Motivations: Article on Sustainable Couch about eco-nomadism

I recently wrote an article about eco-nomadism for Sustainable Couch. 

It appeared in their newsletter today, so here it is :)

It's been almost a year now since I started travelling. Before that I worked in an organic store with nice co-workers, I had a lovely girlfriend and I lived in a beautiful house with some friends. I had everything to be happy, yet it didn't feel right for me. I can't really tell why, but I just HAD to travel. So I did. I left everything that I had behind to discover a little bit of a world unknown to me. My original plans where to travel for six months and then go back to work but it didn't really turn out the way I planned everything and I'm really happy about that. First I was a tourist, then I became a traveller and now I'm becoming a nomad. What the difference is? For a tourist the destination of their travels is important. For a traveller the road towards their destination becomes equally important and enjoyable. Finally, for a nomad the road becomes the destination and so it becomes one, it becomes their home. The road is becoming my home and I absolutely love every step I take on it.

The road becomes your home, so it doesn’t matter which way you go. :)

That's why I recently started the eco-nomad project, "eco" standing for "ecological". Themes like ecology and sustainability are always close to my heart and I had the feeling that it would be a good idea to consciously fuse these themes with the nomadic lifestyle I have now. For me eco-nomadism means to travel from place to place with the intention of reducing your own ecological footprint as well as those of others. It's certainly in line with the goals of Sustainable Couch, but viewed from a different perspective. Let me explain a bit more in depth what this project is about.

A challenging situation

One of the biggest challenges we have in our Western society is the lack of time and energy to put into ecological projects. This is mainly because we live a sedentary, expensive lifestyle in which we have to work full time so we can pay off all of our costs (housing, heating, electricity, food, etc.). With a full time job you put most of your time and energy in this job and thus are unable to do much more after working hours. Sadly enough most full time jobs are, at the moment, unecological, which means we, as a society are putting most of our time and energy in unecological work. Basically, by doing this, we are destroying nature, others and eventually ourselves. Our work nowadays is mostly based on economical performance, not on ecological performance. It is one of the main causes of our socio-ecological destructive behavior. This could be solved if we could all switch to ecological, green jobs. Sadly enough this isn't an option, because these don't yet exist at a large enough scale. We can not make a shift, because there isn't anything to shift to. Quitting our job isn't an option either because we have all our costs to pay!

We are in a challenging situation where we are destroying our precious planet Earth, yet are unable to invest time and energy to reverse this situation. We are in dire need of green, ecological work. We can no longer wait for politicians and the business world to change their priorities and switch from an economical to an ecological perspective. Chances are it will be way too late when they do.

Yet I believe there is a creative option we can turn to. We can reduce this shortage in time and energy by introducing eco-nomads. Eco-nomads are people who consciously choose to not work full time and dedicate their life to ecological projects. By not having a full time job, you have the time and energy to do so. The main challenge with this lifestyle is having a reduced income to even having no income at all. You have to be thrifty and creative. This is where the sedentary, full time working people come in the picture, because they have the possibility to offer accommodation and even other stuff if needed. They become an eco-host. If there are enough people like this who can offer an accommodation, the eco-nomad can fall back on these eco-hosts and effectively invest a lot of time and energy in ecological projects without having to work a full time job to pay for all his or her costs. By fusing these two different lifestyles together you create a situation with numerous advantages. A diversity in lifestyles to save nature's diversity.

You don’t have to go far to find inspiration from other travellers.

This is ‘De Bereklauw’, a place I regularly visit when I’m in my home town.

Experiences so far

To go more into the practicality of it all, I'll give a few examples of how I experienced eco-nomadism so far and what good practices I ended up with:

When I travel I never take the plane and never drive a car myself (even if I would like to I can't, because I don't have a license). I mainly use public transport, go on foot or hitch hike to get to my destination. Recently I had to go to Milan from Belgium for a conference. I used Eurostop, which is a website on which you can find people who go to another country by car but still have some space in their car. It's not free like hitch hiking, you pay a part of the gas, but at least you're sure you'll get to a certain destination. For me the first stop was Lyon in France. What I really like about sharing a car with someone is that you get to know new people this way. For example, in this car to Lyon was a woman who has been working on her thesis for more than 18 years, could speak Gallo (she was from Bretagne), and has a blog with most of the best jazz clubs in the world on it. How awesome is that? And of course there's always the "What do you do?" question, which is the point where I take off talking about the projects I'm working on and, inevitably, ecology. ;) After this trip I took the nightbus to Milan. Not really comfortable I must say, but it did the job. This trip costed me only 70 euro in total!

