It took a while for me to get used to making sustainable decisions while never being parked in one place for more than a week at most. But these decisions are important for me and so I have continued to strive to find ways to implement an eco-friendly living into a small budget, r.v lifestyle.
Some steps that I have taken so far is not taking a vehicle along with us. Though our r.v does not take bio-fuel, I’d say that we ride our bikes more than anything so far during our travels. Keeping our r.v in one spot, we travel by foot and by bike 80 percent of the time.
Not taking a vehicle to tow behind us was a tough decision, but it has already paid off and I thoroughly enjoy walking and riding my bike places. Everything is at walking distance, but if I had a vehicle I would take advantage of it, though it is not needed. This decision has saved us gas, by not caring the extra wait, it has spared Ricky the extra worry and also spared the atmosphere of the extra harmful fuems.
Some other simple decisions I have made is buying compostable Garbage bags, though they are a little more expensive, it is far worth it. For any of you who do not know, plastic is not compostable and one of the worst things for our environment. Because of this we refuse plastic bags in grocery stores at all cost, and bring reusable bags for everything we need to carry. In Oregon, some stores give you a discount for using reusable bags as well.
Recycling is another big decision, it takes a moment to get used to not having your own garbage and recycle bin right outside your home, but it is worth finding other solutions. We have two small bins where we put our recycles, we hide them away from our eyes view so the house does not seem cluttered.
For those of you who do not already know, for the most part we have been boondocking, which means not paying for r.v parks, but rather parking in National Forests, parking lots and anywhere where we can overnight park at. This can make it hard sometimes to find garbage bins that we wont get in trouble for putting our garbage in.
Recycling is free to all cities, Oregon especially made finding recycling areas easy to find. So many of the things we use are recyclable and it makes a difference to take the extra second to clean your recyclables. We have found we can make most of our waste recyclable and therefore free.
When not being at an rv park, it can be hard to keep our water tanks full of water, currently they are empty. This can save us money on gas because the rv weighs less, but it is very important to stay hydrated in the California heat.
We have a few one gallon plastic bottles that we refill just about everyday. Refilling these bottles instead of continuing to buy more saves us lots of money as well as sparing the environment the extra plastic.
Decisions like these are very important to me, as they should be for anyone trying to live in an eco-friendly way. Our experience can be a prime example that no matter the situation, it is possible to decrease our carbon imprint as much as we can. It’s all about putting intention into your decisions.
