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A few friends of mine from the fledgling Sustainability NPO we recently founded, Sustain Jefferson , spent a few incredible hours touring Growing Power this past Monday. Growing Power is a non-profit Urban Agriculture and Education facility in Milwaukee, WI that claims to grow enough food for 2000 people on 2 acres. With a claim like that I was drawn like a moth to flame. Their website offered some clues to their system-vermiculture, aquaculture, and several greenhouses. The actual tour filled in many of the details and inspired me in a way that I haven’t experienced since I was originally introduced to Permaculture and Bill Mollison several years ago.

What excited me most about Permaculture was the sheer common sense of it all. Taking wastes and turning them into resources is not something we typically think of today. Just as Forests have no waste products, Permaculture strives to promote such perfect systems in human endeavors whether it be designing a garden or linking businesses together via Natural Capitalism. Using the waste of built systems to add energy to another allows you to drastically reduce your time and energy taking care of problems and reap the benefits of one integrated system working in concert is something that continues to fascinate me Aquaponics, especially in the uber simple system that Will Allen of Growing Power sets up, fits the bill perfectly.

Aquaponics takes the aqua from aquaculture and ponics from hydroponics and melds them with a healthy dose of applied Permaculture. Aquaculture is the farming of fish in indoors in recirculating water tanks. The single largest waste from this system is that housing thousands of fish in a closed system fouls the water right quick. Hydroponics is a system of growing plants in a nutrient water medium, which of course begs the question of where the nutrients come from. Aquaculture attempts to solve these problems with an elegant solution by routing the waste water from the aquaculture tanks through a hydroponic system to provide the nutrients for the plants, which help to clean the water and significantly reduces the filtration needed before the water is returned to the fish. Even at this level I love the idea. Growing Power puts this system into hyperdrive.

What Will Allen and some others are doing is experimenting with what is considered by most to already be an experimental way of raising fish and plants. First off Will has completely done away with the filtration system. He has also done away with any commercial feed, preferring instead to grow his own. See the underlying foundation of Growing Power is worms.

Vermiculture is the practice of raising worms as a means to reduce, even recycle, waste and turn out some freaky good fertilizer. Red composting worms will eat their weight in organic waste (anything from pasta leftovers to cardboard to animal manure) and then poop out “castings” that are quite possibly the best organic fertilizer available. Growing Power does this on an almost industrial scale-using hundreds of bins (pictured) to process literally 10′s of thousands of pounds of waste from local restaurants into rich worm castings-saving the restaurants thousands of dollars in garbage removal fees, and providing Growing Power with the raw material to produce tons and tons of food. Brilliant!

The other great thing that worms do is, um, breed. In fact, in perfect conditions composting worms will double in population every 6 weeks. Growing Power uses the immense amount of castings to provide the growing medium for their greenhouse operations and then uses the surplus worms as a significant portion of the feed for the thousands of Tilapia in the aquaculture tanks.

Back to the filtration method. Growing Power uses plants, specifically water cress, to filter the water. As with most of the systems at the site, it is simple and uses mostly reused items that are common in an urban environment. In this case reclaimed sump pumps take water from the bottom of the 5′ deep tanks to 30′ long flats of cress. The flats are very slightly sloped, so only gravity is needed to move the water slowly through the pea gravel bed that serves to anchor the water cress roots. The water cress removes quite a bit of the excess nitrogen and other “wastes” from the water, but much of the work is done by nitrifying bacteria that lives in the pea gravel and on the plant roots. Between the bacteria and the plants the water is cleaned of virtually all of the excess waste. Will Allen was not real long as specifics when asked about ratios of cress to Tilapia, he is an instinctive innovator… he just knows it works. Several PhD types have also toured the facility and are adamant that the system should not work. Yet, Will adds with one of his huge grins-he has been doing it for 3 years and has only lost one fish. Time to rewrite the textbooks!

So what gives? Will Allen (the giant in the blue sweatshirt above) is convinced that the few handfuls of worm castings he adds to the cress flats are the difference. The castings are chock full of rich living bacteria and fungus cultures, and it is these that Will believes supercharges the cress flats with filtering capability. After seeing the vibrance and life of his greenhouses, the obvious health of his fish, and the numerous innovations that seemingly turn up at every corner-I believe him. What Growing Power is doing is preforming a simple modeling of a natural system (a watershed) and tweaking it to produce resources more applicable to human society.

This mingling of Permaculture and Sustainable Agriculture is fascinating, but Will Allen and Growing Power are not merely working to perfect experimental growing systems. Their true goal is to provide sustainable, local food to the people that need it most and have the least access to it-the urban poor. Growing Power grows tilapia and watercress in their aquaponic system, but in most of his greenhouses before the water gets to the watercress it irrigated thousands of sq. feet of nutritious greens that are housed in pots full of worm castings. These plants are incredibly lush and vibrant-without the input of any additional fertilizer. By using “waste” products at every turn Growing Power is able to drastically cut costs which allows them to survive in an urban setting with its high property values, and provide healthy sustainable food to thousands in an urban environment. In all Growing Power provides employment for over 30 people and gives meaning to hundreds more by offering educational workshops and volunteering opportunities at the farm. On site, Growing Power also raises row crops, chickens, and dairy goats giving many urban children (and adults!) a rare glimpse of where food comes from and the chance to pet a goat or hear a chicken cluck and feel a still warm egg.

