“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it. ”
Off Grid Living with green and eco-friendly amenities
Water, water, everywhere…well, not quite.
When you shower or turn on a tap Out There, its easy to take for granted that water comes out! It wasn’t always that way, we had to haul fresh water over from the mainland and carry it up the hill. These days our engineered system supplies a combination of rainwater collection, and solar powered, gravity fed water from our well up in the forest on Nelson Island. It comes out of the taps at natural room temperature, filtered and drinkable and we think its the best water we’ve ever tasted. You’ll be happy to learn that instead of boiling a kettle, we now have tankless on-demand water heaters to provide hot water where and when its needed. Our grey water is a simple branched drain system, feeding the surrounding forest and fauna through a series of pipes and filter beds. Our whole water system is limited, sensitive and precious. A couple of our favourite water resources are:
District of Nanaimo Rainwater Harvesting Best Practices
Create an Oasis with Rainwater
Lovable Loos.
In the main Yurt, all our bathrooms are serviced by sun mar 1-pint composting toilets. Considerably less expensive than traditional septic systems, and combined with the fact that water is one of our most precious and valuable resources, eco-friendly composting was the way to go. A typical household flushes around 70 gallons of water a day down the “loo”, and we simply can not afford to waste that amount of water. All waste composts down to about 3% of the original amount, then is moved to a larger composting bin where is continues to breakdown over a year or more. Our hard earned “black gold” then feeds our organic kitchen gardens. There are also simple “water-less” composting toilets around the island. Our go to bibles for composting toilets are:
The Humanure Handbook
How to Shyte On Lasqueti
BC Government Composting Toilet Manual
composting loo with a view
The power of the wind and sun
With the help of the crew from Weber McCall, connecting our solar power system was one of the first tasks. All our tools were powered by solar for the whole build. Our system started with 4 x 125W solar panels, 8 golf cart batteries, an inverter and charge controller. We have since added 2 more panels, and a whisper 100 wind turbine. The combination works great in our area, and although we don’t get as much power from the wind turbine, there’s something very cool about generating power in the middle of the night or during a raging west coast storm, when community power outtages are a common occurance. Our renewable energy, combined with a small back-up generator, provides enough power for all our led lighting, electronics and refrigeration.
renewable energy powered all our building tools
Nobody’s perfect
Out There only uses as much energy as can be produced here on site through our combination solar and wind renewable energy system. We’re not perfect though. As much as we are trying to encourage sustainable tourism, we do have a back up gas generator, a diesel and a gas boat, and a vehicle on the mainland. Our guests also generate emissions just to get here. To offset these carbon emissions, Out There donates approximately 4 seedlings to Tree Canada’s National Greening Program for every single booking that we host. This Canada wide, mass tree planting program targets areas in need of reforestation or afforestation due to human activity or other causes. As Canada’s only national non-profit dedicated to planting and nurturing trees, they have planted more than 82 million trees since 1992, sequestering millions of tons of carbon pollution in the process. At only $5 per tree, please consider making a donation to Tree Canada.
bath night back in the day
Deep Green Cleaning
Due to the sensitive nature of our grey water system, there are absolutely no chemicals, metals, or other additives in our system. We ask all of our guests to use water wisely, keep it chemical free, and to use only the bio-degradable toiletries, toothpaste and our homemade soap that we provide. Our COVID compliant cleaning products are homemade, using water, steam, vinegar and lemon juice. We have homemade alcohol based hand sanitizer available in each guest room and make our own hydrogen peroxide based disinfection for deep green cleaning.
guests can buy our delicious hand made soap as a take home souvenir
Leave no trace
There is no garbage collection on Nelson Island. Everything that comes here arrives by boat, or barge and then carried. We have minimal recycling, which we donate to Egmont Community Hall, and we try to do everything we can to minimise the amount of garbage we have to carry out. We compost all our kitchen scraps and our ultimate goal is to get as close as possible to a zero waste, plastic free island. We ask guests to be sure they travel light (suitcases with wheels do not work) so they can carry what they bring and more importantly, so that they can carry it out.
our goal is for a zero waste, plastic free island
