Living Lightly: The Drop Box

I’m not holding my breath for technofixes to “solve” energy decline. But I am counting on peoples’ cooperation, resourcefulness and ingenuity. Here’s one example:

We live about six miles from town. We usually go to town just once a week, both to conserve on gasoline and our time. Of course that means doing a week’s worth of errands on one day (21 is the record so far, but then, who’s counting?), not to mention arranging our stops for the most direct route.

That handles most of it, but some errands aren’t that simple — like the person we need to get something from who only comes to town Thursday evenings. So . . .

We’ve put a box on a friend’s front porch with our name on it. It’s our “drop box.” People can drop things off for us, and we can leave things for others to pick up. It’s in a safe location, and we haven’t missed anything yet. (Occasionally our friend will bring things in and put them back out for our “in-town” day).

Our drop box has been a transfer station for fresh local eggs and their empty cartons, used bubblewrap envelopes (we mail our DVDs in reused packaging), CDs, books, local grass-fed beef(!), flea market giveaways and more (okay, on occasion it does overflow the box). It saves us from having to meet somebody at a specific time and place — freeing them and us to flow with our own schedules and conserve energy at the same time.

One small expression of conservation and cooperation.