Will Allen takes this even further and travels Africa and Central Asia teaching others about his growing systems. To that end, much of his current design work is focused on replicability and cost cutting. Will’s newest aquaculture houses are built in simple plastic hoop houses with the fish tanks buried in the ground to increase insulation and allow the use of inexpensive pond liner vs. stand alone tanks in an attempt to cut costs and reduce energy inputs. The last greenhouse system he took us through was built for $5000 plus labor, and it houses 3000 tilapia and 1500 Lake Perch in addition to 300 sq. ft of water cress and several hundred pots of greens and vegetables that were basking in the warm humid air. The next biggest problem to overcome is how to make it Peak Proof by removing the dependence on the second hand natural gas pool heater he is using. It will certainly add significantly to the start-up costs, but a renewables based system using simple materials is in the works. At his current site, Will is also working with some partners on an experimental methane digester sized to be useful on a municipal level. Seemingly every turn on the tour had another incredibly innovative idea pushing the envelope of sustainability be it heating greenhouses with compost piles or retrofitting broken clothes dryers to be reborn as soil sifters.

It was truly inspiring to see people in the heart of some of the poorer parts of Milwaukee making a difference, growing sustainable and nutritious food, and spreading the word about simple common sense systems that work.

Introduction to Aquaponics

Ed-This post is from one of our contributers and the information he shares about the food he can grow in his little suburban lot is amazing. It shows the impact each of us could have if we started growing more of our own food.

Today is one of my favorite days of the year. The Autumnal Equinox is particularly special, even holy, to us. I am not an overly spiritual person, but September/October are fabulous times-the harvest is still in full swing-my sunchokes are cresting 8′-and while there is a nip in the air during my 5am commute I can still pick tomatoes and peppers. It is a beautiful, magical time.

Today was also the final installment of a 6 month long intermittent training program I was participating in at work. Together with another 40 execs from our region, we got together 3-4 times to discuss career development, give/receive feedback and network. This is real Fortune 500 stuff that I tend to isolate from my blog, but during the sessions I (being me) had worked enough permaculture stuff into some of the discussions that 2 of the members of my group who were up from IL asked for an “eco-tour” of my property after we wrapped up.

We took the short version (under an hour) of the tour, and as I explained my permaculture guilds, rain barrels/gardens, bio-cisterns, and native plantings we grazed along the way. They were amazed that at almost every stop I was able to bend over and pluck a leaf off a plant, pop a tuber out of the ground, a berry from a bramble, or fruit from a vine. They commented on the simple elegance of the rubble rock walls and the frugality of the municipal wood chip mulches-and were then fascinated at the functionality of the rocks storing heat to serve as season extenders, and the mulch as a substrate for edible mushrooms and provide food for a complete soil ecosystem.

When I answered their question that I had harvested over 500# of produce this year and hoped for 2000# within 3 years they were stunned. They know I work the same jobs they do-they knew that they could do it too if they wanted to.

And that is what my HOA Permaculture is all about. Imagine if I hit my goal of 2000#. Imagine if my entire subdivision of 50 homes did the same (100,000#). Then take that out to my little village of 1200 with its 500 homes and you get darn near 1,000,000 pounds of food. All from homes that still have lawns and play systems and decks. From the street it would look like we all just have well landscaped homes. But a walk through that landscape and you realize that virtually everything is either edible, or supporting a plant that is.

David Holmgren has posited that we turn the problem of Suburbia into the potential solution for the feared food crunch of the coming century through Permaculture. In no other time have so many people owned land-cleared, arable, and irrigated land. The fact that we only farm Kentucky Bluegrass instead of apples and raspberries on our small holdings is only a matter of priorities and the luxury granted to us by cheap energy. The energy needed to completely revamp the infrastructure of our society may no longer exist-I believe we need to make lemons with our lemonade as we transition to a greener future. That Super Walmart looks alot less necesary if each hamlet is growing 1,000,000 pounds of real food…

Be the Change!

What can I do?

Being Eco Aware in a Fortune 500 company can be interesting. Some of it is great-everyone wants a test drive in your hybrid, but it can also get weird when they want to feel the texture of your organic hemp shirt. Last week in a lull during a meeting in a peer’s office while he took another call I filled the gap by sketching a rough diagram of The Funnel on his dry erase board and as he finished his call I proceeded to regale him with a 90 second version of my deep concern about the results of our current rampant consumerism and its effect on the population limits of our Earth mixing in various elements of ideas such as ecological footprint, Peak Oil, the effects of the melting of the Himalayan glaciers on water availability in India and China, etc. to such an extent that the overall effect was to stun my peer into silence. The Green Bug rears its head at odd times.

