If there’s anything that the current pandemic has proven, it’s that most of us don’t know how to sustain ourselves without technology or heavy environmental impact. According to AP News, over seventy-eight percent of Americans they polled didn’t have enough food and water resources set aside when quarantine first hit. Worse, much of our emergency planning relies on the use of single-use plastics like bottled water.
As climate change causes ever greater weather catastrophes, self-sustainable living becomes ever more important. Here are three ways that you can start sustaining yourself and break away from your reliance on the current grid.
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1. Harness Natural Power
Your first step to self-sustainable living is to break away from the fossil fuel-based power grid. If you want to start homesteading and live away from our exploitative capitalist house of cards, you’ll need to harness nature’s power.
A solar generator is one of the best ways to start breaking your dependence on the grid. Once your panels are paid off, you’ll be able to produce your own electricity for free, no matter what happens in the outside world.
2. Learn to Grow Your Own Food
Standard grocery stores use an abhorrent amount of plastic to keep their food preserved and prepared. One of the best tips for self-sustainability is to learn to grow your own food. Depending on your location, you may have a meager first few harvests. You’ll need to research what foods grow well in your area, and ensure that you have foodstuffs for all seasons.
This means that you won’t be able to eat off-season foods. So, if you have a craving for strawberries in Winter, too bad.
Eating seasonal foods that you grow yourself will help you not only let you become more self-sustainable but help you feel connected to the land and what you produce. It’s a fulfilling prospect!
3. Embrace Getting By With Less
Frugality is crucial to self-sufficient living. If you want to reduce your environmental impact, you’ll need to find the places where waste hides in your life and purge it. You can’t disconnect from the grid with debts tying you to it, so focus on getting rid of that first.
Once your debts are squared away, look at where you’re spending excess money. If you intend to live in self-sustainable housing away from the normal grid, chances are, you won’t get internet, phone, or TV service without paying through the nose for it. It’s up to you which of these luxuries you feel you can do without.
Self-Sustainable Living Saves Our Planet’s Future
It’s clear to anyone with eyes that our current way of living is unsustainable, both for us and the planet. Self-sustainable living is the only way to not only save the earth but save ourselves from any coming storms. By finding greener ways to produce food and energy, we can reduce our environmental impact and move towards self-sufficiency.
If you found these self-sufficient living tips helpful and would like to find more ways you can help yourself and the environment, check out our blog for more articles like this one!
