Eco-town: Sarah & Alan

Sarah and Alan have recently moved to one of the new Eco-towns – partly because they wanted to take advantage of the new localnet service there. With a new baby, Sarah is particularly pleased with how much easier her life is with localnet than it was in their old house in a region where localnet is not yet available.

Sarah is currently on maternity leave while Alan works in an office in a town twenty miles away.

Scroll down to read all the ways localnet impacts their lives or click on a bullet point below to jump to the item that most interests you.

 

Houses Designed with localnet in Mind

As with almost all the houses in the area, theirs is brand new. This means that the kitchen has been designed around a localnet hatch on an exterior wall. They don’t have to be home or even come to the door when deliveries are made and can access the boxes without going outside. The layout of the houses and the paths between them on the new development were also designed to make localnet work as well as possible. The kitchens of neighbouring houses are on opposite sides and easily accessible from the road so that a delivery van can stop between them and deliver to two at a time.

Sarah chose to have the delivery bay option with integral fridge and freezer. Although it’s a little more expensive, it does mean she can have chilled and even frozen food such as ice cream delivered, knowing it’ll be kept at the right temperature till she gets back even if she’s away overnight. She also opted for the “all in one” design - where the unit is extended to head height and incorporates her fridge and freezer directly above the box drawers. This not only makes good use of the space in the kitchen but because these now use a single power and chiller unit was actually cheaper than buying separate ones. It will also be more energy efficient. They're very confident that the few hundred pounds extra on the price of the kitchen will be more than paid back when they come to sell.

Post, Papers and Periodicals Delivered by localnet

The first delivery of the day is always before 8am – just like the good old days of the G.P.O. - though Sarah has to take her Mum's word for this! This means that Alan can read his mail and can skim the paper before leaving for work. Envelopes, junk mail and anything that doesn’t need to be kept go straight back in the box and into the localnet cupboard for recycling later in the day. Alan used to shred a lot of correspondence before throwing it away but he’s confident that the automated processes make it much harder to get at the waste than it used to be.

Commuting by localnet

Alan used to drive to work twenty miles away but since moving to the localnet area he’s switched to using the delivery van to get to the LocalHub – about 5 minutes away. He could almost walk it really but when it’s cold and wet, there’s not much chance of him doing so. It’s really bustling at the hub around 8:30. Half a dozen delivery vans, now emptied of newspaper and breakfast boxes and filled with commuters and school kids converge on the hub in the space of ten minutes. However, eighty percent of the people on any given day are the regulars who have reserved seats so they know how many seats are needed on the bigger van that goes across town. The seats are more comfortable on that one too – which is great because it’s a thirty minute journey on that leg.

Alan loves the fact that the post and his newspaper are guaranteed to be delivered to his house a good fifteen minutes before he has to leave to catch the delivery van (it’s the same one that just dropped them off so he knows if they’re running a few minutes late). He can even see on the touch-screen exactly where the van is so he can wait till the last possible minute before going out when it's raining.

By the time he gets to work he has had time to catch up on the news and sport rather than fuming about the traffic that he used to get stuck in. Actually, now that you mention it, he thinks the traffic seems to have got a lot less stop-start than it was in the “bad-old” pre-localnet days. He thinks that’s probably not a coincidence as he quickly tots up the number of people on the bus with him who used to drive instead.

He also points out how many of the men on the delivery van are sitting next to their children – who can easily walk the five minutes from the LocalHub to their school. He suspects the mothers who are now chilling for a few minutes at home appreciate this too – as most of them were previously in charge of driving the kids to school in their other car (which many of them no longer need).

In the evenings he likes to walk home from the hub if it’s fine (there’s a rather good pub half way home) or he’ll jump on the evening round van if it’s chucking it down.

Working from Home enabled by localnet

With some spare time on her hands most days, Sarah is earning some extra for the family holiday by doing some washing and ironing most days. She has her Localnet profile set up to send her two boxes of laundry at a time with 48 hour turnaround. Some days she does both, other days one and some days neither. When she has finished a box she just pops it back in the hatch for collection on the next round. She’s not sure how it knows there’s a box to be collected but someone appears by magic within a few hours and takes it away – usually dropping off another one for her to start on.

Sometimes, if she finds a single sock in the box, she’ll use the touch-screen on her delivery station to call up the details of the box to check that its owner knows they only put one in – and if not, she’ll flag the discrepancy. Occasionally she’ll check that the contents were entered correctly so she knows she’s going to be paid for the right amount of work.

