I feel like I always think of solar punk as a macro thing where a lot has to change but there are still smaller wins we can implement, what have you been doing?
@Capitanmaroon we replaced our front lawn with raised garden beds a few years ago. Do we grow a lot? No. Are we especially good at gardening? Gosh no. But tonight I went outside, picked a cucumber and a handful of tomatoes, and really enjoyed my dinner. Planning on setting up a little table soon so we can give away any tomatoes beyond what we can use.
Boycotting big business/unethical anti competitive practices. Businesses that lobby or have lobbied (aka legal bribery) for Republican officials or AIPAC democrats.
For me I admit not as much as I’d like.
I was unable to get solar panels for my house, due to the city’s rulings. My house being a dome lacks a traditional roof for solar panels, and the city has a lot of strict rulings against solar panels not on roofs, mostly because the city council hates solar energy. Of course, I have small solar panels with power stations in the yard.
The house also is specifically one that is efficient for such purposes, and we practice dressing it up during the year. Currently we have blackout curtains over the windows that get hotter during the day-time barring the south-facing in my office, where I simply close that door. We also have curtains over hallways. While we have to use a rolling air conditioner due to the house’s setup, we focus on only cooling the room that we are in or sleep in during the day-time, and during the night even if it is still 70s to 80s outside, we do what we can do to cool the rest of the house.
I have my own garden I grow vegetables and herbs in, as well as having an indoor garden in a south-facing window with a trellis shelf I built. I am able to grow plants year round. I pickle, dehydrate, and similar methods for everything I grow for the purposes of usage throughout the year, including using the brine from pickling for recipes. Also we make stuff during the night-time and put it to cool, making it able to be eaten several meals instead of every meal-time turning on a stove and cooking.
My spouse and I both have knowledge on repair, both around the house but also clothing, adding our own bits of charm when needed. I also have experience with repairing my bicycle as well as repairing my car, having been a mechanic in the past.
To add about the dressing house up or down,
During the last winter even when it was snowing and in the single-digits outside, we didn’t have to turn on the heating for the house using the boiler. By dressing the house up, and ourselves dressing up a bit, the house was plenty warm and comfortable.
I’m thinking of buying the slate truck and kitting it out with solar panels and insulation. Rent rises faster than my income, and at some point it’s gonna catch up. If I can park on the edges of town then just scooter between locations, life might actually become financially sustainable.
Buying secondhand over new. I love thrifting so that’s a bonus for me! Also using what I have, repairing what I can, or just going without something versus buying something in the first place.
Eating less meat, and prioritizing locally grown veg when possible.
Taking public transit, walking, or biking everywhere. If going long distance, I try to take ground transportation (trains, buses) over flying.
Reducing energy use eg turning off lights when I’m not in the room. You’d be surprised how many people still don’t do that, haha!
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Moving my technological dependencies from big tech companies to self-hosted, open source solutions, running Linux on my machines etc.
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Gardening on my balcony. I am growing tomatoes, broad beans, peppers (chilis, bell) and an assortment of salads and herbs. I am mostly self-sufficient on herbs, during growing season I am fully self-sufficient on salads. Pretty far from it on tomatoes and peppers, and especially on beans as they are not fruiting :(
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In general getting more in touch with local flora. I’ve been photographing flowering plants in my neighborhood lately and identifying them, trying to learn what grows around here. Goal is to be quite well-versed in local flora, including what is edible (and how to use it) and not
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Contributing to OpenStreetMap, both in my neighborhood and also through tasks.hotosm.org where I help trace missing buildings in disaster-struck places for first-responders to use (and in preparation for possible disasters in the future). This kind of collaborative project I find to be very solarpunky.
Living in a rented apartment, there is only so much I can make changes here. There was an initiative to install solar panels, but it was voted down for some reason - not being an owner, I am not involved in those discussions. Dream is to find a small house outside the city to expand my garden and to become as off-grid as possible.
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I’ve put solar panels everywhere.
On my house, on my tent, even on my hat.
Nothing beats getting free energy from the sun. Found some cheap solar power banks that I repurpose for all kinds of things.
- I’ve been vegan for 5 years and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.
- I only buying second-hand clothing. This is a recent change.
- I mostly stopped shopping online, except for specific items like my injection supplies.
- Using my local library!
- I crochet clothing and items for gifts.
Does it count if I already did it? Could say being car free, I suppose I am by choice now.
