The ecofrugal challenge I'm not taking

As regular readers know, I love a good challenge. I don't mean just something that's difficult to do, but a Challenge, something you basically dare yourself to do for a week or a month or whatever. In the 12-plus years I've been writing this blog, I've challenged myself to follow WWII rationing rules, eat on a food-stamp budget, and live on the minimum wage. I completed roughly the first half of the 52-week savings challenge before realizing that most of the weekly challenges weren't saving us any money, and that I had better things to write about. I've designed my own challenges as well, including two local shopping challenges (finding a new outfit locally and finding a different bargain in town every day) and decorating an entire apartment with a $1,000 budget at IKEA.

So in theory, the Take The JUMP challenge should be right up my alley. Because this challenge is all about ecofrugality: "Less Stuff, More Joy." It comprises a set of six specific steps you can take to "protect our earth and live with joy" — exactly what I've always said ecofrugality is all about. You can challenge yourself to take these steps for 1, 3, or 6 months. 

The six steps are:

1. End Clutter: Keep electronic products for at least seven years. Actually, the description on this one is a bit inconsistent; it says seven years in the headline, but within the text it says to "keep electronic products for 5-7 years - their full optimum lifetime." And in the video, it says, to keep them until they are "past repair, and aim to keep all electronics for at least seven years."
2. Travel Fresh: Get rid of private vehicles. Entirely. Simply switching to an electric vehicle isn't enough, the authors argue, because a big part of their carbon footprint comes from their manufacture, and because even EVs contribute to congestion and "cause pollution from tyres and brakes." (As you can see from the spelling of "tires," this challenge originates in the UK.)
   
3. Eat Green: Move to a plant-based diet. Eat everything you buy. Eat healthy portions. The full description of this one concedes that not everyone is willing to go full vegan, and that replacing "most" of the meat and dairy you consume is good enough.
   
4. Dress Retro: Only buy three items of clothing a year. Once again, the full description clarifies that this is not as extreme as it sounds. They're really recommending that you get most of your clothing secondhand and buy no more than three new garments per year.
5. Holiday Local: Keep short haul flights to one every three years. (Note the use of the British "holiday" in place of the American "vacation.") Again, the full text provides further clarification: you can take a short-haul flight (less than 1500 kilometers, or 932 miles) once every three-years, and/or a long-haul flight every eight.
6. Change the System: Make at least one life shift to nudge the system. This last step acknowledges that individuals shouldn't be expected to fix the environment by themselves. Thus, the most important changes are ones that push governments and big businesses in the right direction. Examples include switching to a green power provider, making your home more energy-efficient, moving to a green bank or investment firm, and writing to your political representatives (MPs for them, Congresspersons for us).

Now, in principle, I approve of all of these. In fact, I already do most of them. I did recently replace my first smartphone after a mere four years, but only because it was actually past repair (the battery just wouldn't hold a charge, and I'd already tried replacing it), and my last two computers each lasted ten. We've already given up nearly all meat and dairy, and our food waste is negligible. (You can argue about whether our portion sizes are healthy, but they're not ludicrous.) We currently buy most of our clothes secondhand, and while we don't limit ourselves to three new garments a year, we probably could if we had to. The last time I flew anywhere was for my grandmother's funeral in Florida over ten years ago. We're already using green power at home, and I not only write to my Congresspeople, I call them every month to push for climate-friendly legislation.

And yet, as you've no doubt deduced from the title of this post, I haven't pledged to Take The JUMP, and I don't intend to. The sticking point is #2: giving up the car.

It's not that I love driving. I dislike it, in fact. When I lived in Princeton, I routinely took the Dinky (the shuttle train from Princeton to Princeton Junction) to work, even though it was much more expensive than driving. I generally walk to doctor's appointments in New Brunswick, over two miles each way. And though Brian doesn't mind driving as much as I do, he still prefers to take his bike when possible.

But where we live, a car is often the only practical way to get around. Maybe in the UK, it really is true that "Depending on where you live, taking the train, tram or bus usually doesn’t take much longer than driving"; here, it emphatically does take much longer. And I mean, MUCH longer.

For instance, to get to Princeton for an 8pm dance practice on Thursday, Brian and I would have to leave the house at 6:40, walk a couple of blocks to the bus stop, catch a bus to New Brunswick, walk another couple of blocks to the train station, take the train to Princeton Junction, transfer to the Dinky, and arrive in Princeton at 7:48pm. And when practice ended at 9:30, we'd have to reverse all those steps to get home, except that the bus would no longer be running. We'd have to walk a mile and a half from the train station to get home, arriving around 11pm. That's over two and a half hours of travel for an hour and a half of practice, as opposed to a car trip of roughly half an hour each way.

And mind you, this would only work in summertime, when we practice in an outdoor location right near the Dinky station. In winter, we practice at a church at the north end of town. To get there, we'd have to leave home by 6:15 and take a different bus into New Brunswick, then transfer to another bus that would get us to the middle of Princeton, and walk a mile north to the church. But by the time we left practice at 9:30, the buses would no longer be running, and neither would the Dinky. There would be literally no way for us to get home short of calling an Uber to take us to Princeton Junction. Which means we would still be relying on car transportation — just in someone else's car, at considerably more expense.

And that's only one of the places we go regularly. Grocery shopping? Well, we'd probably have to confine ourselves to stores within walking distance of home, which would mean going without some foods and spending more on others. All other shopping? Guess we'd have to buy most things online. Concerts at the Troubadour in Morristown? Once again, we could only make the trip in one direction before the trains stopped running, so we'd just have to watch online. Visiting friends? We do have a couple of friends we could manage to reach by rail, but everyone else would have to come to us if they wanted to see us. Visiting Brian's parents in Indianapolis at Christmas? With both driving and flying off-limits, it would take over 26 hours each way by rail and bus. And visiting my parents in Hopewell, a mere 45 minutes away by car, would become literally impossible, because there is not one single bus or train that stops anywhere within walking distance of their house.

The creators of The JUMP acknowledge that for people who are disabled or "live in remote areas," a car may indeed be a necessity. But Highland Park is not, by any reasonable definition, a "remote area." It's smack dab in the middle of the most densely populated state in the country. A major highway runs within a mile of our house, as the crow files. We're within walking distance of two rail stations, and within two blocks of the nearest bus stop. In short, we are much better off as far as transit options go than the majority of Americans. And still, we can't go everywhere we need to without a private vehicle.

The simple fact is, the US as a whole is a car-dependent society. That is not my fault nor my responsibility to fix. The reason America is dependent on cars is not that there are too many people like me selfishly refusing to give up their private vehicles; it's because our entire society is built around the automobile. Convincing Americans to give up their cars will not make their lives more joyful; it will make them more stressful, because they'll have to spend so many of their hours on buses and trains — or figuring out which buses and trains can get them from one place to another — and so much less time doing things that actually bring them joy.

If the authors of The JUMP want to create a version of it that works for Americans, they need to change step 2. If they're not willing to get rid of it altogether, perhaps they could ditch most of the text and focus on this one little paragraph at the very end:

If you do need to have a car then try to keep it for a long time rather than swapping it out for a new model (and when you do swap it, choose electric!). Cars can last more than 20 years, and the shell and interior of a car can last even longer if well cared for. But if you replace it with a new one every 3 years you’re generating 5 or 6 times the amount of emissions involved in making these cars over that period. 

When and if there's a "JUMP for Americans" that doesn't require me to be car-free in a society built around cars, I'll take the challenge happily. Until then, I just can't. It would be making a promise I know I can't keep.