Host Family Sustainability

My Host:

Here in Bonn, I am staying with Sabine Gerhardt, a grandmother who has lived in this region for over 25 years. She lives in the village Lessinich, west of the city center where we study. It is a narrow but tall (four stories) house that is attached to another in the same plot. The houses are wrapped around completely by a large garden, and she has a small driveway.

Transportation

In the driveway she keeps her one very small car. She only takes this vehicle every couple of days, and only to make trips to the local Rewe on the other side of the neighborhood. Sabine prefers to bike, telling me that it is more fun than walking and easier than riding the bus. Although she doesn't enjoy the bus, she has mastered the city's public transportation, keeping timetables and charts of every bus or tram she might need to get around. She's loaned me three of them, for the three busses I can take to get back to Lessenich at the end of the day.

Energy

Upon arriving here at my new home in Lessenich, I discovered what every other student would discover, the lack of air conditioning. I expected this, but what I didn't expect was the lack of fans. Sabine, like most others in Germany, relies on insulation to keep the house cool, and magnificent windows that can be cracked open from the top and also swung open to keep the house ventilated and cooled during the sunlight hours. In the winter, the house is heated by many radiators powered by the long range heating provided by SWB. The house also has a wood-burning stove that is piped through the house to provide heating in the event of power loss. 

Sabine also doesn't have a dryer for clothes in the home, only using a washing machine that I can't figure out how to operate. She hangs towels and clothes from racks outside in the garden, and from racks in the top floor of the house when it is rainy out. 

She keeps very few entertainment electronics in the house, just one television, a computer, and her radio/record player. They're rarely on, only listening to the radio in the morning while she prepares breakfast. There are few consumer electronics in the house as a whole, almost no electric utilities in the kitchen other than her refrigerator, dish washer, and electric tea kettle. 

Food, and other natural resources

Sabine eats a pretty regular diet mostly containing fruits, dairy, and bread. She has told me that normally she doesn't cook much, but instead will make meals out of sausage, bread, and cheese for lunch and dinner, and fruit and dairy for breakfast. She buys most of her food at the local Rewe, and she travels there a couple times a week by car. 

She has a large garden and a small rooftop garden where she grows fruits, this season she is growing fresh strawberries. Her yard is where she grows flowers, and collects rainwater to water them during dryer times. 

Waste

She doesn't have a recycling bin, but does have multiple bags in the kitchen dedicated to sorting different trash, and she saves organic trash to make fertilizer for her garden. She does recycle, however she doesn't often buy recyclable products, like water bottles or other glass or plastic bottles. She makes her own sparkling water with a CO2 machine, so she has no need for purchasing and bottles and recycling them. She didn't mention a limit to the amount of trash she can put on the curb, but she does place her recycling in a shared bin with her neighbor on trash day.