Last Friday one of the other supervisors was in that office and my buddy, who has left the diagram up, threw him under the bus by asking me to explain the “funnel” to him. After the inevitable stunned silence he asked me what that means for us. I explained my belief that if it gets that bad-the 1st world will be somewhat protected by our affluence-i.e. in the Depression there was not rampant starvation, just rampant poverty- but for the 3rd and 4th worlds they would not have such luxuries-water and food shortages could be acute with horrifying results given their population levels. He answered with the only real logical response: “What can I do?”

I was amazed to find that I couldn’t immediately answer. After working myself that deep into the Doom and Gloom, changing a few bulbs to CFL’s didn’t seem even remotely enough to offset water shortages on a continent wide scale. I gave it some thought and came up with a few macro level changes that called for more of a change in mindset than tweaking how you light your kitchen which is my typical answer when a friend asks for a way to live a little greener.

Buy Less: After talking so much about the rampant energy consumption, pollution and water shortages in China and India I feel strongly that exporting our pollution and resource use is an immoral act. It takes a lot of energy and water to make a Mattel Hot Wheel in China while at the same time pushing uncontrolled urbanization that is further eroding that region’s ability to feed itself. We cannot be sustainable until we learn to more live frugally. Cutting consumption impacts everything. It cuts environmental degradation from resource appropriation, cuts energy consumption and industrial pollution from unregulated manufacturing, and frees up money for more sustainable practices.

Buy Local: If we are to survive post Peak Oil and remain flexible enough to roll with the punches of our new self made climate we need to recreate village/regional economies. There is more patriotism to Buying American than in keeping Harley afloat. Here in Wisconsin it isn’t always easy to find local foods and goods year round, but by purchasing as close to home as possible we drive a local economy that encourages artisan skills that will be essential as we are forced to switch from a resource intensive economy and revert to a more knowledge based one. Factor in the massive resource and pollution savings of cutting several thousand miles of transportation off your goods and it’s a no brainer.

Conserve Energy: This is usually where I start my Eco Evangelism. I have even made inroads with some die hard neo cons… energy is expensive and even if you don’t believe in Peak Oil or Climate Change, money is a powerful persuader. I figure we are saving $6-8k annually compared to where we were before going green. On a more sustainable level, due to the massive energy losses in transmission lines for electricity or in shipping oil half way around the globe, cutting energy use at the source pays back immense dividends in resource and pollution savings. Hybrids, CFL’s, programmable thermostats, caulking, etc can have incredible effects. Kick it out another level and factor in the built environment with LEED standards, New Urbanism development, and efficient mass transit and hope becomes a reality. We need that energy to invest in a different production infrastructure and may only have a generation to do it.

Buy Organic: I rarely push the health benefits of buying organic. The science can be divisive and no one wants to think they have been slowing poisoning themselves or their children so it throws up walls for them. Instead I push the undeniable environmental consequences of our current industrial agriculture. We are losing our topsoil to the wind while we poison our groundwater–two resources that we literally cannot live without. Almost more terrifying to me is that with the passing of the current generation of farmers (mean age of over 55) we will be losing untold generations worth of accumulated oral traditions of “organic” farming. Our grandparents learned from their fathers before them how to farm successfully without petroleum. Their children switched to a more industrial model and the majority of young farmers today have never farmed any other way. Anyone who has ever tried to start a garden knows that nature is a firm taskmistress and does not brook mistakes-and even Eliot Coleman can only teach you so much from a book. We need that knowledge to be passed on as it always has-through experience: how to hold a hoe, when to plant in your county, and with those skills to have the seeds that have been painstakingly saved for generations to thrive in that exact farm.

I still firmly believe that coming off too strong will not help give others the impetus to change, but that doesn’t mean that we have the right to shy away from the realities of the logical conclusions of our society’s path. Know your audience, if all you can do is convince your neo con neighbor to buy a CFL so he can save a buck, then we are several hundred Kwh to the better. But for those that are further along the change curve in accepting reality giving them real tools to help them reorient their lives is critical if we are to build the amount of grassroots momentum to literally save the world.

Hubris got us into this mess, it just might be the only thing to get us out.

Be the change!

Resources
Simple Living:
The Simple Living Network “Transform your life by learning to do more with less”

Going Local:
Local Harvest “real food, real farmers, real community”
Food Routes “do you know where you food comes from?”
100 Mile Challenge This can be tough if you live in Zone 4, but competition is inspiring!

Energy Conservation:
Energy Savers If you can’t trust the government, who can you trust? Don’t answer that…
LEED Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
Smart Growth Ways to recreate suburbia and communities

Organic:
Organic Consumers Association Good one stop shop

The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift by Andres R. Edwards

A Book Review

Recent intellectual stints into the Big Picture of Sustainability trying to place thoughts within the current destructive economic and industrial paradigms had me searching for some additional perspectives on the matter. Luckily a quick Amazon search led to me to this incredibly useful little book that details the history of Sustainability over the past 200 years focusing most intently on the past 20 years as momentum picked up. Of interest to many readers will be the incredibly detailed Resource Section that includes 28 pages of Organizations, followed by a 15 page annotated bibliography. A true Who’s Who of Sustainability today that is a great launching point for additional study.

