Saturday, February 21, 2009

Riot for Austerity - where we are at

Got a few bills recently so thought it would be good to do a proper tally of how we are doing in all the Riot for Austerity categories:

Electricity:
Not doing as well as last year. A number of factors have contributed to this
1. my health has not been great for the last 3 months. Getting better now but because of this we've had our electric heat in our bedroom turned up, and have been watching a lot of tv.
2. we did massive amounts of canning in the fall.
3. seems like it was colder than last year (certainly the cold weather seemed to start earlier this year).

Here's our most recent bill:



This gives us an average of 5.5kWh/day and keeps us at 17% of average (for now) for the last year.


Water:
Still doing well with water. Got another credit on our most recent bill.

Here it is:


This puts us at an average of 400L per day for the last year. Divided by the 4 people in the house, that is 100L per person per day or 30% of average.



Garbage:

Last week our totals were as follows:
Garbage: 3lbs
Compost: 4lbs
Recycling: 6lbs (was plastic and glass)

This puts us at 32% of average for the last 5 weeks (28%+62%+12%+30%+28%)/5


Heating:
We have used 1755 m3 of natural gas for the whole house for the last 8 months (we had a new meter installed in June so it's easiest for us to start from there - before that most of our bills were estimates). Divided in half that's 877.5m3 for each apartment. This puts us at 46% of average. Also I read somewhere recently that the average yearly consumption of natural gas for heating for Ontario is actually in the 4,000 m3 range (much higher than the national average I'm working with of 2,871 m3


Gasoline:
This is an estimate but here goes:

12 trips to work in the car during the bus strike: 192km
9 trips to work on the bus (yay!): 144km
1 trip to see family: 50km (divided this in half because hubby was with me)
1 trip to Toronto: 500km (divided this in half because hubby was with me)
random trips in the car: 200km

This puts me at 58.6L of gasoline so far this year or 35% of average.



Consumer Goods:

Still doing well with this.

So far this month I have bought:
  1. tapestry needles (new): $2

  2. 1 urban forest soap: $5

Total spent on consumer goods in the last 51 days=$111.78
This puts me at 6% of average (for now - big expenses still to come).


Food:
Have been totally sucking in the food category. Due to the health issues I lost a lot of weight (didn't really have much to lose in the first place). As a result I dropped all my rules and allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted (had to because I really didn't want to eat anything). Meant I ate a lot of non-local and overly packaged food. But I am on the mend. Appetite is back and so is my interest in cooking so I'm back on the local, homemade food wagon.
But all that to say my averages for food for the last 3 months have probably looked like this:
Local: 10%
Processed: 60%
Non-local: 30%

4 comments:

Irma said...

Delurking (well, can I really be a lurker when I only found your blog a few days ago??) to tell you how much I am enjoying your writing. Yours is among the first Canadian sustainability blogs I have come across, so nice to read about a fellow Canadian!

Cheers from NB.

Anonymous said...

Glad to see your letting your health be a priority and even happier to see you on the mend.

Rachel said...

Hi Irma! Thanks very much. Glad you found your way here. There are lots of us Canadians out there who are interested in sustainability. If you haven't been to them already, you should check out:
Unstuffed (http://unstuff.blogspot.com/),
Pondering the Myriad Things (http://myriadthings.blogspot.com/), Hit Pay Dirt (http://hitpaydirt.wordpress.com/) and Green as a Thistle (http://greenasathistle.com/)

Rachel said...

L,
I wouldn't be where I am without the help of great friends. :-)