Living with less

Just some of the stuff thrown out by my neighbours in a single day 

We live in a throwaway consumer society, in case anyone hadn't noticed. It's often said that people these days are more materialistic than in the past, although that would seem to imply we had some kind of respect for materials, which we clearly don't. I often feel like I am at the epicentre of the throwaway consumer whirlwind, living, as I do, in Europe's most wasteful country.

The picture you can see above was taken this afternoon and represents just a quarter of the stuff that was put in the dump area today not forty paces from the front door of my flat. Tomorrow, lots more stuff will arrive and on Monday morning workmen will put all of it in a giant metal compactor and then it will be taken on a truck to the local incinerator and turned into what the politicians here call 'green energy'.

In theory all the TVs and bikes etc. will be sorted into different piles and processed according to what they are composed of. In practice though, most of it ends up in the same metal container along with everything else. Luckily the prevailing winds are Westerlies so the trickle of smoke that comes out of the incinerator will take it harmlessly away out over the Baltic towards, er, Sweden.

I've always been puzzled how anyone could throw a perfectly good thing away. Growing up, it was hammered into me that you just don't waste stuff. Thus my clothes were 'let out' (i.e. made bigger) by my mum as I grew and we had the same knackered kitchen table with one leg shorter than the other for decades. I also became an expert at scraping the mould off the top layer of marmalade to get at the 'perfectly good bit' underneath – and was taught to judge whether food was edible or not just by using my nose rather than looking at some 'best before' date. Talk about lost skills.

I clearly remember my first bike, which my parents gave me for my sixth birthday. It was a bright red affair with solid rubber tyres and home-made stabilisers salvaged from dead roller skates. My father had cobbled it together from bits of other bikes and painted the frame himself with some strong smelling oil paint. But if you think you can detect an accompaniment of weeping violins as you read that then you'd be wrong: we were a solidly lower middle class family with a detached house in niceish part of town. That's just the kind of bike you could expect to get in 1977, and I suspect some of my friends were even jealous of my new chick magnet.

But whatever you may think of home-made bikes and knitted mittens that were attached by a length of string to one's duffel coat so that it was impossible to lose them (a feature that delighted school bullies everywhere) – not many people are actually willing to go back to the 1970s. Here in the more bohemian parts of Copenhagen one could be forgiven for thinking that we have returned to that era. In what could be termed austerity chic, it's virtually impossible to walk around Vesterbro without bumping into bearded, long-collared fashion victims looking like extras from Starsky and Hutch. Some bars are now decked out in the 'authentic' bad taste of the era replete with yellowing wallpaper and smoke stained furniture. Of course, all the clientèle are speaking on iPhones about their latest vinyl record acquisition and drinking fashionable lager, so the illusion doesn't hold up to much scrutiny.

Bang og Jensen - one of Copenhagen's most tragically hip bars has gone back to the 1970s

But I wonder how many people in our very pampered societies are really willing to go back to the 1970s – or beyond? As austerity begins to bite and graduates start to get used to the idea that they'll probably never get the job they assumed would be rightfully theirs at the end of their studies, more and more younger people are having to face up to the fact that their level of material wealth will never be as great as their parents'. And then some.

All this was a very circuitous and long-winded lead-in to what I promised to talk about this week, namely, how to prepare for the coming energy crunch and all the associated chaos. Here's a confession: I aim not just to get through this mess alive, I intend to live through every moment of it as best as I can. I hope to help any others who are prepared to listen. To that end, this advice will seem pretty damned radical to those who are new to the peak oil blogosphere, and grist to the mill for anyone who has been paying attention over the last few years.