Edwards traces the history of Sustainability back to the early 19^th century and the Transcendentalist of America. Emerson’s essays on Nature and Self Reliance are as poignant today as ever, and where would we be without Thoreau’s Walden and Civil Disobedience? Of special importance to Edward’s was the Transcendentalist’s connection between Nature and human wisdom and spirituality through its symbolism and connection with the Divine. The role of Nature as teacher was further developed in the early 20^th century Naturalists, of which John Muir is perhaps the most notable. Muir’s works Our National Parks and Yosemite focused more on the systemic nature of Nature and also laid out the basis for conservation by detailing the impacts of ranching on our wild lands. Aldo Leopold picked up the torch in the 1940’s by intimately tying ecosystems to our survival in The Sand County Almanac and was one of the clearest voices establishing Conservation as an ethical decision. Twenty years later, Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring roused a sleeping nation to the dangers of our New World Order and generated enough momentum to found the Environmental Movement culminating in Senator Gaylord Nelson’s first Earth Day in 1970. This movement reached critical mass with the passage of such landmark legislation as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the establishment of the EPA. All of this led up to the first landmark event on a Global scale in 1972 with the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Sweden. These notables all led up to what Edward’s considers the birth of Sustainability with the World Commission on Environment and Development report in 1987 which defined Sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

Edward’s differentiates between the Environmental Movements of the 1960’s/70’s which were issue based and typically led by charismatic leaders like Carson and Nelson with the Sustainability Revolution that he sees today which is much broader and lacks one central figurehead. Edward’s identifies a Core of Sustainability with the following 3 categories:

• Ecology/Environment This “E” is framed by three broad concepts: long term not short term thinking, a focus on the systemic understanding of ecosystems critical importance to human life, and finally the strongly held belief that there are limits to the amount of life that the ecosystems of the Earth can support.

• Economy/Employment Here is where Edwards begin to grow beyond the traditional Environmental movement. Sustainability focuses on the critical importance of secure, employment and economies that do not overstretch their ecosystems. There isn’t a community on Earth that can be truly sustainable if they cannot meet the needs of their citizens-impoverished Africans will harvest bushmeat and American farmers will turn more and more to industrial agriculture without a viable economic alternative to feed their families and pay their bills.

• Equity/Equality Without going all socialist here, the world may not currently have a resource shortage, but it certainly has a distribution problem. Ok, I’ll go a little socialist-moral issues such as famines and homelessness are all the more terrible because they are preventable if we could just redistribute the wealth/resources already in use in our society. Edwards also stresses community building in this “E” recognizing the inherent importance in concern and cooperation with ones neighbor. “At a fundamental level, members of a sustainable community understand that the well being of the individual and the larger community are interdependent.”

The bulk of Edwards’ book is spent flushing out these 3 categories and providing actual organizations or conferences that address them specifically. Edward’s also spends a lot of time defining Principles for each category and looking for common themes. In Chapter 2 he delves into Sustainability and Community with great examples like the inspiring Netherlands National Environmental Policy Plan (NEPP) and the Earth Charter. Further chapters devote time to Commerce, Ecological Design, Natural Resources, and the Biosphere. Subsequent chapters spend several pages each with an organization that is on the leading edge of driving change in their area of expertise providing fantastic examples of how we can all “be the change we wish to see in the world”.

Edwards concludes the book by identifying Seven Common Themes that all the detailed organizations have in common:

• Stewardship

• Respect for limits

• Interdependance

• Economic restructuring

• Fair Distribution

• Intergenerational perspective

• Nature as a model and teacher

These themes can be seen at work in areas such as Curitiba, Brazil and Kerala, India where governments are literally changing the way that cities and regions are run to create ore sustainable paradigms. Edwards concludes that “Sustainability offers the possibility of brining social change values into the mainstream and pushing the mainstream toward sustainable practices.” I will leave you with a beautiful quote from the Netherlands’s Green Plan NEPP4:

“All humans seek to survive, to live healthily and to live meaningfully. This still does not add up to a sustainable life however. A sustainable life involves more: a realization, for example, that humans are not the only living creatures on the planet and must respect all life. And it involves, for example, the shouldering of responsibilities in a range of different roles: as citizens, as producer, as consumer or as citizen of the world. By bearing responsibility for the social, economic and ecological consequences of our actions both now and later… …we will bring sustainable development closer.”

Andres Edwards’ book is a great primer for anyone seeking to become more intimately aware of the myriad diverse initiatives in action across our globe as we try to dig ourselves out of this mess. The Doom and Gloom is easy, Edwards provides real proof that there are hundreds of thousands of intelligent, inspiring people fighting for a better way across the globe. Learning from them is a both a necessity and a pleasure.

