Sustainability while Thru-Hiking. Beyond LNT

[Pedaling Fool]

Many holes in this "sustainability" crap being sold to us in the various forms of media. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=segU9...eature=related

Use basic common sense to reduce your impact; don't overthink it, like these crazies.

[garlic08]

Don't slackpack, either.

[quilteresq]

There's a short article about this in the final edition of "the Complete Walker." Instead of a Zip Stove, I'd probably opt for this: http://biolitestove.com/CampStove.html , and use the charger to charge a light instead of relying on a solar charger.Go for natural products like wool, silk, and cotton in your clothing choices but avoid jeans. Obviously the less processed the food the better. Avoid Snicker bars. Cheeses and jerkies are exceptions. You can sprout seeds. Filtered water vs. Boiled vs. Chemical treatment? I question which wins overall.Just a few thoughts.

Don't even quote anything about cotton clothing for hiking here. BAD idea, and while we know it, some casual reader might take it seriously. That said, I do wander my neighborhood in cotton.

[Papa D]

I try very hard to hike sustainably - one of the greatest things you can do is be a vegetarian (and I am) - you save so much water and fertilizer with this plan and do such good things for you body - if a fish jumps out of the creek, I confess, I will eat him though -- I re-use water bottles and peanut butter containers, I carry my own pack, hitch hike, reduce, reuse and recycle as much as I can ... one of the greatest things about long distance hiking is that you don't drive a car anywhere - this saves a ton of gas - very few people go 10,20,30 or more days without using an automobile like I do. Glad you are trying to do your part - don't take life too seriously though - things are serious but getting too worked up doesn't help - something I'm trying to learn. Best regards ......

Oh, and like Garlic says, don't slack-pack - I don't know how this caught-on - I wish someone important would come out and say, NO, this is not allowed - but they won't - i'm getting ready to get flamed on this.

[Lone Wolf]

slackpackin' is lazy BS. in the last 26 years and 16,000 plus miles i've walked on the AT, i slackpacked about 30 miles. never again.

[Rasty]

Most of your gear will be made in China by slave labor.

Child slave labor!

The children have smaller hand to do intricate work.

[sbhikes]

Don't be a vegetarian. Grains require the destruction of entire ecosystems and rivers. We could all be eating the bison on the prairie that were here originally. There were more of them than there are of cattle right now in the US. We could be scooping salmon out of the rivers if we hadn't diverted them for crops and hydro-electric power.

I make my own shoes. You can make sandals from Vibram soling sheets and leather straps. You can get the supplies at Luna Sandals. I have made my own regular shoes from scrap leather and Vibram soling sheets. If they break, I can stitch them back together and glue on new soles.

[Kookork]

Don't be a vegetarian. Grains require the destruction of entire ecosystems and rivers. We could all be eating the bison on the prairie that were here originally. There were more of them than there are of cattle right now in the US. We could be scooping salmon out of the rivers if we hadn't diverted them for crops and hydro-electric power.

I make my own shoes. You can make sandals from Vibram soling sheets and leather straps. You can get the supplies at Luna Sandals. I have made my own regular shoes from scrap leather and Vibram soling sheets. If they break, I can stitch them back together and glue on new soles.

What was that?

I was waiting for the whole post to be a joke till the end of the reading but it did not happen!!!!!

You start with the bold statement of "Don't be a vegetarian"? come on, have you heard HYOH?. It is a very polite and smooth phrase that expands to many aspects of life on and off trail.

do yo really believe that being vegetarian is more destructive to planet than being non vegetarian? I am just amazed with your post.

You make your own shoes? Good for you but keep in mind that we live in a society and shoemakers make their living out of me and you paying for our shoes so it is not that simple to say you are doing something good r bad by making your shoes.

I have a friend that is obsessed with being greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen and drives an electric car here in Ontario,Canada but guess what he does not produce electricity of his own. He charges his car by electricity that is produced mainly by gigantic fuel burning generators somewhere just out of his sight . Is he green?

