Tiny Choices Survey: Martin!
By tinychoices | April 10, 2009
Vital statistics (name, age, location, link to website/blog)?
I’m Martin Higgins. I am 39.9 years old. I am a Canadian choosing to live abroad. I am presently in Tunisia. I blog about reducing plastic consumption at http://PlasticLess.com. Also Build Your Own Solar Panels.
How do you reside (apartment or house, roommates)?
I live with my wife and three teenaged kids in a ground floor duplex.
Are your housing decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain.
My life decision to live long-term as a visitor means that renting furnished living spaces is pretty much a necessity. I like not having a lot of stuff. The four homes that I have had in the last four years have varied widely. It is more important to us to live within a real local community than to have a nice sofa.
How do you travel (transit, car, etc)? Are your travel decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain.
When I lived on the tiny island of Gozo, I spent the first year walking and taking the bus. We would make a monthly car rental to stock up on heavy groceries and combine that with a drive to a more distant beach or historical site. When we decided to start a local company, it became necessary for me to own a car. Now I am living in an oil producing, developing country. Public transit is efficient and affordable. I don’t plan on getting a car here.
Tell us about a Tiny Choice you’ve made in your life.
I have stopped using bin liners and I walk to the dumpster and back with my kitchen garbage can.
What is the one environmental dilemma you personally struggle the most with?
Water conservation is a struggle when you have three teens in the house.
What is one Tiny Choice you can make in that direction?
A low flow shower head would be a step in the right direction.
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?
Environmentalism is not mainstream here so I confuse and confound people when I tell them that I don’t want them to put my stuff in a plastic bag. I’m living in a country where I only speak the second language (French). This doesn’t help.
What is the one environmental Tiny Choice you would like every single person to adopt?
I would like to see everyone using reusable shopping bags instead of plastic.
Do you feel like you make sacrifices for environmentalism? Please explain.
Do you know what kinds of snack foods are packaged in plastic? The best kinds!
Actually, that’s a stretch. I do go without some tempting foods on a daily basis because I want to avoid the responsibility for the wasteful packaging.
Are you generally: optimistic, pessimistic, neutral about environmentalism and the future?
I am all over the map with this. I can have optimism and pessimism at the same time. I get pessimistic about the direction that politicians and business are taking with alternative energy. Promoting ethanol just doesn’t make sense to me when people are starving. I am optimistic that the best solutions will eventually win out. I am hopeful that solar will be a big part of the solution. Almost all of our sources of energy are essentially stored energy that originally came from the sun. I just started writing a blog called Build Your Own Solar Panels even though I haven’t built my own solar panels, yet. That is called optimism :)
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