Areas

 Monthly U.S.

Monthly
Goal

 

Average U.S.

90%

May 2008

Gasoline (per person) - in gallons

42

4

-

Electricity (kwh) (household)

917

90

63

Heat +Cooking: Natural Gas (therms) (household)

83

1

15

Heat +Cooking: Oil (gallons) (household)

626

5

0

Heat +Cooking: Wood (unsustainable) (household)

10

8

 -

Garbage (lbs/year) (per person)

136.9

27.38

??

Water (gallons/year) (per person)

3,042

507

11.22

Consumer Goods (in dollars) (per household)

$10,000.00

$83.33

$29.19

Food: Local

 

70%

75.22

Food Bulk

 

25%

24.78

Food Wet Goods

50%

5%

0

Here are my May 2008 Riot 4 Austerity numbers.

Gasoline: I am not tracking my public transit usage since I am well below the 90% guidelines. I use public transit to get to work and walk or ride my bike everywhere else. I haven’t been tracking my bike miles because its too much work to do so. I used to use gmap pedometer to track my mileage before (I don’t have one of those nifty little gadgets to attach to my bike). This was well in the winter when I didn’t ride much. But now I’m riding alot more, and its just a pain to track bike mileage. I rode to a dinner party recently and was pleased with myself because I didn’t get grease on my clothes.

Husband rides bike every where every day. I would ride my bike to work, except for two reasons.

1. I don’t have the additional money to buy more food which I would need if I was burning up more calories.

2. There is about 7 miles of bad ghetto between me and my job.  

Electricity: This is wind powered electricity so I get a payback per the 90% guidelines. My bill averages at around $60. The electricity hogs are the fridge and our desktop computers. I am hoping to purchase laptops in the next few months. This number also dropped from last month. The reason: husband is now working and not at home using electricity so much.

Gas: We used 15 CCF which is 18% of U.S. average. This is another drop from April of roughly 50%. Gas is used to heat the water in our house. I’m still confused about this number. We don’t shower every day and when I do shower I like a hot shower. But all our other water needs uses cold water: washing dishes, clothes, watering plants. I have read the suggestion online to turn off the water heater, but I’ve also read that some sort of bacteria growth can occur in the heater if its turned off. And its apparently poisonous/dangerous in some form. I don’t know if this is believable or not, but I don’t want to be stuck with a bill for a damaged water heater when I vacate this place, so I’m leaving the heater alone.

Garbage: Again I forgot to track garbage output. It isn’t any more than usual. We now put out a few full grocery bags every two weeks (ever since we began composting, we haven’t purchased garbage bags…we are now in the phase where we (meaning my husband) have been picking up garbage bags from the street (hanging from trees for example) and bringing it home so we can use it for our garbage. Cheese and butter come wrapped in plastic cling-wrap. I’ve read that in the olden days before plastic, cheese was packaged in wax. I should suggest that to the cheese makers.

Water: No change from last month. The amount was exactly the same. Water here is used for drinking, cooking, bathing, washing clothes. Toilet flushes use grey water from the washer and bath. Since the water is soapy, the toilet is cleaned with every flush.

Consumer Goods: The $29.19 spent breaks down as follows: $13 for shoe inserts for husband, $2.19 for a notebook and $14 for a handmade purse I bought on etsy.com. I wonder if I should start including TP purchases as a consumer good purchase.

Food: I had forgotten what wet goods meant per the riot guidelines. So I checked to see what it was. For some reason I had thought it meant things like oil for cooking. But it isn’t. From the page:

Wet goods - conventionally grown meat, fruits, vegetables, juices, oils, milk etc… transported long distances, and processed foods like chips, soda, potatoes. Also regular shampoo, dish soap, etc… And that no one should buy more than 5% of their food in this form. Right now, the above makes up more than 50% of everyone’s diet.

I have not purchased conventionally grown anything in a very, very long time. I bought some campbells tomato soup in January when I was sick and at work and I couldn’t eat anything. So I bought the soup from a chain grocery store (can’t remember the name). I realize tomato is one of the dirty dozen, but every "vegetarian" option had chicken stock in it and the thought of eating it really grossed me out.

I’ve been buying my soap from a store front at the Reading Terminal Market called Bee Natural. The soap is made from honey and appears to be made in Delaware. We’ve been using Dr. Bronner’s bar soap (the scent free one) to wash our dishes after reading about some other blogger (burbanmom?) using it. It works well. So now I don’t use the earth friendly dish washing soap that comes in a recycleable plastic container.

Additionally, although I have not bought any soda, this doesn’t mean I haven’t drunk any soda. The soda I (and husband) drank this past month was given as a reward for our niceness (as volunteers, good worker bees, etc). I usually drink water (even bottled water) if I’m caught unprepared at these events, but I just drank some soda and enjoyed the corn syrup goodness. Same rule applies for other junk food. We never (yes never) buy chips, snack foods when grocery shopping. Neither of us like it that much. But if its offered at a party, I’ll have some. And I am no saint. I was addicted to Pepsi at one point. Paying over $3,000 to fix my teeth (cavities) got rid of my addiction very quickly. I was also addicted to chewing up at one point in my life. But then I wore braces because according to my parents, I had horsey looking teeth, and since its difficult to chew gum while wearing braces, I quit chewing gum.

I also have some lotions that I purchased before I heard about the Riot project that I’m still using. I just can’t bring myself to toss it out, so I’m using it up and promising myself never to buy it again.  

I have not been tracking the specifics of what I buy for food. So I just totalled up what I bought from the farmer’s market vs. the natural foods store to get the percentages. The farmer’s market provides me with local goods and food and the natural foods store provides me with organic stuff I can’t buy at the farmers’ market…such as rice.