[hikerboy57]

Don't even quote anything about cotton clothing for hiking here. BAD idea, and while we know it, some casual reader might take it seriously. That said, I do wander my neighborhood in cotton.

i wear cotton tshirts in the summer when its hot and dry, it helps cool my body a lot faster. i can always switch should the weather turn.just sayin.

[hikerboy57]

Don't be a vegetarian. Grains require the destruction of entire ecosystems and rivers. We could all be eating the bison on the prairie that were here originally. There were more of them than there are of cattle right now in the US. We could be scooping salmon out of the rivers if we hadn't diverted them for crops and hydro-electric power.

I make my own shoes. You can make sandals from Vibram soling sheets and leather straps. You can get the supplies at Luna Sandals. I have made my own regular shoes from scrap leather and Vibram soling sheets. If they break, I can stitch them back together and glue on new soles.

where dfid you get the tools to make your shoes, and just exactly where did the vibram come from?its close to impossible to maintain some sort of 100% pure independant self sustaining non environmentally damaging lifestyle.you can trace everything back to some footprint. the true concept of ecology is about balance, not about purity. Every volcano that erupts spews thousands of tons of acidic debris into the atmosphere(but its natural, right?).eventually balance is restored, without human intervention. the hope is that we as a species dont alter that balance too much.

[JAK]

Many holes in this "sustainability" crap being sold to us in the various forms of media. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=segU9...eature=related

Use basic common sense to reduce your impact; don't overthink it, like these crazies.

Agreed. People need to figure out for themselves what sustainability is, what is more sustainable, what is less sustainable, and what is worth sustaining. Politicians don't like to talk about sustainability, unless they are twisting it around into something more ambiguous that they can work with, like sustainable development.

Simple put, anything less than sustainability, is not sustainable.
We have to stop dragging our knuckles on these issues.


When it comes to most "stuff", if it isn't cost effective, it probably isn't sustainable.
The exception is fossil fuels, which tend to be too cheap, which is why we are in trouble.

[JAK]

Don't even quote anything about cotton clothing for hiking here. BAD idea, and while we know it, some casual reader might take it seriously. That said, I do wander my neighborhood in cotton.

I hike in cotton flannel boxers. If they get wet I dry them on my head. One cotton item is manageable, and hygenic.

[JAK]

I try very hard to hike sustainably - one of the greatest things you can do is be a vegetarian (and I am) - you save so much water and fertilizer with this plan and do such good things for you body - if a fish jumps out of the creek, I confess, I will eat him though -- I re-use water bottles and peanut butter containers, I carry my own pack, hitch hike, reduce, reuse and recycle as much as I can ... one of the greatest things about long distance hiking is that you don't drive a car anywhere - this saves a ton of gas - very few people go 10,20,30 or more days without using an automobile like I do. Glad you are trying to do your part - don't take life too seriously though - things are serious but getting too worked up doesn't help - something I'm trying to learn. Best regards ......

Oh, and like Garlic says, don't slack-pack - I don't know how this caught-on - I wish someone important would come out and say, NO, this is not allowed - but they won't - i'm getting ready to get flamed on this.

Good stuff.

[hikerboy57]

Agreed. People need to figure out for themselves what sustainability is, what is more sustainable, what is less sustainable, and what is worth sustaining. Politicians don't like to talk about sustainability, unless they are twisting it around into something more ambiguous that they can work with, like sustainable development.

Simple put, anything less than sustainability, is not sustainable.
We have to stop dragging our knuckles on these issues.


When it comes to most "stuff", if it isn't cost effective, it probably isn't sustainable.
The exception is fossil fuels, which tend to be too cheap, which is why we are in trouble.

fossil fuels are not as cheap as they seem. I just heard the other day on the news that wthout tax breaks and govt subsidies, gas would cost well over $13/gallon.big oil rules. this is what needs changing.but the alternatives are more expensive, and people are having a tough enough time making ends meet, that they will chosse the least costly alternative, usually with a clear consciense.