A quote written on the wall in the kitchen of my hosts in Milano.

When it comes to food I compromise when I'm with a host. When I stay with someone who eats meat, I eat at least vegetarian. When I'm with vegetarians I eat vegan. When I cook it's always vegan and gluten free. In every case I try to reduce the ecological footprint of my host's diet, yet try to compromise so it doesn't become too difficult for them to adapt, unless they go to a point beyond veganism where I'm not even at. In that case I would adapt to their diet, but to this point that hasn't been the case.

It's a great way to exchange recipes and try new things. Yesterday I ate something with rosewater in it. An ingredient I've never used and never considered using, but I really liked it! The day before I suggested a dish with quinoa and my hosts really enjoyed it. When staying with someone I'm always prepared to give an explanation on how to reduce their ecological footprint and help them with achieving this if they want. If I don't know the answer on a question I'm prepared to look it up, so it also becomes something enriching for me.

Furthermore, When I stay with someone, the ecological footprint of my hosts is automatically reduced, because we share the same space and thus heat, saving energy this way. Not only energy is saved, but also time. When my hosts are having trouble getting things done because of their fulltime job I help them out. For example, at the moment I'm staying with a family that have a six year old boy, Titus. Instead of driving him to his grandmother so she can watch over him while his parents are out, he can just stay at home with me, which saves the time of driving him there and picking him up again. Besides that, it's a great opportunity to share in general, be it in knowledge or skills. I mean, I never really had the opportunity to watch over a kid and never was really eager to do this, so this is a whole new experience for me. I never thought I would absolutely love doing this. :)

Travelling is a great way to learn a lot of skills!

At the moment I chose hosts that are close to my home town because of the ecological projects I'm working on in that region. I'm still not up to the point where I can circulate through my hosts though, so regularly I stay at my grandmother's place for a couple of days. It's the fase I'm working on at the moment.

And then there's the financial issue. I was able to reduce my costs to about 150-200 euro a month by living this way. I don't have to pay rent and cooking vegan is actually very cheap once you get past the meat-replacement products. I do have to say that I'm a minimalist, I keep my possesions to a minimum, because I want them to fit in my backpack. I only buy what I really find necessary. Until now I've lived of my savings this way. Actually, the moment I'm writing this I just got back from a meeting where we agreed that I could work as a payed volunteer foran organisation. This would be the next fase I'll be working on: creating a break-even situation where I earn as much as I spent.

My experience so far tells me that this way of living works and can make a difference if other people start doing this. If I look at the time and energy I've invested so far in ecological projects, I can surely say I wouldn't be able of doing this if I would be working a full time job. I truly belief in eco-nomadism as one of the pieces to solve our challenging ecological puzzle. I believe that if only a small amount of our population would adapt to this lifestyle, it could make a substantial difference for our ecological well-being. It's a way of sharing that what we have in our rich Western society more efficiently among each other, so we can help nature and others.

Me on the left with my hosts at a gig, supporting a local band. ;)

Future plans?

For now my main goal is to write down the essentials of this lifestyle, so other people can easily adapt to it and do the same. I guess this article is a good start. As soon as I'm done with writing and lived this lifestyle long enough to be experienced in it, there's a possibility I'll become an eco-host, so I can help eco-nomads this way. Who knows what else I'll do in the future. My life has changed so much in the last year I can't even imagine where I'll be one year from now. So many options... But first things first.

It's been a wonderful experience so far and I really hope to engage other people with this project. Hopefully I'll encounter some eco-nomads in the future. :)

See you on the road!