I'm not a fan of 'How to' lists, and neither do I like so-called advice dished out by clueless experts or well-meaning amateur busybodies, so I'll start by saying that the next few posts will be a collection of very important pointers that I have arrived at after much consideration, and ongoing consultations with many other people in the peak energy scene. I personally try to live up to them all, and I'm fully aware that the term 'hypocrite' can kill a well-meaning suggestion faster than a silver bullet kills a vampire. To that end I'll be measuring each of my suggestions against actions I have taken in my own life, with the general aim being to communicate that if a lazy so-and-so like me can achieve it, so surely can you. I stand by all of the suggestions I make and, as you'll notice, I don't use a pseudonym and am hence quite happy to take all the opprobrium I encounter from others squarely on the chin. That's not to say that I think I have 'the' answer. There is no 'perfect' solution and I'm in favour of the idea of dissensus i.e. a collection of different approaches to solving the same problems as a more resilient and, to use a modern term, open source way of doing things.

How to live with less

One of the most important lessons for people to learn today is how to live with less material goods than they have been led to believe is theirs by birthright. In the West we gobble up resources at an alarming rate, and people in former Third World countries are now copying us. But for all sorts of reasons, the party's over. Here are some of the main reasons:

• Conventional oil, which fuels our expedient lifestyles, has peaked. Forget dreams of shale gas and Alberta tar sands – these are just shadow plays concocted by investors and politicians and believed in by those who want to believe in them. From now on, as we tumble down the far side of the supply curve, we will see steadily climbing prices of everything from food and energy bills to healthcare and technology.
• Population is continuing to climb, despite the fact that most people are reliant on cheap forms of energy, particularly oil and natural gas, to deliver calories to their bodies. This will not end well.
• The West is broke. We have lived beyond our means for too long. No amount of money can compensate for a lack of cheap concentrated energy. The East might be playing catchup with us, but they face the same constraints on this small, finite planet, and will face the same future.
• Technology will not save us. Everything from computing tablets to nuclear power stations depends of processes which are highly energy intensive and prone to supply disruptions, politics and financial bubbles. Some technology will cushion our fall, but in the long run the industrial civilization faces the same fate as every other former civilization: a rapid deceleration in speed and reduction in the level of complexity. Technology = complexity. Complexity = weakness. It's our major blind spot: see it.

Given all that, it's highly unlikely that we are going to see our standards of material living increasing again in the future. So if we assume that we have the choice between becoming poor voluntarily and being forced to become poor against our will, which one shall we choose?

Consumerism, despite what we are told on the adverts, doesn't really deliver. There is plenty of evidence now that a certain level of material wealth is optimal and when we get beyond this we start to become unhappy. We humans are social primates, and when once we acquired manufactured good to meet our material needs, we now seem to purchase them merely to boost our individual status and satisfy the false need that has been planted there by black magicians (aka marketers). The point at which we drifted away from this optimal level of consumption is beyond the memory of anyone under about 40.

The pursuit of stuff is now our be all and end all, and we work on consumer debt-powered treadmills to acquire bigger houses, better cars, more exotic holidays and more up-to-date gadgets. This has never occurred before in our evolutionary history, but so ingrained has the idea become that some people now faced with personal bankruptcy would rather choose suicide as a way out rather than shake the demon of consumerism off their back and lead a life that is actually worth living.

Does anyone remember the first time they heard the term 'retail therapy', meaning buying stuff you don't need as a way of halting depression? In any other society in the world (and there are mercifully quite a few left) this would simply be called 'insanity'. But these days it is something to chuckle about – a guilty little pleasure akin to eating a box of chocolates or watching your favourite film for the umpteenth time. Similarly, people giggle that they are 'shopaholics' in much the same way that people don't giggle that they are heroin addicts or crack-heads. 'I went to Dubai for a spot of retail therapy,' is a phrase I've unhappily heard uttered more than once.

In America, and increasingly here in Europe, you are no longer given the choice of becoming a consumer. If you want to 'get ahead' you're encouraged to attend university and, ahem, study a discipline which, increasingly, is some shade of marketing. Even if you don't study marketing you might end up doing an MBA, meaning that you'll have got yourself into debt right from the start of your adult life. A car follows, as does a modest starter home filled with furniture from Ikea - and before you know it you're trapped in career and saddled with debt. This is known as being snookered.

