Tiny Choices Survey: Michelle!
By tinychoices | March 20, 2009
Vital statistics (name, age, location, link to website/blog)?
Michelle, 48, Eastern Ontario, Canada
www.aztext.com is the site for our publishing business. We publish books and DVDs on sustainable living.
How do you reside (apartment or house, roommates)?
In an off-grid century old farmhouse on 150 acres of trees and ponds. My husband and I share our home with one dog and 3 cats. We use solar panels and a wind turbine to power our home (and home-based publishing business). We have a huge organic vegetable garden and as vegetarians we are able to produce a great deal of our own food. We heat our home using an EPA certified woodstove and cut our own (dead) wood from our acreage. We use a chainsaw with a catalytic converter (to reduce emissions) and use vegetable-based chain oil in it. We haul the firewood back to our home using toboggans that we drag behind us on foot. No ATVs or snowmobiles for us!
Are your housing decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain.
Definitely choice. We left the suburbs 10 years ago and were lucky to find this place. However, my husband would say necessity since living in suburbia was driving him crazy! :)
How do you travel (transit, car, etc)?Are your travel decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain.
First of all we both work out of our home so there are many days in which we just don’t need to go anywhere. Our nearest village for groceries and mail is 14 kms (9 miles) away and we usually travel that in our Honda Civic. In nicer weather my husband often chooses to ride to town and back on his bike. Even our nearest neighbor is 4 kms (2-1/2 miles) away so walking anywhere isn’t a quick and easy thing to do here!
We choose not to fly. We haven’t flown anywhere in 18 years or so. At first it was just a gut feeling that air travel was bad for the planet. After reading the book “Heat” by George Monbiot I am more convinced than ever that air travel is one of the WORST things in terms of global climate change.
Tell us about a Tiny Choice you’ve made in your life.
Well obviously we’ve made some rather BIG choices. We use renewable energy (solar and wind) for our electrical needs. Often living off-the-grid actually means living “on propane” and indeed when we first moved into this house our stove, fridge and water heater all ran on propane. By adding more solar panels we were able to buy an energy-efficient electric fridge. Our hot water is now heated first by the sun using a solar thermal hot water system. Our excess electricity (once our batteries become completely charged on a sunny or windy day we have excess power) is used to run an electric hot water tank. Even though our propane hot water tank is still here, it rarely clicks on. We use our propane cookstove as a last resort and use our woodstove (when it’s on), solar oven (when it’s sunny) or our convection toaster oven (when we have excess electricity being produced by our solar panels or wind turbine) for cooking. Our vegetarianism was another big choice we made 19 years ago.
As for tiny choices we make them every day; hankies instead of paper tissues, cloth rags instead of paper towels, bar shampoo rather than plastic bottles, taking our own containers for our leftovers at restaurants, using cloth diapers for our 2 daughters 20 years ago, etc. etc. To be honest, these things have been a part of our lives for so long that we don’t even think about them anymore.
What is the one environmental dilemma you personally struggle the most with?
Driving a car. Obviously where I live, in the country AND in a climate that experiences REAL winters, cycling is not a real option and there is no public transit.
What is one Tiny Choice you can make in that direction?
We drive the most fuel-efficient vehicle that we can and limit our trips. We are also about to purchase an electric bike to make it easier for us to ride longer distances. Obviously the battery will be recharged using the sun and wind!
What is the one environmental Tiny Choice you make that people question (in either a positive educational or a negative hassle way) you the most about?
Probably our choice to not fly. We have family members who live great distances away from us and they don’t understand our choice to avoid air travel to visit them.
In a more positive way, when people see us putting our leftover restaurant meals into containers we’ve brought from home, they are usually quite excited and positive. One time we overheard a woman at another table say “Look… this restaurant gives you Tupperware for your leftovers!”
Since we made so many of these choices so long ago, long before it was “hip to be green” we have become quite accustomed to others not understanding or being disapproving of our choices.
What is the one environmental Tiny Choice you would like every single person to adopt?
A vegetarian diet. The production of meat is such a wasteful process using large amounts of land, water and energy. It just makes so much more sense to eat the grains ourselves rather than feeding it to cows and then eating them, for example. The methane produced by these animals is a huge problem too…. methane is 20 times worse a greenhouse gas than CO2.
Do you feel like you make sacrifices for environmentalism? Please explain.
Oh definitely. There are many, many times when I’d like to live the way I see other people living…. without a care in the world for our planet. I sometimes wish I was that innocent, naive and unthinking. My husband and I often tease each other and say “why do we have to think so much?
On the other hand, we also recognize that anything we do for the health of the planet is also a healthier option for us personally too. Green choices are healthier choices for your body as well as the planet!
Are you generally: optimistic, pessimistic, neutral about environmentalism and the future?
Sorry to say but I am cautiously optimistic but generally pessimistic. It amazes me that the things we began doing over 20 years ago are only now catching on with the rest of the world. Our window of opportunity is about to slam shut and yet people are still debating the merits of recycling…. But the interest in all things green is truly overwhelming and wonderful to see. I only hope that people will continue to convert their thoughts and concerns into actions! Many of our friends now comment on how “before your time” we are and they assume that it is gratifying to see the rest of the world catching up with us. I just wish it hadn’t taken so long!
- Click here to read all of the Tiny Choices Surveys!
- Want to take this survey? Email us your answers to the questions above, along with a photo!
Topics: Surveys | 2 Comments »
wow, thanks for posting–you two are inspirational! :)
[...] Tiny Choices Survey: Michelle! | Tiny Choices [...]