Does RV Living Help The Environment?
Mari
On Sunday, Ty and I drove close to 400 miles from Las Vegas to Lemon Cove, near Sequoia National Park in California in our giant 34’ motorhome, with our Honda CR-V in tow.
At a mere 8 miles to the gallon, we’re definitely consuming more gas, oil, and other resources to move from A to B.
However, we no longer live in our 2,600 square feet 3 bed/4 bath home on the beach in San Diego. Are we, then, consuming fewer resources?
Today is Blog Action Day, and I’m proud to be a part of the action.
I often ponder just how much of a footprint I’m making on the environment living a downsized life vs. upsized life.
I know we’re consuming less water overall with the way our whole toilet, sink, and shower system works. I’m fairly sure we do laundry less often (probably ‘cuz it’s such a hassle to do as I talked about here).
And, we always do our best to stay clear of highly packaged foods. Though, I confess, we seem to eat out a little more often.
Then there’s the energy we ourselves put out. Do you believe everything is inextricably connected? A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and it affects the temperature in the Amazon.
By the same token, the energy we put out into the Universe affects everything. Fighting, wars, discord, and arguments pollute the environment – would you agree?
Ty and I do our best to maintain peace and harmony between us. But, sometimes mobile living causes us undue stress and we get short-tempered with each other. (Okay, that might be an understatement. LOL).
Fortunately, though, we tend to quickly come back to center and focus on sharing joy and positive energy between ourselves and others along our path.
“Live simply, that others may simply live.”
Every little helps. How do you tread lighter on the planet?
Posted on: Monday, October 15, 2007 at 11:19 am 
Climate, Dream Lifestyle, Mari's Musings, Motorhome Tips, Report from the Road, Simplifying Life, Travel Tips, Where We Are. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
[...] and talks about something I was thinking about as soon as I started reading their blog…the environmental impact of living in an RV. It brings up some interesting stuff. You can read my post for Blog Action Day [...]
November 12th, 2007 at 6:20 pmHey Mari,
You’re singing our song!
When my husband and I ‘found’ our little piece of paradise (a 500 sq ft cottage on the southeastern shore of Lake Huron) we were elated because we love the place and stoked because the move meant a huge reduction in our footprint in one fell swoop.
We went from a 2600 sq ft suburban home with all the urban bells and whistles to cottage life. Today we have:
- no A/C (it’s lake breezes, the odd fan or nothing - amazing how you acclimatize!)
- no central heat (a propane fireplace heats the whole place in a snap when we need heat - and clothing layers do a great job of reducing our usage)
- no dishwasher (and use biodegradable cleaning products)
- no washer/dryer (like you, we wash clothes less often cause it’s such a pain - and when we do laundry we’re using high efficiency/big load machines, and spring/summer/fall we hand our clothes to dry).
Because we work from home - and because we love being home - we drive way less, eat out less, eat more local (and organic) foods (love our farmer’s market) and eat less processed stuff.
Too boot, we have a low flow shower and a new composting toilette (an adjustment we feel good about).
But when we moved we made one purchase that’s always had me a bit torn: we traded in our Toyota Corolla and bought a Nissan Pathfinder to make winter driving out here safer and whatever commuting we did do less claustraphobic. Love the SUV but the emissions have always bugged me, and I’ve often wished for a size/capacity equal option that didn’t produce the same polution.
I was thrilled to see Toyota’s coming out with a Fuel-cell car next year (its only a matter of time till there’s the perfect SUV for us!), and I’m looking for any feedback on converting a combustion engine to a fuel-cell hybrid from anyone willing to share…
OH, and the occassional ‘grrr’ between Randy and I is made a lot easier when there’s the ever present soundtrack of surf and birdsong soothing things over: it’s hard to stay crunchy when you live in paradise. Not impossible but hard…:)
Lissa
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:37 am