But there is another path you can take. It's not an easy one, but then nothing truly worth doing ever is easy. This is the path of consuming less and living within your means. It's not an attractive proposition these days, and you'll likely lose a few friends and relatives along the way. But you can take encouragement from the fact that plenty of people are already doing it and having a fine time of it. Here are some examples:

Mark Boyle lives in the UK with no money. He lives in a caravan, brushes his teeth with sticks and eats wild food and food that has been thrown out by others. Read more about him here.

If that sounds just a bit too hardcore, consider Jacob Lund Fisker, who 'retired' at around the age of 33 and lives off USD 7,000 a year despite living a very full life in Chicago. He has an excellent blog packed with advice on how you can do the same here.

And the idea seems to be catching on, with a film being made about a German granny who lives off no money at all after having become 'irritated with the greedy consumer society'. Read more about her here.

Finally, anyone can buy a starter home on a soulless estate, but it takes courage and vision – and not having a 9-5 job – to build something like this.

What the people above have in common is that they rejected consumerism as a path to happiness and instead chose to focus on their inner lives and the things that made them truly happy. Things like learning to play a musical instrument, building your own home, growing your own food and learning new skills cost little or no money, but the paybacks are huge and ongoing.

I myself regard those above as aspirational and inspirational and I'll be honest and say that because I have kids I probably can't get the numbers down as low as they can. Nevertheless, everything everywhere is a work in progress, and I'd like to work towards their example. In my own life I have achieved the following:

Food. At present, around half of the food my family consumes is leftovers from the staff canteen where I work. A prodigious amount of waste occurs here and I could probably feed myself and family quite well on that alone. Of the rest, around 70% is organic – there's not much point buying non-organic vegetables as they contain very little in the way of goodness. About 95% of meals are cooked from the raw ingredients, although we occasionally succumb to the supermarket pizza. I'm 'mostly' vegetarian (since the New Year), although I don't have a problem with eating meat – just factory-produced meat. I describe myself as a 'part-time carnivore'.

I used to grow a lot of our own food when we lived in Spain but now my options are severely limited. There is a small balcony to our flat which gets the sun from around 2pm, so there are some challenges. I grow tomatoes and peas and this year I have a few pumpkins growing. I also have a wormery there which handles most food waste and turns it into compost. There is normally too much compost so I have to smuggle it out of the apartment block at night time and dump it under bushes. We are the only flat with food growing, with all others displaying flowers, and I am frowned at for doing so. My next door neighbour, an old woman, recently described me as a 'foreign pig' for the untidy collection of food plants, which stand in stark contrast to her neat rows of marigolds.

We almost never eat out at restaurants or go to cafés or bars – it is simply too expensive here in Denmark. With the exception of a cheap and cheerful Chinese dim sum place I sometimes go to for a treat, the only restaurants I end up in are the very high end ones. Why? Because I carved out a niche for myself as a restaurant reviewer as a way to get to go to these places. My enthusiasm for it has dimmed in the last year or so, but in the past I have dined out at Michelin starred eateries with aplomb. One memorable meal would have set me back around USD 500 if I'd have paid for it – a fact I considered as I ate a packet of noodles the next evening, coming in at around 1/1000^th of the price but with a not dissimilar calorific value.

Transport. I go practically everywhere by bike, averaging around 100km per week to work and back. We do possess a car, although I almost never drive it. My wife regards the car as necessary for ferrying the children around and most journeys it makes are less than 1km. Despite it being the most economical car on the market, getting around 58mpg, it's very expensive having a car in Denmark and, although I'm not against car use per se, we plan to swap it for a cargo bike later this year.

In terms of planes, I try and avoid them wherever possible. This hasn't been possible this year but I hope to make my final plane journey within the next year and stick to ground-based transport after that. I had never been on a plane until I was 21, so I aim to have had two decades of flying with them before quitting. Given that we plan not to go anywhere outside of Europe in the future, it should be a simple case of hopping on trains and buses.

