When the oil shock first hit, many on the island were in the habit of letting commercial gardeners come and mow the lawn and trim the bushes. The oil shock brought that to sudden stop as for the most part the gardeners simply stopped showing up. It wasn't the highest priority in most peoples minds but at the community meetings a breakout group did form around this issue. Many front lawns were converted to gardens and a lot was learned about growing and storing food. For some however taking on the task of gardening was not possible. What developed in most of the participating neighborhoods was a hybrid sort of collective that both gardened in collectivized front yards and also mowed lawns with electric lawn mowers as appropriate, (it turned out that there was some electric garden tools in someones garage in virtually every neighborhood .)
Another area of great success reducing the use of gasoline started as a skill share workshop for Hybrid owners here on the island. Originally they started with a practicium on driving technique to get he best mileage ( Hybrid drivers were getting very differing mileage and it turned out that driving technique is critical). Soon however the focus turned to conversion of the cars to "plug in's" that acted as pure electric cars , at least as far as the first 20 miles or so , and further mileage was obtained by adding additional battery packs and or rooftop solar panels. At present about 50% of the actual car traffic on the island is now some form of Hybrid car. Electricity still seems to be available there have been only a few failures of the electric network so far. A small scale industry has sprung up here making chargers and retrofit kits for Hybrid vehicles. Some are being exported to other areas however this is not growing quickly because of a shortage of raw materials and high shipping cost.
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