Interested in learning more? Here are some great links and books included in the Resources section of the book:

The Earth Policy Insitute

The International Institute for Sustainable Development

Natural Capitalism Solutions

The Rocky Mountain Institute

The Global Footprint Network

The Natural Step

The Land Institute

US Green Building Council

The Permaculture Research Institute

Should Reads:

Natural Capitalism

Cradle to Cradle

Biomimicry

Permaculture: Pathways and Principles

The Natural Step for Communities

The fact that biomass energy production is getting half page coverage in the business section of the USA Today shows just how far we’ve come.� Biomass is my new darling.� Why?� For starters we can retrofit coal plants to burn it, it’s�renewable (if we keep consumption down), it provides consistent base power to offset the peaks and valley’s of solar/wind,�and it lends itself very well to local production.� In fact one of the “downsides” in the article-that they must be placed within 75 miles of supply sounds like good sense to me!� Also biomass is amazingly versatile.� Everything from switchgrass to wood chips and garbage to turkey poop can be turned into electricity.� Add in a co-generation plant where you are using the “waste” heat to heat homes and business and you can get efficiencies�of 80-90+%�and�the fuel is�carbon neutral.� Why aren’t we subsidising this instead of coal?

Even better, you can break it down even more local.� Methane digesters are becoming very popular at dairies here in Wisconsin and moving to California and Vermont as well.� While the ones getting the headlines are for unsustainable 5000+ cow dairies, the principle works just as well on a small family farm with 30 head.� Don’t have a farm?� Me either, dammit, but we can still play.� Woodburners are a great alternative to natural gas for those in more rural areas as they provide both heat and hot water in an clean (post 2005 models) efficient manner.� Homeowners in town can install woodstoves or beautiful masonry stoves�to offset your fossil fuel needs significantly, and with good solar gain from a south exposure perhaps entirely.

Biomass isn’t a catch all and still depends on either felling trees, landfills, or unsustainable agriculture but it is a heck of alot better than coal and gets us on the right track.� Global Warming is huge and we need a diverse array of tools in our box if we are to affect meaningful change to protect our kids.� Know someone at work not on board with the reality of climate change?� Ask them to compare the cost of a cord of wood or a ton of pellets to natural gas or heating oil.� Energy efficiency makes good economic sense too.

Be the change!

-Beo

Spied on page 3 of Michael Phillps The Apple Grower:

“Customer Pledge:

Each of us shares in the lasting success of local agriculture.� No longer will I assume food just appears at the supermarket regardless of the season.� The local growers that provide my sustenance are people I need to know.� I understand their livelihood is intimately connected to the vibrancy of my community.� It matters to me how my food is grown and that it comes from nearby.� Paying full worth for a life-enhancing food supply is more than a matter of shopping for the lowest price.� Making agriculture sustainable is as much my responsibility as the farmer’s.”

Let it be so.

-Beo

Many of us have come to our Eco Awareness late in life. This may explain why in so many cases, and certainly in mine, we have a kind of Born Again fervency to our beliefs. But it those journey’s that can be so helpful in understanding and helping others to “convert”. So here is the story of one man’s journey from Complacency to Advocacy.

I graduated from the University of South Dakota with a BA in Philosophy, specializing-as much as one can in an undergrad- in military ethics for no reason other than that is where my interests took me. I figured a career would find me-and because I am lucky, it did. It was in college that I became addicted to speed, first in motorcycles, later after attending a SCCA Pro Rally in Houghton, MI it morphed into all wheel drive turbocharged imports. So despite starting a family I sold my practical Jetta Wolfsburg and purchased a well used ’92 Eclipse GSX, dubbed it the Smoke Banshee, and ventured yet again on the quest to prove that PHD toting engineers with million dollar R&D budgets really have no idea what they are doing, and that I can better. So I gutted the interior, modified the turbo, suspension, etc until I could outrace vehicles ten times as expensive. You see I have this particular mania that forces me to leave no stone unturned. I have modified every vehicle I have every owned. Every repair is viewed as an opportunity, not to fix, but to improve. As it turns out, this particular arrogance (I prefer confidence) is easily applied to virtually anything: houses, gardens, etc. – but I get ahead of myself. I loved that car as only a nut can, it was my Falcon and virtually every man dreams of being Han Solo.

But then there was that family thing going on. It wasn’t that we needed the space to haul our son around, we had a Forester for that and it fit the bill perfectly. Nor was it money, the Eclipse was dirt cheap and my blood and sweat were free. No, it was that blasted conscious of mine popping up. You see somewhere along the way I had acquired a distinct love of nature-my parents are from good WI farming stock, and I spent my youth fishing and walking the woods with my father. I learned to track deer in the forest preserves of suburban Chicago (not too hard as they are all but tame) and later would count coo on elk, big horn, and bison in Custer State Park in SD. This love was fanned into full blown environmentalism during the courtship of my wife. As a practicing Wiccan she saw things differently than I ever had, and I wanted to know what she knew, so as to know her better. Tack on top of this my latent tendency to take things to logical conclusions that had been tempered to a ringing steel in my philosophy lessons and I had serious misgivings about breaking the 400hp mark of my Eclipse. See, power takes fuel, and the best catalytic converter in the world can’t make a 400hp rally car Green. Was my dream car making the world a better place for my son? Um… no. Hell no, in fact.

