HOW WE REUSED

We are excited to welcome this new serial by Jo Royle and her family bus adventures When you live as a family of four in a bus, you’ve no choice but to consider sustainability! When you have much less space in which to live, 90 litre water and waste tanks, a portaloo, no wheelie bin and the only power you have is what you generate, it makes you super aware of what you need, what you use and what waste you create. It was a big trip before our son started school. We’d travelled further afield but never around the UK. Initially it started as a 6 week school holiday jaunt and became a plan to live in a bus and travel the UK coast for a year… which then turned into living in a bus for 4 years! I’m a meditation teacher and have a daily practice… without it I’m not sure I’d have managed 4 weeks! page 4

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The bus itself was recycled. It was an ex-library bus, which had been tuned into a mobile computer shop, before we bought it on eBay to turn into our home. In the renovation we reused as much as possible… the library shelves became panelling for one of the walls; the drawers which once held library cards were upcycled into our cutlery drawer; and lights which were once in the steps at the back of the bus became a new bathroom light fitting. Friends emptied their sheds donating waste timber from which our kitchen was fashioned; we visited a local salvage yard to pick up other pieces, like the gas lanterns which were wired with low voltage bulbs and created our bedroom/lounge/dining room lights (two lights… three rooms… I’ll leave to you work that one out). Other items we bought second hand from eBay… the portaloo… the shower & tray… the school gym flooring which became our kitchen countertops. Obviously there were some things we needed to buy new, like the tanks, the hot water boiler, the custom made tiny wood burning stove, etc. but we bought second hand as much as possible - even our solar panel, which we self installed along the way, was pre-loved, having lived its first life serving to generate power at festivals!

Sustainable so far? Yes, I hear you say, but what about driving an enormous library bus around?

Well… Moby (that was his name, short for Mobile Library) was a big diesel guzzling monster of a bus, with his 6 litre engine, but you could say it was a slow travel adventure. Although we eventually journeyed from Saltburn on the North East coast of England down the East coast, along the South & up the West, until we settled here in our now home on the Isle of Skye, it took us 15 months! So miles or emissions per day were probably much less than most families of 4 with commutes to work and car journeys to school. At times Moby was parked up for weeks, even months, as we were hosted on a WWOOF or HelpX project and then we’d use public transport or bikes to get around. We stayed on a small holding in Suffolk for 2 months over the winter & our son, who was only 4 at the time, did at least 12 miles a week on his tiny police bike (with stabilisers!) up & down to the town for shopping, to go to the library & to go swimming. At other times we were moving around, maybe only staying a night or two in any one place… exploring. During those times we found that power, heat, water and waste were never far from our thoughts. Where would we buy fuel? Where could we charge the batteries (pre solar panel days)? Where could we buy dry wood to keep the fire going? Where could we empty the loo? How much water did we have left & where could we fill up? And how much waste did we have and when would we next see a bin? It certainly created some interesting behaviours…

AND RECYCLED

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... turning the shower off midway to soap before switching back on to rinse…washing up in half an inch of water… trying to encourage the kids to use the loo whilst out… emptying food with two lots of packaging e.g. cereal & leaving behind the bulky boxes in the supermarket! There was definitely no leaving the tap running whilst cleaning teeth; forgetting to turn the hot water boiler off once the water was hot (as this would likely use up the gas or kill the battery) or luxuriating in long hot baths… oh how I longed for a bath! It’s incredible how quickly the things you take for granted, suddenly become luxuries. When we did finally move into a house again after 4 years I wrote 40 days of gratitude… for some of the more obvious things like –constant power… heating at the flick of a switch (we’re lucky our rental has an air source heat pump)… bins… a bath; as well as some of the less obvious ones –doors for privacy, walls on which to put artwork! In our years of living in a bus, we learnt a lot about what was important to us and what we needed. We worked less and spent more time together as a family, often in nature on the coast. We earned less, but had no space for more possessions anyway!

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We swapped our time for a place to park, food, wood for the fire; connecting with people we didn’t know, making new friends. We learnt a bit about foraging, preserving and bushcraft. My husband further ignited his passion for sustainable building and built his first strawbale property for friends, whilst we lived on their drive! We fell in love with the West coast of Scotland and decided to make it our home. When we did finally move into a house we found we were much more conscious about the decisions we made, selecting natural materials, limiting plastic; choosing beautiful items that would last. We’re loving being settled again as it gives us the chance to grow our own food. We have started composting, using natural cleaning products, swapped shower gel for soap, buy an organic veg box to supplement what we grow, sourced a green energy supplier and a couple of other things like using an ego egg for laundry and a soda stream to feed my fizzy water addiction without creating lots of plastic waste! Our next big adventure is to build our own home. We’re in the process of buying a plot and hope to build in hempcrete. I’m hoping to also have space for a circular strawbale space with a living roof and a grounding earth floor in which to teach meditation and run retreats here on the Isle of Skye… I look forward to writing about that adventure in a few years time!