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Creating a Home Graywater System (video)
Peak Moment #141
Trathen Heckman takes us on a step-by-step tour of how to make a safe, ecological and legal suburban home graywater system. Follow the water as it drains from the bathroom tub (and sink and laundry) through a unique valve leading into the backyard garden. It flows into an optional wetland and underground pond for filtering. The water is then piped below ground to several destinations in the yard, where it will supply water for plants growing above it. Trathen discusses the process with local government agencies, the system design and construction (with pictures), costs, resource books, and why to undertake a graywater system in the first place. (www.daily-acts.org)
(7 March 2009)
Community as Technology
Andrew Outhwaite, WorldChanging
… I recently had an experience that underscored just how important our ability to work together will become. As a participant in the Hållbarhet2009 Learning Journey and Conference in Australia, I saw firsthand what climate change looks like. As my group traveled for ten days through southern Australia, we came face-to-face with the frightening signs of a warming world: charred landscapes from the worst bushfires on record
… Realizing the relevance of community itself as a technology, we joined many local and international sustainability networks in exploring the possibilities for collaboration at a dialogue hosted by the Global Sustainability Programme at RMIT. As we talked through the barriers preventing us from scaling up our impact, I recognized that many of the inspiring forms of community-enabling technology we had encountered could be brought to bear in overcoming these barriers. For example:
Barrier: The desire to ‘get more done urgently, now’ rather than taking the time to really connect, listen and build the trust that underlies collaboration.
Community-Enabling Technology: Reestablishing rituals. For example, Aboriginal people inviting visitors to their traditional lands to participate in welcoming ceremonies, a kind of spiritual technology: circling a sacred fire and breathing in the smoke generates a visceral sense of respect and connection with each other, other species and creation.
… Barrier: While democracy and consensus are always the best way to decide and collaboration always the best basis for action, total democracy and collaboration can be problematic. Knowing when and how to take a strong lead or stand within a group is a challenge.
Community-Enabling Technology: Taking a stand. Activists and NGOs are using new political tools to push elected representatives to respond appropriately to the climate emergency. As are scientists through forums like the Wentworth Group, IPCC and IGBP that aim to provide timely, consensus recommendations to inform national and international policy.
(4 March 2009)
Foodzoning the Foodshed
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
Here are two very interesting concepts I’ve come across recently that feel worth sharing. One is Julie Brown of Growing Communities’ ‘Food Zones’ idea, and the other is that of the ‘Foodshed’ or ‘Foodshed Analysis’. Both hold key pieces of the Energy Descent Pathways jigsaw, and we are actively looking at how to make best use of them in the Totnes EDAP process. Clearly the Transition movement has developed a strong ethic that increasing the resilience of a settlement necessitates, among other things, a food system that grows as much food as close to home as possible. But what might that actually look like?
Growing Communities is a fantastic initiative I was lucky enough to visit last year, based in Hackney in London, which sources produce for 450 vegetable boxes a week as well as supplying a farmers market, based on the principle of sourcing as much food as close to home as possible. Three market gardens within Hackney itself provide some of the salads and other produce, and they have a close relationship with several farms on the edge of the city (you can hear Julie’s talk at last year’s Soil Association conference here).
Julie’s model attempts to pin down what percentage of what, in an ideal, relocalised food system, would come from where.
… The second concept I have been finding very useful is that of the Foodshed. Originally a term coined in 1929 by Walter Hedden, who was prompted by the threat of a rail strike and its potentially ruinous impact on the food economy of New York City to explore the flow of how food actually gets to urban areas. It was picked up again by permaculturist Arthur Getz in an article in Permaculture Activist (which I have, but can’t find an electronic copy of) as a concept for defining the idea that food is grown as close to home as possible, and that this needs to be looked at systematically. The concept of the Foodshed and the existing literature on it is described in a paper by Peters et. al. published last year, which you can download here. There is also a paper about foodsheds by Kloppenburg et.al. here and an interesting paper from the President of the Borough of Manhattan called ‘Food in the Public Interest’ here.
(9 March 2009)
