Posted on 01/14/2020 7:04:47 PM PST by nickcarraway
Green activist John Cossham, 52, on how he earns very little so he can live a low-carbon lifestyle
Name: John Cossham Age: 52 Income: £10,000 Occupation: Entertainer and ecology educator
I’m an enthusiastic green activist and I earn very little so I can live a low-carbon lifestyle. That’s the way I like it; I don’t want much money, because people who earn a lot have a high carbon footprint. This green lifestyle saves my family about £10,000 a year on utilities, food and travel compared to the average family of four. But that’s not the reason I do it.
I’m proud to make between £3,000 and £4,000 a year gigging as a children’s entertainer called Professor Fiddlesticks, riding a unicycle and juggling. I also give talks on climate change and other green subjects, plus I sell compost, do gardening and bike trailer removals, which adds up to about £2,000 a year.
I live with my wife, Gill, who works full time as an unpaid carer, and two adult children. We bought our house outright after Gill’s mother died, with help from my dad. As a family, we get a working tax credit of £367 a month.
I’m a freegan, which means I get food from bins, from foraging, or from my garden. I’m largely vegan, but eat dairy if I find it thrown away. The most unexpected thing I found in a bin was a bottle of champagne. I buy unsold fruit and veg for a penny a bag from a local food shop and get four loaves of yesterday’s bread for £1 from the local bakers.
We spend about £100 a week on basics such as rice and pasta. I occasionally have a coffee or pint out, but we never go to restaurants or get takeaways.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Hey, kids. Come on over here. I am about to slop the hogs and you youngun’s can eat some too for yer supper.
Wasn’t this an episode of “The Good Place”?
How do you do it? I used to be able to do it, but they changed the rules or something.
It’s all fun and games until he ends up with tetanus or e.coli or typhus or...
Then the taxpayers get to pay the price for his nonsense.
There is a cost to all this; just because he doesn’t see (or admit) it doesn’t mean it’s not there...
I use both but for different purposes.
40 lb cylinders where I need pressurized CO2.
The CO2 generators run on propane and release the CO2 at ambient pressure.
hmmmm. so he eats garbage and roadkill?
His wife’s job is full-time unpaid carer, she takes care of someone for free.
I don’t know about any rule changes but there are a few ways to do the HTML for pic/graphics. I found out about this one a few years ago and it’s quick and easy.
I’ll leave the angle brackets out so it will be visible. The quotation marks aren’t necessary.
img src=”insert URL” width=”100%”
100% will result in a pic that uses the full width of the screen (or space designated for displaying text and graphics) Use any percentage you want to and the graphic will fill that percentage of the width of the page. The height will automatically be adjusted to match the ratio of height to width from the source.
If that isn’t clear let me know and I’ll try to clarify my instructions.
:)
The real sick part is
He thinks it’s good
For the planet while
Dragging his Family
Thru the Garbage!
Don’t be a FReegan!
He found a pack of Kool-Aid in the dumpster and he drank it.
Sounds much better than “I eat garbage”.
Pretty big for a vegan. Bet he is a closet meat eater
[[I’m an enthusiastic green activist and I earn very little so I can live a low-carbon lifestyle.]]
nothing screams ‘oh look at me, look at me, I’m an attention starved loser’ more than identifying as a carbon miser
Hence the term “Dirty Hippy”.
Probably not very often. Experienced dumpster divers have a schedule of when they scavenge so they have a pretty good idea of how long the food has been sitting out. So if he has a local supermarket and he raids the dumpster 3 times a day he knows that whatever is in there has been out a maximum of 8 hours.
His wife is a full-time, UNPAID caregiver. Except for loopy carbon footprint ideas, I give the guy a pass. Sounds like he and his family are happy. Everybody doesn’t look at money as the end all to be all. And he’s not complaining; he’s glad to be mostly self-sufficient. There are lots of societal sub-cultures, many of which are bad, but some of them are just eccentric. And a lot of eccentrics are very interesting people.
I witnessed a couple living out of their car who
would fry the left over pizza dough from a dumpster,
in a coffee can, over an open fire in the parking
lot.
My incentive for working and saving for the future
was bumped up a notch.
no he gets tax credits
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.