where you got your rain water containers - I'd like to get something around that size this year.
We got ours from a larger farm nearby a few years ago - they had purchased a soy based fertilizer and the distributor didn't have any return/recycle incentives so the farmer was selling them on the cheap. I think we found the guy through the farm & garden craigslist section but I can't really speak to how reliable that is anymore. If you've got a winter farmers market around you it might be worth asking around there (I'm loathe to suggest fb marketplace but if you're already there that might be convenient as well)
FB marketplace may be where I end up - I've seen big fluid totes on there when I've looked in the past.
It's not too hard to make containers in that size out of chicken-mesh and cement. Search for "ferrocement" and rainwater harvesting jar or so.
I make biodiesel for my farm and have as many solar panels hooked to the grid as allowed. I'm also learning how to do my own seed saving.
How do you make Biodiesel?!
..
How expensive is the equipment?
https://www.instructables.com/Make-Your-Own-Biodiesel-Processor/
It's not very difficult, but sourcing larger quantities of vegetable oil cheaply isn't easy these days.
I don't really know how much it would cost today to build a reactor. If you're technical, you can build a reactor out of scrap. If you can weld, you can make a better one. I think the hardest part is just sourcing reliable used fryer oil from restaurants.
Unfortunately, all the best resources online are dead now and the remaining ones are bad. How the hell is Journey to Forever still up, but Biodiesel.infopop.cc is down? You can probably still get all the info from Waybackmachine.
Tried the wayback machine.
'This account has been suspended'.
Wtf is going on here?
Works for me. I'm not even logged into Internet Archive.
Are you using a VPN? Maybe it was one used in that DoS attack from last year?
..that makes sense. I was using Mullvad^^
I work on a wind farm and I'm preparing to build an earthship home. I have an electric bike and I'm also a raging democratic socialist.
I am living my life in such a way that I mostly get to choose to use my time to do what I want, in ways that work for my bodymind. I participate in my community with my chosen family. I don't buy things that I don't actually need, I try to make due with what I have, and fix things that need fixing and mend things that need mending as much as possible. I write and create and share knowledge and skills freely and help others, especially for causes that are life-affirming and nourishing of people and planet. I live in a walkable community connected with electric trains. I cook and eat fresh, healthy, mostly locally sourced foods. I strive to move through the world in ways that spread hope, joy, beauty, love, connection, and awareness.
I am fortunate to be able to live in a country where all of this is more possible than the country I came from. I want more people to be able to experience this life (and to be able to maintain it myself, which is admittedly looking a bit dicey these days.) I want this more slow, mindful, and convivial way of life to be normalized as the "good life."
May be: I own a FrameWork laptop (bought the older generation new, because it is fast enough for me, but I want to support them). Also I self host a couple of web services myself (music streaming, file storage, RSS). I also live in a shared flat (although I could afford my own appartment) and take the bike to go everywhere in the city.
I dont know if that counts as solar punk. However, I think that many of the comments are very inspiring :D
I would really like to reduce my reliance on the electrical grid and have solar panels and a rainwater collection system. I also wanna have a bigger archive of music albums and movies.
We have solar panels, battery backup and a plug in hybrid car. It gets us just about anywhere locally we need to go without needing gas. We just got a 3d printer and I'm already thinking of dozens of things around the house I can fabricate now. We have a VR I can use to work out downstairs (beat saber!). Not to mention this cool miniature computer with internet access I can use anywhere I go.
Hoping to add a garden in the next year or so to grow herbs, fruits and veggies.
That's super cool and I someday wish to live a life like that.
My clothes last me an unusual amount of time when compared with most people I think (15 year old tshirts) and don't really buy clothes at all unless something is at the limit of repairability or looking very bad.
I want to ride my bike more. I work from home so I use it mostly to go the gym but I want to use for more things. Like shopping and stuff like that. I'm thinking of buying an electric one to help out since I live in a city with steep hills and an electric one would make it more likely to use.
I really wanna get to the point where I don't have to buy new clothes. How do you find stuff that lasts that long?
Given the state of the textile industry... make them yourself 🤷♂️
But you can get relatively far by repairing and patching stuff. Especially patches can make for nice upcycling of older or second hand clothes very much in the punk tradition.
There are also a few things you can buy from the outdoor industry that will last a while longer, but with a high upfront cost.
I do have a few things that are from outdoor brands so possiblity it impacts how long they last.
Isn't the fabric that you buy also apart of the textile industry?
Well, yes, but there at least you can still find some better quality I think.
Edit: You can also go buy quite high quality stuff in those "work cloth" / "worker safety" shops, but they do look the part, so I don't think many people would want to walk around those normally. Not cheap either.
[https://lemm.ee/post/52726909] This Post about a site called freesewing.org seems relevant
If you live in or have a neighboring town that is middle or upper class (does not apply to super rich geographies) the second hand stores often have really nice quality clothes for dirt cheap. Church charity shops in the same geographies are a good resource too. I find that you ‘know it when ~~see~~ feel it’ in terms of which clothing items will last a long time. Better fabrics are usually a bit thicker and sturdier feeling.
Not ideal for undergarments or socks though.
I don't know. I think I got lucky with a few pieces of clothing and mostly try to focus on quality long lasting stuff. But like I said I don't really buy much. My jeans are all pure denim and my tshirts tend to be heavier. And I think that's it. The only thing I notice that doesn't hold up very well is knitted sweaters. They tend to stretch over time.
I'm planning to put solar panels on my bicycle cart so I can work in the wild.
I live on this wet little ball of rock that not only gets its heat directly from a sun, but like half of my food harvests the radiation for its energy! And the other half gets its energy from that stuff!
For the future, I want to help bring about system level change in addition to the things I can do in my personal life. There is too much power concentrated in the hands of too few people. I would like to run software on my smartphone to help build an open source and decentralized global platform for digital democracy.
I love reusing old electronics I find! It's pretty fun.
Love an e-waste rescue story 💘
I'm super close to my neighbours. We help each other out constantly. We also managed to plant several fruit trees next to the building, so we make cakes and jelly relatively often with the fruit, spending the afternoon together while they simmer. Also, we have a Signal group, and that's cool.
I have a fold up solar panel and power station so I can play games on my modular entertainment system all day.
Eventually I'd like an upgrade of a self charging vehicle like the concept of aptera, although not sure when it will be available.
Well, I'm in the process of internally overboarding with 50mm PIR sheets for added insulation, added 200mm fibreglass into each floor of my house, and 150mm PIR on top of my flat roofs.
And have just had a heat pump installed, frustratingly, still haven't quite worked out how to properly drive the thing yet so am rather cold currently.
Sitting here in foggy January. The solar on the roof still powers the whole building. The 3D printer is printing something, also solar powered. A little server is running next to me, also solar powered. Posting on a decentralized global communication network.
The front of my house faces southwest. On a sunny afternoon, when it is freezing outside, my house is well enough insulated that the sunlight entering through my front windows and storm door can raise the temperature inside by several degrees Fahrenheit. By closing the prime front door, and covering my windows with insulated plugs, it takes several hours to lose those degrees of heat.