Is self sufficiency sustainability?

[miss_thenorth]

Do you believe that by living a self sufficient lifestyle, you are living a more ecologically sustainable one?

In other words, if you raise your own food and produce your own energy and make your own soap, etc., are you therefore making less of an impact on the planet than if you purchased those items?

I believe so. While those of us who are raising our own animals for meat, growing our own produce, we do still need to buy from other outside sources, but I believe our impact is greatly reduced. we don't have the packaging, or relying on other people to butcher the animals, or depending on transportation costs of bringing the 'fresh' produce to us form wherever on thies planet. We buy more bulk items, and do the processing/fabricating etc ourselves. Even if we still use modern conveniences, such as electricity ( which is too expensive for most to produce themselves), the general impact on the planet is greatly reduced. When I lived in the city, before my SS endeavour, I had three garbage bags a week of packaging form bread wrappers, styrofoam from meat packaging and all the garbage that is produced and thrown away. Now that I make most things myself, I have maybe three garbage bags every two months. Not to mention the hidden costs of transportation, paying workers to do the things en masse that I myself am doing now, and also by doing it myself, i control what goes into what I make. We tend to use reusable items such as rags as opposed to paper towels and the like.

I could go on , but you get the point.

 

[freemotion]

I believe I am using sustainable methods when I don't go purchase supplies, only equipment. For example, if I buy a bag of chemical fertilizer to grow my garden, that is not sustainable. If I use compost that I make myself, that is sustainable.

If I keep my livestock in a miniature model of industrial agriculture, I'm not really reducing my impact. But I don't, and that is why I keep them. I think most people here on ss will get what you are saying!

Yes, you are crazy.

 

[cmjust0]

Ok, I'll be the fly in the ointment and say....not necessarily.

To be self-sufficient carries with it the inherent necessity to do many things for oneself. Doing many things for oneself is pretty much the exact opposite of specialization. While specialization carries its own set of problems, one thing it's good for is the reduction of waste.. Wasted material; wasted energy; wasted time....generally speaking, all are reduced through specialization.

If we all do many things sufficiently instead of each of us doing one thing well, there will be inefficiency.. With inefficiency comes waste. If everyone were to begin striving for self-sufficiency, there would be a lot of waste, and creating that much waste would -- to me at least -- seem to push us toward an unsustainable model.

Think about it...it may take me all day to fell, buck, and split a rick of firewood, whereas someone who's actually good at processing firewood could perhaps do it in a few hours. Now, if I elect to spend that day getting paid to do something that I'm actually good at and use the proceeds of my day's work to pay the firewood guy to do what he's good at, more overall stuff got done that day than would have gotten done had I elected to process the firewood myself in the name of self sufficiency.

Now, you think...who cares?!? What does a wasted day cost anyone else but me, really?

Well...you had to eat.. If that food took you half as far through the firewood as the other guy, then half your food that day was technically wasted.. And perhaps your not being terribly good at processing firewood actually cost you some firewood, because maybe he's better enough at it that he can harvest more usable firewood from the same tree than you can..

My point is that there are costs associated with waste, and...well...the self-sufficient life is pretty much inherently wasteful. Bear in mind, though, that an economically wasteful life doesn't necessarily mean a wasted life. Far from it.

I mean, I get it. Believe me, I get it. I like being able to provide for myself, if only because it gives me a sense of peace and security that you just can't achieve with a highly specialized existence where you provide a niche service to others and use the proceeds to purchase everything else you need.. And it's difficult -- scratch that...it's just meaningless -- to try and assign a value to what I'm losing in "opportunity cost" as I'm hacking around at a downed tree with my trusty chainsaw.

Sure, I could be doing what I do well and leaving the firewood to someone else better suited to the job.. That would be the most efficient, least wasteful thing to do...

Thankfully, though, a good life's not all about efficiency, and a good life is invaluable.


But, ya...to answer the question...no, self sufficiency doesn't necessarily equal sustainability.

 

[Aidenbaby]

Buster, obviously self-sufficiency and sustainability are not one and the same. Self-sufficiency is an excellent step towards becoming more sustainable. To me the two go hand in hand. The more you produce and create at home, the less you have to use resources that are not limitless like what was once believed. By canning my own tomatoes (just an example, I have yet to do it), I would reduce: the petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, I use my rabbit and chicken poo and use chickens for pest control; the trucks needed to take the tomatoes from the field to the factory and then to the store, definitely don't need them to bring them from my yard; not to mention no tractors; no metal to make cans; no factories; etc, etc. If you have solar panels (another SS thing I hope to do at some point) and an electric stove, you could be even more efficient as you could save that evergy too.

 

[Ldychef2k]

The environment and ecology never entered my mind when I decided to become self-sufficient.

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

Buster, obviously self-sufficiency and sustainability are not one and the same. Self-sufficiency is an excellent step towards becoming more sustainable. To me the two go hand in hand. The more you produce and create at home, the less you have to use resources that are not limitless like what was once believed. By canning my own tomatoes (just an example, I have yet to do it), I would reduce: the petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, I use my rabbit and chicken poo and use chickens for pest control; the trucks needed to take the tomatoes from the field to the factory and then to the store, definitely don't need them to bring them from my yard; not to mention no tractors; no metal to make cans; no factories; etc, etc. If you have solar panels (another SS thing I hope to do at some point) and an electric stove, you could be even more efficient as you could save that evergy too.

