A Review of the Garbage Warrior Documentary
I had a chance recently to review a DVD called Garbage Warrior (trailer above) which is about the gentleman who started the Earthship movement and some of the trials and tribulations he experienced while building his houses. It focuses too on his ideas and techniques for using trash materials (aluminum cans, plastic and glass bottles) to create low cost energy efficient housing.
The houses he builds are amazing. They are off the grid houses which are passive solar heated and have greenhouses for food production in them. They deal with their own sewage and they collect water from the roofs to use in the house. They essentially are a one stop house that can be built and then it will live on forever on it’s own devices. They stated on the DVD that with the passive solar design and the thermal mass they are able to keep the house comfortable in the winter with temperatures of 30 below zero. It’s amazing.
Grow Food Party Crew
I came across this video today of a group of like-minded people working together to improve their lives. They call themselves the Grow Food Party Crew, a part of the Ojai Valley Green Coalition, their goal is to work together to build their local food shed and strengthen their community. They employ permaculture principles as their design approach to food production and land use. Projects include vegetable gardens, rainwater harvesting, as well as natural earthen structures. All the while having a great time doing it!
Why not start a Grow Food Party Crew in your neighborhood!
Utah Residents and Businesses Do Not Own the Water that Falls on Their Property
Like Colorado, Utah has laws on the books that make it illegal to collect rainwater that falls on one’s property. A Utah car dealer installed a cistern and rainwater collection system to feed a on-site car wash that has water recycling technology. This was in an attempt to “go green”. He was thwarted by the state government, and eventually had to work out a deal. Local residents who collect rainwater will not be bothered at this point because “there are bigger fish to fry”.
King Corn – Now Available via iTunes
The kind gentleman promoting King Corn (now out on DVD and iTunes) gave Groovy Green a complementary download of the movie via iTunes to review. I hadn’t seen the movie yet so it was a good opportunity to view the film and to try out watching a video via downloading.
First of all, downloading the film was fast and easy. I had iTunes downloading in the background while I caught up on my RSS feed, and was surprised by the speed in which the nearly 1 GB file was transferred. (For tech savvy readers: I have a high-speed cable connection, and run OS X 10.4.11 on a MacBook 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB RAM). iTunes provides a quick and easy way to watch a movie. I think that this would be especially worth it on a long flight or trip. However I think that that is about the only way that it beats owning the actual DVD. There is no (legitimate) way to burn a iTunes download to a DVD to watch on your TV. Bummer. The $14.99 iTunes price did beat out the lowest DVD price that I could find at $17.99. One last benefit of downloading rather than purchasing the DVD is that is a much “greener” option. No energy or materials used to produce the media, nor fuel or effort to ship it. I imagine the trend will continue until DVD’s are things of the past.
Enough about iTunes movies, what did I think about the flick? I liked it. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, here’s the summary:
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