She knows there are half a dozen people nearby who also do laundry and ironing so she’s never worried about taking a break for a few days as the localnet will send the boxes to someone else instead. She suspects that a lot of the laundry is from students at the local college as sometimes, during the vacations, there’s not as much laundry available as she’d like.

Nappy Washing Service via localnet

While Sarah is happy to do normal washing and ironing - at least if she's being paid for it, she draws the line at washing nappies. Having moved to an Eco-town she'd feel too guilty to use disposables. Luckily, her localnet area offers a nappy washing service. Even more luckily this includes a dedicated, airtight box that she can simply drop the nappies into. Once a day this is magically swapped for a box of freshly laundered nappies! She tries not to think too much about the poor souls who handle these boxes. (Actually, she needn't worry as it's almost completely automated!)

Socialising made easier by localnet

Every few weeks, Sarah will invite some friends around for an Impromptu coffee morning. These often get arranged late in the day but when she knows who’s coming, she’ll go online that evening and order a selection of pastries or cakes and some extra milk and coffee knowing they’ll be with her by 10am the next morning.

Groceries delivered by localnet

About every other day, Sarah checks her standing order for bread, milk etc. and adds on the staples that she needs the following day. The box appears around midday – give or take half an hour – the following day. There's no minimum order quantity and delivery is free so she only orders what she definitely needs. Previously she'd have struggled to buy enough to satisfy the £50 limit for free delivery from her local supermarket.

She used to get quite frustrated with Alan who, using the “but I have to work” excuse, would consistently tell her that he'd run out of shaving foam/razor blades/shampoo etc. the evening after she'd done the weekly shop. Now he just taps them in on the touch-screen himself when he's passing it.

Shopping for Pleasure via localnet

Actually... she just realised that there is no such thing as the “weekly shop” any more. She now goes shopping when she wants to not because she has to! As Alan commutes by localnet and she now goes shopping via the localnet van they decided the second car could go - saving them a fortune.

Daily Recycling collections by localnet

As soon as Alan has put away the groceries from a new delivery, he slides the dividers across the box giving him four compartments into which they put glass, metal, plastic, and food waste as they finish with them. The delivery hatch is very well sealed but since boxes are exchanged at least every other day, there’s far less chance of smells than there used to be with the pull-out bin that could go three or four days between emptying. There’s a separate receptacle for non-recyclables but not much goes in that these days!

Feeding the Family using localnet

Sarah loves buying fresh local vegetables in season and has her online profile permanently set to alert her to a wide range of fruit and vegetables should they become available from people within a few miles. The neighbouring localnet, just outside the Eco-town has several full-time organic farmers who show some crops throughout the season and typically fix a price on their localnet items. Other produce is from neighbours with a backyard plot and they'll often take the highest bid for whatever surplus peas, apples or raspberries they harvest as they ripen.

She is a keen cook and keeps a well-stocked larder and spice-rack but also likes to try new recipes. Often she’ll order a complete set of ingredients online in the morning for delivery that evening. Items that she’s unlikely to use again she’ll just take the required amount for the recipe but for many she’ll tick the box to say she’ll take a whole box/bottle/tub or bag of whatever. She then gets those at the normal shop price rather than pay the extra percentage for the exactly weighed out amount.

Alan likes to give his wife a break from the cooking one night a week so he’ll sometimes browse through the menus and order something during his morning coffee break at work. He’s got a rough idea of the ingredients Sarah keeps in the kitchen but any that he’s not a hundred percent sure she has enough of, he’ll play safe and order the pre-prepared amount needed for the recipe. That’s the default option on screen anyway so it normally only takes him a couple of clicks to complete his order.

All in All...

They both love having more money (thanks to one less car and much cheaper travel plus Sarah's part-time work from home that fits around the baby's needs beautifully). Sarah finds the time she saves not having to go shopping during the week is a godsend and lets her spend a lot more time with her baby. Being able to jump on the localnet van and get anywhere in the area for next to nothing makes it much easier for her to visit friends around the town.

The best thing, for both of them though, is that they really feel they are living a more sustainable life and can actually understand how the Eco-town with its infrastructure and buildings designed for localnet from the ground up is really optimising their use of resources while giving them a terrific quality of life at the same time.

Benefits