Bazz country people still live like that.
I live just 40 klm from the coast, half of Sydney seems to come to that coast yet my village is still deeply country.
Recycled septic never leaves the block [standard quarter acre].
Tank water only 20,000 liters.
Hedge of bottle bush picked to grow tightly together and 6 meters tall for shade.
Fruit trees grown only on recycled water.
Grow my own vegys but not enough.
No way its going to feed me unless I become a fruit bat.
But its a start.
love to truly go bush again with chooks and ducks, a few sheep and cattle I just might make it.

Imagine that..The Good Life as science fiction...not only comedy at all

Jason, although I live only 60Km, as the crow flies, from our capital city GPO, for the last 15 years, the only "town" service I have, is electricity. For 10 years before that, I generated the electricity myself, too.

Home power generation is bull s##t, but you can keep the rest, thanks, I'll do my own. But, show me anyone who has lived with home power for ten years, & I'll show you someone who hates it.

Of course, in the name of some green bunkum, people like me now have to have some chemical micky mouse sewerage treatment plant in a bottle, rather than the simple old septic system, in new houses. Not much use for fertilising the veggie patch.

Incidentally, when you get back to school, tell that lady geography teacher of yours, to stop putting all these silly ideas into your head.

When I saw “Self sustained living” I thought it was going to be something to chew on

Jason’s idea “Own power generation. Own sewerage disposal. Own water collection for toilet flush. All new houses and other buildings to be self sufficient as much as possible.”

Begs the questions

What benefit is there in denying the economies of scale which make water and power generation effective ?

What happens if we turn the clock back around 160 years ?

No power networks
No sewerage collection
No tap water.

A few side effects

Higher child and adult mortality rates due to dealing with untreated sewerage and non-potable water.

Cholera and dysentery spring to mind.

So how does this plan stand up if we consider the big boogey man “carbon emissions”

In constructing a house, the biggest contributors of carbon emission are the bricks and the concrete used to build it.

We would be better off building all wood houses (need something to kill the termites and stop the rot), with modern plumbing and centralized water processing than brick houses on concrete slabs with individual power generation and water processing.

Long term comparative price performance of self generation and water recycling remains largely, an unknown.

Something’s sound nice but the theory needs real research, otherwise we end up with government grants for environmental tossers to indulge their hobby horses with and the standard of living of the rest of us gets flushed down the recycling water closet.

I had a septic tank here for many years before the sewer arrived.
Mosquitoes disappeared when the sewer came but generally it was successful.

One of the major costs of generating your own electricity is the cost
of batteries. They do need replacing from time to time depending on
how keen you are on maintenance work.
Last time I looked at this the break even time was about 20 years.
Now that the government will give some of us a subsidy that time will
be reduced. The problem is the people who will install the system
are mostly those that are refused a subsidy, hmmm clever.
What percentage of the population would be interested/capable of
maintaining such an electrical system ?

I have a swimming pool and contrary to what most people believe you
don't put water into a pool you take it out. So the rainfall while it
has been lower than normal would be sufficient I believe, provided you
have big enough tanks. Again the maintenance becomes very important
to ensure the health of the system.

In large population centres, including larger towns, maintenance is
not something people are conscientious about. Just look at their cars.

I agree jason. There are many things we can do as individuals to be more self-sustaining. Some level of self sustained living is certainly achievable as regards water tanks, solar panels, grey water recycling and even a compost toilet.

I would worry that too many people with compost toilets might not understand the methodology and you may end up with some problems such as Col outlines. I quite like large scale sewage treatment and the output from these works if managed well can be clean.

The problems lie in increasing populations and economic rationalism and the effects this has on water, sewerage and other infrastructure and can lead to accidents like untreated sewage being deposited into the oceans.

Even if we cannot be fully self-sufficent some level of individual self-sufficiency would reduce the pressure on our already stretched infrastructure.