So despite having just installed a kevlar racing seat and 4 point harness, I sold it to an aspiring freak from MI, who bought it sight unseen. I love autotrader. Still stinging from the loss, but empowered by doing the Right Thing I went straight to my Honda Dealer and blunked down coin on a blue Civic VP sedan. We looked at a hybrid, but $19k was too rich for our blood and the VP gets 37 mpg every tank no matter what and rated an ULEV. Plus blue is my son’s favorite color. I kept that car for two years, but it had no soul. I have always, for good or ill, felt that a car says alot about you. As one of the single largest purchases of your life it makes a statement about what you hold dear. And while I switched to the Civic for good reasons-it wasn’t, well… me. So with greater regularity I was searching the web for another race car. See I have few hobbies-rather introverted, fiercely devoted to my wife, I spend virtually all my free time at home and don’t regret a minute of it. I don’t golf, loathe television and major sports, and rarely go out for a beer – preferring to read at home or play with the kids. What hobbies I do have I follow with passion. Prior to autoracing it was MTB racing and backpacking. Both those became less practical with my new family, but motorsports was something we could still do together, and my son was pretty good at handing me tools in the garage-good Father Son stuff right? Sounded like rationalizing to me too.

Without the racing I had very little outlet and it was eating at me. Recent promotions and my wife reentering the workforce, albeit part-time so one of us could stay home with our now two children had given us some free money. When I saw a black Evolution 8, my dreamiest of dream cars, for $4k under blue book I cracked and did something rash. My son cried for 20 minutes as we drove away from his beloved blue Civic, but I had my dream car. 300hp, carbon fiber aerodynamics, and a suspension that will literally out handle some Ferrari’s. And it was mine.

For a time. Until now I had been able to meet or beat the EPA on virtually every car I had owned. Even the Banshee could get over 30mpg if I stayed off the turbo and the Forester was good for 31 mpg on the trips to the inlaws in SD. The EPA says the Evo can do 27ish. Even driving it like my Civic I only ever saw 22mpg, and when I was racing or testing out new settings it got down to the very low teens. Driven daily, as it was, I was seeing 19-20. That meant filling up weekly with premium. Combined with gas at/over the $3 mark this was all but eliminating my annual budget for modifications and race fees. Tacked onto that the rising natural gas prices and our monthly budget was losing its wiggle room. This last January we did a 3, 5, & 10 year budget, something we started doing when we had kids. That extra money wasn’t just taking the mods away from the Evo. It was making the chance of taking the kids to Glacier National Park next year doubtful, and the dream of us buying a 3-5 acre plot in 3 years almost impossible. My dream had become the family’s dream and that was wrong.

Then there was my little 4 year old conscious. We have raised our son to hold certain things dear, but to make his own decisions as much as a 4 yr old can. When he asks why some people drive Big Trucks, we explain that they may need to tow heavy trailers, etc. or maybe they just like to have a big vehicle. When asked why we drove a Forester (our 3rd…) instead, we explained that we didn’t need to tow anything big, and that all four of us fit in just fine. Anything bigger would be wasteful. This was becoming a theme in our teaching, fitting in with why our house isn’t as warm as our friends, why we don’t eat meat, and why Daddy’s lawn mover has no engine. So when, in a particularly thoughtful moment my son asked me if the Evo was wasteful…. it hit home. How do you explain rationalized compromises to a 4 year old? I tried, but it was weak and we both knew it. The seed was planted-and given the long term budget situation it fell on fertile ground.

Within a month of our budget work-really only 2 weeks- I was haggling over the phone with Honda Motowerks in LaCrosse WI on a 2001 Insight Hybrid. Impulsive? Heck yeah, but so was buying the dang Evo in the first place. The reasoning being that the Insight had soul, it was quirky enough for me, and had enough cutting edge junk stuffed into it to make the Evo seem archaic. Add into it that it is the most fuel efficient car sold in this country and I was All In. The Pod came home this past February: Blue, 58,000 miles and a lifetime mileage a respectable (my how perspective changes!) 58.9mpg. As importantly-the move is saving over 10,000 lbs of CO2 annually. I had made a quantifiable impact on my impact.

To date my best one way commute mileage is an astounding 92.8 over 19 miles, and I see mid 60’s on every tank. Loves it.

However, it has always been the dichotomy that I have loved about myself. The SCCA Eco Freak doesn’t fit into a pigeon hole. The discussions at work revolved around how the Evo had kept me sane-kept me safely back from The Edge. With the Evo gone-where was the anchor in the “Real World”? I remember a discussion with my wife on the way home from the Honda dealership-something about asking her to look back over our shoulders. See That? It was The Edge and this car just drop kicked us off it.

