Design with Nature

Our grandparents seeded this. Our parents.
They imagine a world with people and habitat and studied it:
Habitat 76, Biomimicry, a pattern language,
Earnest Callenbach, peter oberlander, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander,
john Todd, bucky fuller, pliny fisk, Bill Mollison…
Paolo Soleri.
Ian McCaig.
Ross Evans & Kipchoge- Xtracycle
Ampersand, these are the new people with ideas that are working. Not necessarily their own ideas, but ideas that work:
solar-shower, outside bath, composting toilets, natural building, rainwater collection, brown-glass bottlewall.

Edible Parks and Ecosystems are now coming into play. The Commons is back. We have new challenges to study along with the old ones… how do we integrate food into our city and rural lives? How can we create ecological sanitation? How do we get ourselves to slow down and plan for the future? to stop buying and consuming and creating garbage and toxic dumps just because we want to consume?

I love the slow food movement. As Volkswagon says: All I know is slow.

O Bioplastics Surfrider

from: O Ecotextiles

The Surfrider Foundation has a list of ten easy things you can do to keep plastics out of our environment:

Choose to reuse when it comes to shopping bags and bottled water. Cloth bags and metal or glass reusable bottles are available locally at great prices.

Refuse single-serving packaging, excess packaging, straws and other ‘disposable’ plastics. Carry reusable utensils in your purse, backpack or car to use at bbq’s, potlucks or take-out restaurants.

Reduce everyday plastics such as sandwich bags and juice cartons by replacing them with a reusable lunch bag/box that includes a thermos.

Bring your to-go mug with you to the coffee shop, smoothie shop or restaurants that let you use them. A great way to reduce lids, plastic cups and/or plastic-lined cups.

Go digital! No need for plastic cds, dvds and jewel cases when you can buy your music and videos online.

Seek out alternatives to the plastic items that you rely on.

Recycle. If you must use plastic, try to choose #1 (PETE) or #2 (HDPE), which are the most commonly recycled plastics. Avoid plastic bags and polystyrene foam as both typically have very low recycling rates.

Volunteer at a beach cleanup. Surfrider Foundation Chapters often hold cleanups monthly or more frequently.

Support plastic bag bans, polystyrene foam bans and bottle recycling bills.

Spread the word. Talk to your family and friends about why it is important to Rise Above Plastics!

Surfrider

O Ecotextiles

climate change

Very important environmenal piece:
Natural Capital

Watershed

Christy Moormann

About Greater Vancouver Watersheds

Salmon Creek Watershed

Vancouver, WA

Sustainability Management

Wild Horses

I just heard that they are euthanizing wild horses (National Geographic,February 2009) and I thought what good farm animals they would be. Not just for hauling wood out of the forest whole, as should be done, maybe not by wild horses, they are great digesters, if people can find a way to allow them to work grasses into manure. Perhaps eventually we could cooperate enough to find more land that they could graze on, and fence half of it and grow the other half, alternatively. Hum, the best of both worlds. Permaculture has a lot to say about farming with animals. Manure is a valuable thing for crops. As for wild horses, send them to Canada alive! There is plenty of land. Sure horses take up a lot of energy if you keep them in a pen and have to feed them and run them. And they must be unhappy. Permaculture asks for more than one use or yield from all of us.

video

Aprovecho

Wild Horse and Prisoner Redemption

Permaculture asks for more than one use or yield from all of us.

Permauclture and Horses

We Are the Animals

Especially in the case of being vegetarian, manure is hard to come by, if you don’t have animals to work with. In the case of Permanent Agriculture, where we want to give back more than we are taking, building a reserve of abundance to have and to share, we can choose to be the animals and compost out own ‘waste’ preserve not only water but all of the valuable resources that were previously heading down our toilets to be dealt with in an overflowing chemical system of fear of our own bodies. Psychology might call this self rejection. At any rate my soul is ecstatic that this cycle is finally finding a way to close. Let the A-Bun-Dance begin!

Humanure in Haiti

Humanure Handbook

Water and Sanitation

Akvo, the open source for water and sanitation.

Application of ecological sanitation and permaculture techniques: food
and water security for indigenous tribes and rural areas in Brazil.

Ecological Engineering

Ecological Sanitation Research

Pan African Conservation Education

Ecological Sanitation
© Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
All rights reserved
Published by
Department for Natural Resources and the Environment,
Sida, S-105 25 Stockholm, Sweden

Humanure Handbook teaches how to use nutrient rich waste as a resource. . .

The Garden Project

The Garden Project model for community change is an integrated, community-wide, systemic response to crime, high rates of recidivism, and unemployment which links crime and poverty with stewardship of the environment and the community. The United States Department of Agriculture hailed The Garden Project as “one of the most innovative and successful community-based crime prevention programs in the country.”

Wild Salmon vs. Farmed

Watershed Watch , because sometimes, nature knows best. I recommend the full version found here. . .nice animation, and delivery.

Salmon Nation

Among all the “food nations” of North
America, Salmon Nation is the richest in
mushrooms, berries, wild roots, fish, and
shellfish. Native American traditions are at its
core, but other culinary accents – from Spanish
to Japanese – have added to the mix. Renewing
Salmon Nation’s Food Traditions describes over
180 species of local plants and animals – many
now at risk, others recovering, and all deserving
of recognition – that have formed the basis of
food traditions in the Pacific Northwest.
This illustrated handbook brings together
farmers, chefs, fisherfolk, food historians, orchardists,
activists, educators, and wild foragers in an
unprecedented effort to assess the current state of
foods unique to the Pacific Northwest. The result is
a comprehensive guide to the foods that have nurtured
Salmon Nation for centuries.
Renewing Salmon Nation’s Food Traditions
describes the appearance and taste of each species,
its origin and history, geographic range, and
culinary uses. Foods range from the Bing cherry,
Hood strawberry, and Nez Perce bean to Chinook
salmon, candlefish smelt, and geoduck to wild
items such as Oregon black truffle, wapato, and
blackcap raspberry. A resource list provides names
of nurseries, seed companies, and suppliers working
to safeguard and revitalize the heritage foods of
Salmon Nation.

Political Ecology

Since green politics emerged as an ideology, it has been defined by a few key green principles. The German Greens drafted the earliest statement of this kind, called the Four Pillars of the Green Party. The Four Pillars have been repeated by many green parties worldwide as a foundational statement of the green ideology:

* Ecological wisdom
* Social justice
* Grassroots democracy
* Nonviolence

In Canada.