Energy. We live in a flat that was allocated to us by the council when we were broke and as such have little control over the heating, which is set for the whole block (too high, as it happens, and in Winter I have to open the windows or else bake). We use about 5 kWh of electricity a day, and most of this is used by the fridge and on cooking. Wherever possible I use energy saving measures, such as slow cooking with the lid on, putting devices on timers, maintaining the fridge freezer etc. Clothes are washed at 40 degrees Centigrade and dry on racks around the flat. Our electricity consumption is around half the normal rate and we get a nice cheque back each year because our billing is based on the average rate.

Stuff. Nearly everything in our flat is taken from the dump I mentioned above and our whole apartment is decked out this way. Most of the stuff is nearly new (the microwave was still in its unopened box) and the things I have rescued so far include: a pine table at which I am now writing, an espresso maker, three TVs, numerous frying pans and dishes, chairs, two beds, several computers, bookshelves, plant pots (with plants), some expensive designer chairs, lots of artworks, a set of weights, two grandfather clocks, several bicycles, a wood-turning lathe, two seal skins, some giant wooden cats (that hold CDs), a set of Dickenses printed in 1907, numerous stereos and DVD players and a sewing machine. Many of the kids' toys are similarly from the dump and they often accompany me on my forays, regarding such outings as completely normal. I've even found a bag of silver cutlery there, and a plastic bag filled with coins, and a complete wine making set from the 1960s – there really is no end to the treasure one can pick up there.

Clothes. I wear my clothes until the literally fall to pieces. Some of my socks are 20 years old and still going strong. Part of my reason for this is that I hate clothes shopping. After about 10 minutes in a clothes shop I become dizzy and nauseous, so I try and limit the experience to around once or twice a year if I really need something for some reason.

Holidays. The last few years we have taken our holidays in other people's houses while they came to live in ours. House swapping is an excellent – and free – way to have a holiday and we've been lucky enough to have had several breaks in rural France, taking the overnight train to get there. This year we are going to stay on a farm in Greece - our first 'proper' (i.e. paid for) holiday in about six years.

Leisure. Many people buy expensive gear to be able to pursue some kind of leisure activity such as kite surfing or boating or scuba diving. My leisure activities tend to consist of reading and going for walks. It might sound corny, but I can get far more pleasure from watching a beautiful sunrise on the beach, than I would by doing something that required me to buy a load of gear or, gods forbid, join a group of like-minded enthusiasts. That said, I do love photography, and building things. And cooking, and lots more.

Personal grooming. My wife cuts my hair for me and we make all our own soap. I made a pot of shaving soap two years ago and it is still only half finished. I'm also working on making shampoo, which is getting increasingly expensive.

Conclusion. Many people would read the above and no doubt find fault with some of my choices, but for me I am quite happy to be continuously reducing my consumption footprint. Many others will no doubt think that this is too severe and that I should 'live a little'. The thing is, I live more than a little, I actually consider that I live a lot without attending expensive concerts or sporting events or going on costly trips to holiday resorts. Instead of spending money unnecessarily we spend it on things that we consider of much greater value - including holidays.

The amount of money we actually spend every month is far below what is considered the poverty level in Denmark (you are officially 'poor' if you have less than 8,450kr in your pocket every month after tax – that's about USD 1,450) and yet we count ourselves as amongst the richest 1% on a global scale – something to bear in mind when assessing how 'monastic' one might consider oneself to be.

*** Update - in response to several comments people have posted about the above on other websites I should probably clarify that I DON'T regard scavenging as a way of living in a post industrial future. I should probably have stated that it can only be useful when there is a surfeit of 'waste' generated by a consumer system in overdrive and that by taking what's there for free out of the waste stream you can spend your hard earned on more useful things like books and tools and insulation. Neither do I dress in rags and feed my children swill from a bucket. Sometimes things can get exaggerated a little ...***

Peak n'Oil Band Number #8

Led Zeppelin

An easy choice for this week. In the realm of rock anthems about consumerism as a substitute for something more meaningful Stairway to Heaven can't be beaten. There are probably plenty of other Zeppelin tracks that address meaningful peak oil realted subjects too, but the only one can think of right now is When the Levee Breaks.