I am interested to see where the plunge takes me and look forward to sharing the trip with you.

Our municipality is currently undergoing the initial phases of a installing a new kind of utility-for runoff.� These utilities are popping up across the country to meet the growing municipal expenses associated with new state and federal laws designed to control the quantity and quality of runoff.� A rather general unit called an equivalent runoff unit (ERU)is agreed upon and typically matches the�average runoff from a residential unit in the municipality.� A fee is then assigned to each ERU, and range from $15-$100 annually for a residential owner.� The incentive for the homeowner is that previously all capital improvements to stormwater facilities came out of the general funds typically through property taxes.� This unduly taxes the homeowner as most property taxes come from them, where most runoff comes from large commercial and industrial properties.

A search of existing stormwater utilities will show that most are designed to simply offset the cost of the improvements-a water utility doesn’t try to get you to conserve water right?� What if it did?� That is what we will be looking into.� We hope to set our utility up�to include�a very aggressive credit program�to encourage stakeholders to massively reduce or eliminate their runoff-through raingardens, bioswales, and permeable pavements.� Revenues generated will go not only to improving the means to control floods, but to infrastructure to reduce the chance of having floods at all.� We hope to set up a rebate/grant program for stormwater best management practices to help reduce the footprint of our entire community.� Will it work?� A recent bioswale at the Miller Brewing Company achieved 0% runoff for 2005…the technology exists-so all we need now is the political will!

-Beo�

I am blessed with a stable job which pays generously, and has little take-home stress or travel requirements. It also allows me the almost unthinkable benefit of working only 4 day weeks-it’s like living in France without the free health care. However, working as a Distribution Executive for a Big Box Retailer, even for one of the “better” ones, contrasts in many ways with my values in sustainability. Very often I find myself thinking of the old adage: “find something you love to do, and then find a way to make money doing it”. Unfortunately, like many Americans we have backed ourselves into a financial situation that, at least for the short term, precludes us from bowing out and pursuing a less lucrative, but more meaningful career. Yet, like many of the Eco Aware, I feel compelled to do more-to Be the Change I wish to see in the world.

When we first moved into our current home 3 years ago, we were in the first wave of a new subdivision. The house is nice enough, built to high standards and is remarkably fuel efficient. It is south facing for mild passive solar (furnace mostly runs at night), high efficiency appliances, good insulation, and about 25% smaller than the (undeniably huge) “average” American home. But none of this removes the fact that we are literally urban sprawl. So to help us assuage that guilt, we attacked our .5 acres with the explicit intent to live as lightly as we can. A big factor in that has been my growing interest in Permaculture and site design. When we moved in we had a blank slate-literally no lawn at all. We had neither the time, nor money to go completely lawn free, and the HOA wouldn’t let us plant prairie everywhere. But we blocked out a full third of the yard for perennial and vegetable beds, installed a rain garden, 4 rain barrels, and in total planted 13 trees that first year. By the second year the perennials were coming in strong and we began to notice that when talking with other members of our community about where we lived, they invariably commented “oh, the house with beautiful gardens!” With Eco Mama’s eye for color and form, and my insatiable need to dig and plant we had discovered a talent to create sustainable, beautiful, and low impact gardens. The seed for Someday Gardens was planted.

As we waited for our own Someday, when we could live a simpler life on a small acreage in a purpose built Green Home, we decided to start a Cottage Business installing ecological gardens, native plantings, and rain gardens to help some of neighbors lessen the footprint of their lawns. When we bid out our own new rain garden, it came to $5000, a staggering price that I certainly couldn’t afford, and I doubted any of my neighbors would pay either. One of the goals of Someday Gardens is to provide ecological gardening services at prices regular people can afford. We are not trying to get rich; we are doing this because we care about changing the world which means getting as many of these gardens out there as we can. My financial goals of the business will be to offset any tools needed (such as our new small trailer), and to perhaps offset the moderate yearly expenses of my own gardens. A good example is the rain barrels that we offer. They are constructed in our garage from Oak Whiskey barrels that I source from a local brewery. Because I am using what is essentially a manufacturing waste product, I get them cheap. Oak Rain Barrels typically sell for $175 or more. Mine are $60. Not counting the time it takes to pick them up (about 7 miles away) I can make 2-3 an hour. So I can keep up with demand and only work an hour or so a week, and still make about $30/hr doing something I love.

The all sounds great, but will it work? Probably, since we are starting small, have very simple goals, and under $1000 invested we have very little to lose. Back to our pricing strategy. The reason I can charge $130 less for rain barrels is that I have almost zero overhead. This is absolutely critical for any Cottage Business. As long as I can cover the cost of my supplies, I am very close to running in the black right off the bat. Warehousing my standing inventory of 4 Rain Barrels is accomplished easily in the garage. My distribution network is handled by our trusty Subaru Forester equipped with our only capital investment: a 5×8 utility trailer I bought for $650. Carrying over my “simple is better” yard work philosophy, all but the largest installs will be done exclusively with hand tools (zero emmisions!), most of which I already own-again no over head. As this will be a weekend only affair I doubt that Someday Gardens will ever account for more than 10% of our gross income-but that 10% gets us significantly further along to our “dream house” than we would have been, and we are doing real, tangible good with every sale.