Besides gardening? I built a low-power, right-sized server out of an ancient phone. It draws around a watt of power, less when idle.
Any DIY links that you have found are useful for this (before I start re’searching’. )
What are you using it for?
Offsite monitoring. It runs Prometheus, Grafana, etc, and watches the rest of my selfhostables. Sends me alerts when stuff goes down.
Lately, I’ve been teaching people how to repair their clothing! At least one guy has come to the conclusion that hand sewing is actually punk af, because knowing how to fix your shit is Sticking It To The Man.
‘Thread Repair’ is definitely less grandma-esque than ‘sewing’ or ‘needle and stitch’.
Some youtuber somewhere is probably recording an introduction,
‘Welcome to my thread repair lab. This is where we pull, push, and stretch fabric to the limit…’
It writes itself! Theres a whole youtube channel in this!
The need to de-centre women from traditionally female technologies, crafts and occupations in order to appeal and cater to men’s interests, is kinda upsetting though.
Yeah, interesting for me that you picked up the masculinity still.
In that comment I actually considered that because I had written something like ‘inject masculinity’ into it. But as I wrote, I thought its not just young men, but women as well, much like yourself. So I tried to de-masculine it and make it about dropping the old person connotations.
I suppose I’s not very successful in that. I think its the faux quote at the end that just reads so much like every male teenfluencer ever. 😆
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I believe that’s actually a modern perception and textiles were originally a male dominated field.
Yeah, fuck all the female dominated histories of all the various textile cultures around the world, someone on the internet told me it was men who probably did it first, and women obviously just copied them! So if men want to get into textiles again now they have every right to push out any reminder of women ever being involved!
Just to be clear, the above paragraph is sarcasm. Exasperated but unsurprised, sarcasm.
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On the other hand, the SciShow episode about knitting was so upsettingly wrong that Hank Green took it down, so I’m not particularly inclined to trust him on this topic. He angered the entire fiber art community by talking about how nobody understood knitting until scientists looked at it, which is actually pretty sexist.
@faythofdragons @Capitanmaroon
Knowing how to fix your stuff should be something people focus on way more than we do these days.
I’m in no way proficient at all, but I made sure to know how to:
- hand stitch fallen buttons
- hand stitch rips in jeans, etc, so they at least stop growing :D
- operate a (foot powered)sewing machine (last thing I “fixed” was a sleeping bag whose lining was ripping and the fluff inside was all loose. Ugly, but functional again. Punk!)
- knit (both with needles, and those knitting looms. Don’t ask me to make anything other than scarfs/hats :D)I also love the “analog” sewing machine we bought from an old couple and that I brought with us when moving hundreds of km away. We don’t use it much, but even the machine itself is a work of art!
As someone else said: “knitting is manly as fuck. It’s like welding, but for your clothes”
@faythofdragons @Capitanmaroon
Good for them for realizing the truth, because It *IS* punk af.
And also awesome.@faythofdragons @Capitanmaroon plus you can sew on punk patches 🤔
I’ve been lucky enough to be able to get a rooftop solar set up and battery for my house. I absolutely love it. We’ve barely used the grid since it’s gone up, only our electric shower draws too much for the inverter/ battery to provide it all, everything else runs off solar. It’s been especially good in the UK recently with the weather because it means I can run my (also recently purchased) portable aircon without feeling guilty. Makes me feel happy every time the sun is shining.
I keep thinking about getting a ground rod installed so I can run totally off grid.
We’re trying to eat less meat and having at least a couple meals per week with veggies or fish as the main. We’ve reduced how much landfill waste we produce and are recycling more.
I’m also from the UK. Could I ask for a recommendation and price range for your panels? I love the idea of it and know the upfront costs are high but haven’t actually looked into it.
° Eating plant-based & living vegan
° Going car-free while using an e-bike
° Reducing consumption habits while lowering waste production & plastic use
° Long-term goal of owning land & building off-grid, renewables-powered tiny home ♡
A lot of our life has been trending solarpunk for decades; we just finished processing the early crop of cooking apples, from two trees, and gave away the surplus, for instance.
But notably utopian design stuff: we’re building a bathroom with a composting toilet and greywater drainage.
Heating in the bathroom will be by on-demand infrared panel, and the small multipurpose building with the bathroom is getting a heat pump. Construction is mostly new materials but we did manage to reuse a lot of salvage.
I bought a portable solar panel and used it for like 2 days, before I stopped due to theft risk. Might start again, once we have the new camera around.
