side effects of living off-grid
WHY NOT, IT'S FREE?
Imagine you are at your favorite restaurant. You are allowed to order whatever you want, and at the end of the meal whatever you order will be paid for by a random stranger. You don’t see that person, know nothing about them. It’s not hard to imagine you might order an appetizer when ordinarily you skip that course, ordering a few extra drinks and opting for dessert, even though you aren’t sure you can finish the food you’ve already ordered. It’s easy to imagine how you could quickly run up a giant tab and skip away satisfied at the end of the night without having spent a cent.
Now, imagine that same scenario, except the person on the hook for the bill at the end of the night is someone you are close to. Perhaps you know they are in debt, or just lost their job. Instead, you might order more carefully or maybe even skip the meal altogether to spare them the burden. I believe the same scenario can be applied to sustainability and conservation. It’s so easy to leave a light switch on or leave the faucet running unnecessarily when the impacts of our actions are hidden from us.
For instance, if you were to turn on the faucet one morning, and no water came out, you would call a plumber because you have a problem with your faucet. If while at the grocer's you see an empty shelf where your favorite food usually is, you would check back later because clearly someone has neglected to restock it. Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that no water was coming from the faucet because there is no water, or that the shelf in the grocers is empty and will remain empty for the foreseeable future.
THIS IS WHAT I LIKE TO CALL THE ILLUSION OF INFINITY. BECAUSE OUR NEEDS (E.G. WATER, POWER, FOOD ETC.) ARE DELIVERED TO US IN A WAY THAT SHIELDS US FROM THEIR DEPLETION, THEY FEEL INFINITE.
THINK OUTSIDE THE GRID
Living in a tiny off-grid home on wheels, you have a water tank, you have a battery bank. They have a maximum capacity. You fill them up, and you use them up in an endless cycle. Becoming intimately acquainted with the finiteness of your resources fundamentally changes how you use them. Additionally, because it requires your direct effort to refill those resources they feel that much more precious. Along with that the resource of space. You notice how much space all that unnecessary food packaging takes up when you have a small refrigerator. You aren’t forced to ask yourself will this giant plastic container of spinach fit in my fridge?
Being off-grid for any significant portion of time, the deceptive simplicity of the grid takes on an almost mystical quality in comparison to the sometimes frantic balancing act that is managing resources off-grid. Not watching anxiously as the capacity of your battery ticks down with every device you plug in, the endless flow of faucet water, sticking the trash on the corner and it being taken away seems almost like a magic act. But now I know better. I know that every drop of water comes from someplace, every watt of energy takes resources to generate, every piece of trash winds up in a landfill, or in the ocean.
I believe we could all benefit from living off-grid for a few months. If nothing else it would make us so much more appreciative of the resources that we have at our fingertips, and the price that is paid for them. When we get to know where our resources come from and the limits we stretch them to, it can only benefit the choices we make regarding preserving them.