Cottage Businesses are critical to the growth of local, not global, economies. My gardening business is not very labor or supply intensive limiting my larger impact, but I have already approached several community members as “subcontractors” who have heavy equipment I will need such as seed drills for prairie installs, or skid steers for no-mow lawn installations. More interconnected Cottage Businesses help keep the wheels of a local economy rolling. A cottage business that makes artisan breads may keep a local health food store in business thru purchasing ingredients from them; an idyllic example could be home spinners sourcing fiber from local small farms, selling to other small weavers to produce clothes to be sold in a local shop. Of course, this is how a huge portion of the American economy used to work before cheap energy changed the playing field. Better yet, many cottage business transactions need not involve the exchange of money at all-bartering is viable at this scale. My last rain barrel was traded for organic flour, peanut butter, and eggs with a small local organic grocer.

Starting a business isn’t for everyone, but if you have a dream and some extra time you might consider giving it a go. Remember to start very small and to take it in steps; buy as little as possible to limit your liability and set small, attainable goals. Cottage Industries may not be the solution to our current economic situation, but I believe that they can help us soften the landing of Peak Oil as it steers us to a more local, artisan based economy that values quality over quantity and builds connections among neighbors instead of the at the WTO.
Be the Change!

For more inspirational stories, please visit Beo’s site at: http://www.onestraw.wordpress.com/

To visit his green cottage business, Someday Gardens, please click here!  

Imagine if to go wireless, mobile phones companies made you purchase a kit to install your own tower for $8k, and then shipped you�a box of minuscule widgets and a soldering gun that you have to somehow assemble into a Razor.� I’m pretty sure the market density of cell phones would be about as�weak as that of PV, because that is the marketing strategy that Solar Energy is currently operating under.

Now imagine you could sign a contract, and have clean, green solar energy installed at your home by professionals and pay a nominal monthly fee based on your usage with no initial outlay.� Tempted?�The Citizenre�Corporation�is counting on it.� What they are offering is the chance for average Americans to have the privilege of a Solar Array on their roof.� According to their website it will be as simple as having one of their technicians do a site assessment, the signing of a 1,5,or 25 year forward rental agreement (FRA) and�a safety deposit of $500 (reasonable for $25k in equipment!).� At the signing of the agreement you will lock in your current cost per�KwH and pay Citizenre�that amount for any watts�their equipment sends into your home thru an interconnected inverter.� For anyone who is remotely Eco Aware this is Earth Shattering.� But that elation is followed immediately by “where’s the catch?”.� Talk to a REnU rep and they answer simply “there is none!”.� Hmmm.

Let’s dig a little deeper into Citzenre Corp.� It helps to think of them not as a marketing firm, but as a PV Manufacturer, which is exactly what they want to be.� They are in the process of building a massive facility capable of producing 500MW of cells annually.� That would make it the single largest PV plant in the world, capable of supply 100,000 homes a year- doubling the current amount of PV in the�US in their first full year.�� If you are going to invest in�facility of this incredible scale you will need a massive market… or create one.

That helps, but I am still not convinced.� Now let’s think of Citizenre as a PV Energy Supplier that wants to produce 500MW of power annually.� That many PV Cells takes a massive site with all its inherent capital costs, and then you only get the chance to sell at wholesale energy rates.� It really isn’t a workable model.� But look at what Citizenre is doing.� They need no site-they have your house.� They need no distribution network-your utility neatly supplies one.� And they sell the energy straight to you for retail prices.� This is starting to make sense.

A couple of other neat tricks that Citizenre is�using are the fact that they are cutting out the middleman-heck they are cutting out everyone.� They want to make their own�SG-si silicon�in house, install their own arrays with a 100 dealer franchise network, and are building a massive sales network.� Another cool option is that Citizenre will amass an amazing amount of�Capital in Carbon markets such as the new CCX�and also in supplying other old school energy producers with Renewable Energy Credit’s (REC’s) to offset their inability to Go Green.

Overall it seems just crazy and innovative enough to work.� But this kind of hubris takes massive cash outlays and thus far Citizenre is keeping their cards close.� Plus they have already signed up almost 3000 customers, but their factory won’t even be on line for another 10 months at least.� It seems that everything about Citizenre is in the future tense, and that is where the anxiety sets in.

If its legit, and they can pull it off, it could change our world forever.� Go back�15 years and ask someone if they think that in 2007 everyone will be paying $50/mo for cute little wireless phones that you can check your email (what’s that?) on.� We live in an age of revolutions-seemingly anything is possible.

Stay tuned to Groovy Green for more�as this story unfolds.

-Beo