The numbers show how much of an impact off-grid living can have!

To compare how we lived over 10 years ago to today, even I am surprised at what we have accomplished.  The world struggles with over consumption which has significant environmental, financial, emotional, mental, physical and even spiritual consequences.  

So after 10 years of off grid living, have we made an impact?  YES!!

When we lived in St. Albert, our water consumption averaged about 225 gallons per day for a family of four.  Our efforts to reduce water consumption has our average down to 25 gallons per day.  That is a 89% decrease in water consumption.  For us, water is sacred.  It does not make sense to defecate in water that is clean to drink, bath or cook with.  Composting our humanure and having less frequent showers has made all the difference with this one item!  If everyone did this, we could shut down all the waste treatment plants, have no more toxic sludge to process and clean up our rivers as well!

Our live in the city also had us consuming on average 660 kilowatt hours per month.  When we built our solar system it would have cost $100,000 to build an array big enough to produce that much power.  So we took great strides to reduce our power consumption and now we average about 150 kwh per month.  That is a 78% decrease in the amount of power that we use.  The amount of coal and natural gas we save by our efforts is significant and if everyone in the province took the same measures, we could shut down all the power plants, take down all the power lines, turn off all the smart meters and really clean up the mess that is out there!

We used natural gas for heating water and our home during the winter.  Now that we are off grid, we use a little bit of propane to run our gas stove.  That was one strategy to reduce our power usage.  On average our gas bill was about $175 a month and now we we pay around $20, which is a 89% decrease.  There are times where we don't consume any propane, especially during the winter, which gives us a 100% decrease through those months.

The fact that we use wood to help augment the heat in the earthship means that we still do burn.  However, the environmental impacts of what we are doing is still a huge net decrease in emissions.  We burn our fires hot, so the amount of smoke produced is very small.  Hot fires are much more efficient than cold, slow, smoldering fires.  Being consciously aware of these issues helps us to reduce the impacts of wood fires.  

The biggest change has been on our pocket book.  Between my wife and I we were making about $90,000 a year.  We made the decision to quit our slave jobs and live off the land.  As a result, we were able to reduce our dependency on fiat currency to about $9,000 a year.  that is a whopping 90% decrease!  If the government was to do an evaluation of how we live, they would be forced to conclude that we live well below the poverty line.  

If I am to do an assessment of our quality of life, I conclude that we are wealthy beyond most others on this planet!  The closer we get to getting these numbers down to zero, the less stress we have, no dependencies on other people and the more free we become!  Even if the amount of fiat currency hit zero, we would not perish or starve because we have taken care of all our needs!  The stress of loosing our 'j.o.b.' is gone!  The stress of debt collectors is gone too!  How?

When we lived in the city our debt load was close to $200,000 when you include the mortgage, credit cards, line of credit, etc.  Now our debt load is under $1000 as I am currently bartering for hay that we traded for building a deck and we owe a few people small sums of money while others owe us.  When I wash it all out, we are actually in the black.  Either way, that is a 99.5% to 100% reduction of debt!  I have no bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages, etc.  My wife only has a single bank account so that we can interact with people in the system.  But all told, cash and barter is how we roll.  We only build when we have the fiat currency or materials through barter.  Projects are not done and that is okay.  We are not in any hurry as the value of living without debt eases the vast majority of our stress.

As for our waste, we would put about three large garbage bags out at the curb each week.  I just read a report that the average Canadian produces about 777 kilograms of waste per year.  Because of our efforts, I am confident that we have that number down to about 50 kilograms per year.  That is a 94% reduction of waste.  The only way we were able to accomplish that is by our life style.  If we remained in the city it would be very difficult to make such drastic reductions.  Feeding table scraps to the animals, burning cardboard and other measures are difficult within the city environment.  The fact that we grow the vast majority of our food has resulted in a significant reduction of packaging that we deal with.  No question in my mind about how important it is to not purchase stuff from the stores.  

The one area that we have not had any significant impact on is how much we travel.  When living in the city we traveled every day to get to and from work or to get food, etc.  We averaged about 20,000 km per year living in the city.  Now that we live 1 1/2 hours north of the city, we find that we still travel about 20,000 km per year.  Except now we are traveling to the city or small town to get supplies that we are not able to produce for ourselves yet or to trade / barter with other people.  Remember, a trip in the city takes all day.  It does not seem to matter how fast we rush around town, it still burns a day.  So we try to minimize our trips as much as possible.  In the end, we have been unable to make an impact on travel ... YET.  It is definitely on our list to tackle and we are consciously aware of how much we do travel.  

If there are other numbers that your curious about, let me know.  These are the ones that I can think of this early in the morning.