[garlic08]

I hike in cotton flannel boxers. If they get wet I dry them on my head....

We need a "coffee just shot out my nose" emoticon.

[JAK]

I think the problem is that sooner or later many of us are going to have to stop "making ends meet". ;-)


The St. Petersburg Paradox - Revisited

You are offered an opportunity to play a game. In this game a fair coin is tossed, and if it comes up heads you are given one american dollar and the coin is tossed again, and if it comes up heads you are given two american dollar and the coin is tossed again, and for every head that comes up your additional winnings keep doubled, until it comes up tails and the game is over but you still get to keep all the money so you can't lose. The value of the game in american dollar is infinite, since mathematically it doesn't converge. You only get to play once. The catch is, in order to play the game you have to be willing to burn some amount of fossil fuels.

The question is how much fossil fuels are you willing to burn in order to play, according to one of the following rules;
1. You have to buy the fossil fuels and then burn it all up for no purpose other than to play ?
2. You don't have to pay for the fossil fuels, but they still get burned for no other purpose ?
3. Finally, you don't have to pay, but you get to decide how the fossil fuels are put to use ?

Myself:
1. By rule#1, I figure I would be willing to buy and burn up about 1 tankful of gas, about 15 gallons.
2. By rule#2, since I wouldn't have to pay for it myself, maybe a tank of fuel oil, about 200 gallons.
3. By rule#3, I suppose I might be willing to burn it all up, but I don't think I would be able to figure out the best way to put it to use, or over what period of time it should be burned, so I suppose I wouldn't be very popular for doing so, especially if the damn coin came up tails right away, which would be just my luck. So I guess maybe I would only burn as much as I likely would myself anyway, for my own and my families use in my lifetime. No free gas for you guys, but of course I am a heartless greedy bastard ( but not a dictator lol ).

Maybe I should give it some thought though. Maybe I could be a benevolent dictator for a day or two, or a year.
Could be fun, even if at the end of the day I didn't even win any money. What harm could it do ???

I guess we all have to make choices, even if we don't always calculate all the odds.

[mkmangold]

Don't even quote anything about cotton clothing for hiking here. BAD idea, and while we know it, some casual reader might take it seriously. That said, I do wander my neighborhood in cotton.

Mainly it was a warning about jeans. At the time I wrote it, I was thinking that baseball caps made of cotton have less of an impact than caps made of say, tyvek, like one of mine. My underwear is cotton because polypro makes me sweat like nothing else. Some posters wear cotton t-shirts which probably have their place in the right conditions.

[Papa D]

I'm going to start this a little off topic, but I went to buy some saw blades for my table saw yesterday - I couldn't find what I needed at my local hardware it's called "Normal Hardware Store" and went to Lowes - the guy there wanted to show me a table saw - and what I got out of that is that most people (like this guy) think that what he was showing me was a "table saw" - they were like $598. I just shook my head and didn't say much. What I SAW was a piece of cheap chinese crap made of plastic and pot metal - the "big one" weighed like 60 pounds. They don't even sell "contractor saws" any more -- that guy wouldn't have ANY IDEA what he was looking at if he saw my cabinet saw made in McMinnville, Tennessee - it weighs a couple of thousand pounds and would have been in the $4,000 - $5,000 range new (in today's money) - it was built in the 1970s and it would slice those cheap Lowes saws in half for breakfast. This is why in my business, if I need something new, I buy from tool manufacturers like Festool -- www.festool.com/EN/Pages/index.aspx or Martin or Powermatic - see, most of you haven't even heard of these companies - that's because you EXCEPT that what Lowes, and Target, and Walmart, etc. sells acceptable items -- they are not -- they sell crap -- and most people have been totally snowed over a period of time to accept this standard -- now, on to sustainability:

I will NEVER have to replace my table saw in my LIFETIME - no more gas to move it, truck it somewhere, etc. -NEVER - same things with my other tools. Maybe, the most sustainable thing that BACKPACKERS can do is to INVEST in equipment made by small to medium companies that put quality FIRST and price no-where - it simply costs what it costs. You buy it with the intention of keeping it forever -when you purchase your next sleeping bag or rain jacket or tent or stove, think of things in this context -- OR -- just make things yourself home-made - like an alcohol or a wood burner stove, or a sleeping bag. It is this sort of thinking that leads you down the path toward sustainability. Support business models that are sustainable - businesses that make long-lasting products - people you can talk to on the phone and get an answer to a question - seek THESE people out. One clue is to find products made in Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the US - I have some chinese stuff because it's hard to avoid but TRY - stay out of Walmart and avoid REI (if alternatives exist for you).

By the way, I didn't buy the saw blades - waiting on Martindale to send me a box.

The cheap man (or woman) spends the most.
HYOH

[Tuckahoe]

I will NEVER have to replace my table saw in my LIFETIME - no more gas to move it, truck it somewhere, etc. -NEVER - same things with my other tools. Maybe, the most sustainable thing that BACKPACKERS can do is to INVEST in equipment made by small to medium companies that put quality FIRST and price no-where - it simply costs what it costs. You buy it with the intention of keeping it forever...

And here is something that I can agree with. Fair trade boots? What the hell are those? But well made boots that can be fixed and repaired and rebuilt so that they can last 10, 15 or 20 years? Well worth the time and money.

[hikerboy57]

I'm going to start this a little off topic, but I went to buy some saw blades for my table saw yesterday - I couldn't find what I needed at my local hardware it's called "Normal Hardware Store" and went to Lowes - the guy there wanted to show me a table saw - and what I got out of that is that most people (like this guy) think that what he was showing me was a "table saw" - they were like $598. I just shook my head and didn't say much. What I SAW was a piece of cheap chinese crap made of plastic and pot metal - the "big one" weighed like 60 pounds. They don't even sell "contractor saws" any more -- that guy wouldn't have ANY IDEA what he was looking at if he saw my cabinet saw made in McMinnville, Tennessee - it weighs a couple of thousand pounds and would have been in the $4,000 - $5,000 range new (in today's money) - it was built in the 1970s and it would slice those cheap Lowes saws in half for breakfast. This is why in my business, if I need something new, I buy from tool manufacturers like Festool -- www.festool.com/EN/Pages/index.aspx or Martin or Powermatic - see, most of you haven't even heard of these companies - that's because you EXCEPT that what Lowes, and Target, and Walmart, etc. sells acceptable items -- they are not -- they sell crap -- and most people have been totally snowed over a period of time to accept this standard -- now, on to sustainability:

I will NEVER have to replace my table saw in my LIFETIME - no more gas to move it, truck it somewhere, etc. -NEVER - same things with my other tools. Maybe, the most sustainable thing that BACKPACKERS can do is to INVEST in equipment made by small to medium companies that put quality FIRST and price no-where - it simply costs what it costs. You buy it with the intention of keeping it forever -when you purchase your next sleeping bag or rain jacket or tent or stove, think of things in this context -- OR -- just make things yourself home-made - like an alcohol or a wood burner stove, or a sleeping bag. It is this sort of thinking that leads you down the path toward sustainability. Support business models that are sustainable - businesses that make long-lasting products - people you can talk to on the phone and get an answer to a question - seek THESE people out. One clue is to find products made in Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the US - I have some chinese stuff because it's hard to avoid but TRY - stay out of Walmart and avoid REI (if alternatives exist for you).

By the way, I didn't buy the saw blades - waiting on Martindale to send me a box.

The cheap man (or woman) spends the most.
HYOH

goes against everything american consumerism has brainwashed us about.
Built to last.own it forever.
PapaD, thanks for a great perspective.