My Eco Movie Five

Life is Good-Sustainable Living

Permaculture

Permaculture is a design to create a sustainable way of living.

Permaculture Design Certificate- (PDC) is a course to learn how to design a permaculture property.

Swale navigates in contour lines, so water efficiently soaks into the soil.

Warm compost. You can keep earthworms in a tub to make fertilizers from the compost.

You can also make 18-day manure by turning the compost faster.

Chicken Tractor: Mobile chicken coop used to weed.

Self-Building

• According to Alex Hobbs, you can learn about building from someone or self-teach yourself, a self-builder who has settled in the village- Starlight Community. Alex taught himself about a building technique; Slip form wall building is quick and reliable and has the advantage of, which he just tried.
• He has an energy control system: that controls solar energy and a backup generator with batteries, charger, and inverter.
• He also has an outdoor bathtub, where a fire is made under the tub to heat the water.
• He has converted an excess water tank into a swimming pool.
• A green tap/ warm compost separates food and water from kitchen waste, turning food waste into soil, which after six months, you dig the dirt out and throw into the garden.
• He uses a composite toilet to reduce water usage and facilitate the growth of non-edible plants around his home area from the compost.
• However, Alex advises that self-building in the village sometimes is not cost-effective and requires a lot of work, and it’s better to build to rent first.
• Another self-builder, Peter Herriot, who has also settled in the village, has a solar electric system consisting of 3 panels- 140 Watts, enough to run a washing machine provided it’s sunny. During cloud weather, he uses a storage battery.

Community Living

• Carsten Sundby Nielson, a resident and a co-founder of the Belbunya community, says that community living is about modeling sustainable living and caring for humanity. Community awareness and core values have helped the community thrive since being established in 2009.
• Another example of sustainable living is the WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), a worldwide work exchange network.
• Kenton Zerbin, a wwoofer at Zaytuna from Canada, helps with the morning chores in aiding food production at the farm.

These programs are helped participants to envision living sustainably, like Andrew Schonfeldt, a PDC student from Australia, who aims to live peacefully and respect his place, hoping the rest of the world can do that.

Visions

Kenton Zerbin envisions that humans can live within the environment as a part of it, not apart from it, and they can increase its health and biodiversity.