Sustainable Living for Less in Charlottesville

A couple in Charlottesville, Virginia won’t let poverty stop them from living sustainably. Nathan Hanley and Tenzin Namdol have built a trailer for their four door sedan that has a two person bed, a sink, and electricity gathered by photovoltaic energy.  Travelling through Virginia in this modest home, they are currently looking for a town to call home. Plying their trades as a modest carpenter and as a nanny, the couple works, not for money, but for needed supplies like meat and soap.

The couple hopes to live entirely on the barter system, trading meat for other needed supplies, and existing as off the grid as possible. Their solar energy collectors are enough keep a light and fan going at night, and even the occasional night time movie.

It’s truly admirable to see a couple working to protect the environment, even when they don’t even have a house to call their own. It provides a startling contrast to the naysayers to green energy, who have vast amounts of money, and dismiss issues such as sustainability because it’s too expensive. A couple who can exist solely on a photovoltaic cell and the barter system proves quite an impressive fact: You don’t need a ton of money to do your part and help the environment. Sustainability is a goal that can be achieved, even by a couple who exist purely on the barter system, and are by that fact destitute. If this couple can do so much all by themselves, what could people with much greater resources do, if they only set their mind to it?