A Weekend Without Oil?

I hope this isn’t breaking news for anybody: We use a LOT of oil.
The U.S. consumes about 300 billion gallons every year. As a summer intern at DoSomething.org, I helped out on a campaign to encourage people to reduce consumption for a weekend.  August 21 – 22 was the Weekend Without Oil, and I was was ready to see if I could cut it.

Buying local

The weekly farmers market in Charlottesville runs from 7am to noon on Saturday – clearly, it doesn’t target college kids. I dragged my roommates out of bed at 7:30 and we walked the 2 miles to historic downtown Charlottesville, where the market takes over an entire parking lot.  We splurged on fresh cut flowers, homemade pasta, and all kinds of good veggies for dinner that night. It was 9am, and I have to admit that I was feeling pretty great about myself.  We had even remembered to bring cloth bags to carry all the purchases. I was invincible. Who needs oil???

My first infraction was pretty innocent. As we were leaving, we stopped by a booth occupied by the jolly “Lemonade Lady.” Apparently the bright color of the disposable plastic cups was enough disguise to make it past my oil radar. I told myself maybe they were that kind made with corn, but I could already see just how difficult the weekend was going to be. A key part of sustainable living seems to be staying on your toes!

Thrift Stores and Carpooling

The Weekend Without Oil also happened to be move-in weekend at the University of Virginia.  My roommates and I decided to save money (and oil!) by getting used furniture for our new apartment. To avoid crowds and traffic we escaped to nearby Staunton with its plethora of kitschy second-hand stores. I justified using a car with the fact that we carpooled and were using it for sustainable purchases. We found an end table for $10 at the ReStore by Habitat for Humanity, but my favorite place was Worthington Hardware Co, an adorable store full to the brim with everything from old jukeboxes, traffic lights, and gumball machines to typewriters, bins of horseshoes, and old storefront signs. In the basement we made a surprising find for our living room, which needed more seating: A porch swing bench!

This was just the basement...

Thus began the next oil-reducing adventure: the bench was large, and the car we brought was… not. I couldn’t accept the idea of calling someone with a larger vehicle to come help, because I already felt bad about using a car at all. Miraculously, we got everything in, after about 45 minutes of trying different angles and several pedestrians stopping to offer us advice or tell us it was never going to fit. Their pessimism only made us more determined.

Tap Water and Willpower

I carried a metal water bottle all weekend. The idea of buying a bottle of water now seems crazy to me – and I definitely think that will stick. One of the goofiest things I did was bring a reusable cup to the Saturday night welcome block party so I could avoid the cliché red Solo cup. (It was a good icebreaker.)  One of the toughest moments for my willpower was on scorching-hot Sunday afternoon: I walked by a Starbucks without buying a caramel Frappachino. Some people will understand how truly difficult this is.
It was really frustrating when I found myself thinking “I’ll have to wait until Monday” to buy this or that and drive here or there. Oil really did start to feel inescapable, and I felt cheap claiming to be going “without oil” when I was just putting off the consumption to a later date.

I think the best thing about my Weekend Without Oil was that it was a test drive for increased sustainability in my lifestyle moving forward.  I know of many ways to reduce my consumption of oil and other resources, but this weekend gave me a good reason to take the first (and most difficult) step to start actually doing a lot of these things.  Being conscious of everything I did made me realize not only how dependent we are on oil, but also the lifestyle changes I want to make now that the weekend is over.  Never again using a plastic bag or water bottle and working harder to buy locally are just a few of my goals.  I didn’t realize just how effective it would be to have a reason to start.

I thought move-in weekend was going to make this challenge even more difficult, but it actually had the unexpected result of allowing me to start good habits for me and my roommates.  When buying kitchen items, I purposefully chose a recycled plastic cutting board and made sure we got a Brita filter so that we’d never need to buy plastic water bottles for drinking.  All of our “new” furniture is somebody’s old furniture.  And I like to think we’ve begun a tradition of attending the weekly farmers market – but I can’t make any promises – after all, it’s held on Saturday morning.

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