Sustainable Route

Brad Lancaster, Part 2

Published by Ashley on February 27, 2007 in Building, Community, Conservation, Education, Food and Water. 2 Comments

Here’s a note from Brad:

“In an average year with 12 inches of rainfall, we harvest over 100,000 gallons of rain a year within the soils of our 1/8-acre site and the surrounding public right-of-way. Yet we (household of 3 people, plus many more using our neighborhood laundromat) use less than 20,000 gallons of municipal/well water a year. This way we give back or infiltrate more water into the community watershed than we take/pump out. That’s key to water sustainability. Give back more than you take.”

Some words to ponder:

Heat Island Effect: is a metropolitan area which is significantly warmer than its surroundings.
Bioremediation: any process that uses microorganisms, fungi, green plants or their enzymes to return the environment altered by contaminants to its original condition.

Brad’s website: harvestingrainwater.com

desertharvesters.org

Brad Lancaster

Published by Ashley on February 27, 2007 in Building, Community, Conservation, Education, Food and Water. 2 Comments

Brad is like the Willy Wonka of the desert! In Tucson he transformed his urban land into a food producing, wildlife attracting, Sonoran desert island. He has also working to plant over a thousand trees in his neighborhood which act as natural air conditioners (very important in the desert). I’m posting a few videos with brad because I’m fascinated by rainwater harvesting and I’m hoping you are too!

In this video he explains how they harvest rainwater off of their own street.

Way more info on Brad’s Site:

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

Behind the Scenes

Published by Ashley on February 26, 2007 in Community and Education. 0 Comments

Ryanne Hodson, Ashley’s sister, has a fantastic website also about sustainable issues:

RyanIsHungry.com

She did an interview with Ash, check it out!

Andrew Millison

Published by Ashley on February 25, 2007 in Building, Community, Conservation, Education, Food and Water. 2 Comments

I first met Andrew when I attended Ecosa back in 2005. That was my first exposure to permaculture and rainwater harvesting. Andrew has been living in, and working on, a project in Prescott called the Eco Hood. He also has been working with Dharma Dog Pictures to produce videoblogs about sustainability (which you can get to via andrew’s site: http://www.millisonecological.com/).

Here are some resources for some words in the post:

Watershed: is a region of land where water from rain or snow melt drains downhill into a body of water, such as a river, lake, dam, estuary, wetland, sea or ocean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_basin

Permaculture: is both a lifestyle ethic as well as a design system which utilizes a systems thinking approach to create sustainable human habitats by analyzing and duplicating nature’s patterns (ecology).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/resources/permaculture-general-works/

Grey Water: Wash water from showers and sinks, excluding toilet and kitchen sink water which is black water.

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/resources/greywater-resources/

Bioremediation:any process that uses microorganisms, fungi, green plants or their enzymes to return the environment altered by contaminants to its original condition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioremediation

Dynamic Water Harvesting: Water Harvesting+ Permaculture

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

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Tom Bender

Published by Ashley on February 19, 2007 in Art, Building and Community. 0 Comments

We hung out with Tom Bender to talk about the spiritual side of sustainability and architecture.

Check out his site here:

TomBender.org

As well as his wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bender

Yestermorrow Design/Build School

Published by Ashley on February 17, 2007 in Art, Building, Business, Community and Education. 4 Comments

Yestermorrow has so many great classes from basic carpentry to designing your own house. I mashed together our interview with Dan Eckstein and some of the things we explored with him on Yestermorrow’s campus.

Replant New Orleans

Published by Ashley on February 14, 2007 in Business, Community, Education, Food and Water. 5 Comments

When we hit up N.O. we stayed with Hillary Strobel of Replant New Orleans.

Words-of-Use (as defined by wikipedia):

Bioremediation: any process that uses microorganisms, fungi, green plants or their enzymes to return the environment altered by contaminants to its original condition.

Mycoremediation: coined by Paul Stamets and refers specifically to the use of fungal mycelia in bioremediation.

Daryl Hannah did a great video with Paul Stamets about mycoremediation, totally worth a watch: http://www.dhlovelife.com/v2/show/archive/index24.html

Compost Tea: made by steeping compost in water, puts necessary microbes back into the soil

Food Security: a situation in which people do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.

We did anther video about food security if you haven’t seen it already: Food Share

Ecosa Institute

Published by Ashley on February 13, 2007 in Art, Building, Business, Community and Education. 3 Comments

I attended The Ecosa Institute in the Spring of 2005. It’s a ’sustainable’ design program, but as Tony points out in the video, they welcome a variety of people whether they are currently students or not. Ecosa focuses on real projects with real clients which doesn’t normally happen in architecture or design school. The most important experience I had there was meeting people who were actually doing things, which inspired me to go on this road trip and meet more people doing things!

Diane Wilson, Part Two

Published by Ashley on February 11, 2007 in Community, Conservation and Water. 1 Comment

Diane Wilson is the author of An Unreasonable Woman.

Check out part one below if you haven’t already!

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Diane Wilson, Part One

Published by Ashley on February 9, 2007 in Business, Conservation and Water. 3 Comments

Diane Wilson is the author of “An Unreasonable Woman”. We met up with her in Houston at a book signing and she talked about her incredible story. I read her book on our way to Texas and was floored by the events that took place. It reads like fiction but not an ounce of it is made up. I split this into two parts because I think she’s mesmerizing to listen to and it was hard to edit this one down into anything less.

Info about her book, click here.

Here are some links about Bhopal, India mentioned in the video, certainly worth a look-see:

Wikipedia: Bhopal Disaster

Yes Men, BBC Hoax Video

Yes Men, BBC Hoax Response Video

Also some other Links of interest:

Wikipedia: Dow Chemical Company