The trouble I have with solar panels, is the massive amount of money and petroleum that is used to make them.
I honestly think there are better uses for petroleum.
I would rather be totally off grid, then have to choose between the high cost of solar ( and it does cost in the long term) and conventional electric.

 

[cmjust0]

The more you produce and create at home, the less you have to use resources that are not limitless like what was once believed. By canning my own tomatoes (just an example, I have yet to do it), I would reduce: the petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, I use my rabbit and chicken poo and use chickens for pest control; the trucks needed to take the tomatoes from the field to the factory and then to the store, definitely don't need them to bring them from my yard; not to mention no tractors; no metal to make cans; no factories; etc, etc. If you have solar panels (another SS thing I hope to do at some point) and an electric stove, you could be even more efficient as you could save that evergy too.

Ok, but look at the other side of the coin... What more are you consuming by canning your own tomatoes at home in small batches? More to the point...what would it cost if EVERYONE canned their own tomatoes at home in small batches..

To illustrate the point, think about it this way...imagine what would happen is Hunt's and Del Monte and all the other canned veggie giant threw out their highly specialized, highly efficient agriculture and canning systems and replaced them with thousands upon thousands of inefficient consumer-grade cooktop ranges, each manned with one person and a pressure canner.. And imagine that each of those people were also responsible for growing the beans and 'maters!!

Does that sound just a tad ridiculously wasteful and inefficient to anyone else? Because that's the kind of waste I'm talking about.... There's a reason, folks, why they can sell you a can of green beans for $.30 while most of us -- at the end of the day -- couldn't begin to touch that kind of price out of our own gardens if seeds, time, equipment, and everything else were truly taken into account.

Think about it...say you can 10 dozen cans of green beans...that's 120 cans and you've saved, what, $36?!? Do any of us really believe it costs less than $36 -- once everything's included -- to put up 120 cans of beans?

There's just.no.way.

If you don't believe me, well...I'll give you $36 for 120 cans of home-grown, home-canned green beans.

Any takers?





Ya...didn't think so.

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

The environment and ecology never entered my mind when I decided to become self-sufficient.

We feel the same way.
We are more concerned with how we are being totally drained of all our earnings by industrialization and taxes, in order to live.
Its all fake and such a waste!

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

The more you produce and create at home, the less you have to use resources that are not limitless like what was once believed. By canning my own tomatoes (just an example, I have yet to do it), I would reduce: the petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, I use my rabbit and chicken poo and use chickens for pest control; the trucks needed to take the tomatoes from the field to the factory and then to the store, definitely don't need them to bring them from my yard; not to mention no tractors; no metal to make cans; no factories; etc, etc. If you have solar panels (another SS thing I hope to do at some point) and an electric stove, you could be even more efficient as you could save that evergy too.

Ok, but look at the other side of the coin... What more are you consuming by canning your own tomatoes at home in small batches? More to the point...what would it cost if EVERYONE canned their own tomatoes at home in small batches..

To illustrate the point, think about it this way...imagine what would happen is Hunt's and Del Monte and all the other canned veggie giant threw out their highly specialized, highly efficient agriculture and canning systems and replaced them with thousands upon thousands of inefficient consumer-grade cooktop ranges, each manned with one person and a pressure canner.. And imagine that each of those people were also responsible for growing the beans and 'maters!!

Does that sound just a tad ridiculously wasteful and inefficient to anyone else? Because that's the kind of waste I'm talking about.... There's a reason, folks, why they can sell you a can of green beans for $.30 while most of us -- at the end of the day -- couldn't begin to touch that kind of price out of our own gardens if seeds, time, equipment, and everything else were truly taken into account.

Think about it...say you can 10 dozen cans of green beans...that's 120 cans and you've saved, what, $36?!? Do any of us really believe it costs less than $36 -- once everything's included -- to put up 120 cans of beans?

There's just.no.way.

If you don't believe me, well...I'll give you $36 for 120 cans of green beans.

Any takers?


Ya...didn't think so.

we no longer can food. Not only is it sterilization of the food, but it is not sustainable or traditional.
We are able to freeze veges and meats for free for well over half the year, and we also lacto ferment veges.
All they need is cool storage, and they will not spoil.

If our move works out for us, we will also have a large root cellar.

 

[Aidenbaby]

And how many of those cans that the store sells are reused/recycled? 75%? 50%? 30%? Let's use my street as an example. It's a block long with 14 houses. Of those houses, 2 recycle. Me and one other neighbor. I can tell you that not every single can in our house gets recycled and I'm sure that the other neighbor is the same. Let's assume that we are recycling every can though. That is 2 out of 14 or 15%. Take that and apply it to all of the cans produced and that is a 15% rate of POSSIBLE reusability. Of my glass jars that I have for canning, I've reused 100% of them and even a few from the stores (anyone else like the atlas jars that canning lids fit?). I still stand by my argument that intentional or not the SS lifestyle is significantly more sustainable than the "traditional" lifestyle.