Surrounded by gentle Welsh Hills, close to the Pembrokeshire National Park lies the little ecovillage “Tir Y Gafel”. Only since March 2010 all inhabitants live on its land, which is divided into nine eco-smallholdings, each of them operating rather independently from each other. All came for the natural lifestyle, but each has a different plan on how to live from the land. According to Welsh legislation 75% of one’s needs, need to come from the land. All will use hydro (and solar power) for electricity. Once the whole energy system is setup, an expected 20 000 Pound worth of power will be fed back to the electricity system. They will live in low-impact houses, which are currently being constructed from locally found building materials, such as old bricks and wood from their own forest or by reusing of existing materials such as wood planks from IBM acquired via eBay. After years of livestock on its fields, the soil is claimed as too poor for crops. Mono culture crops this is, for each single inhabitant has proven that vegetables grow here. The bio-diversity has already increased and more bird varieties have been spotted circling the land. They will supplement their income by making willow sculptures, furniture, farming fish and pigs and producing own cheeses.
In July I had the opportunity to spend a week volunteering there and experience community life up close. Hoppi, the main contact for volunteers did a great job in organising and so I was able to help out on several pots, learning different things from stripping trees, cleaning bricks, liming a round house, repairing a water way and chopping firewood. Others helped the beekeeper to find the queen or put the reciprocal roof onto a roundhouse. We were six volunteers in total and a nice bunch of people – everybody coming from a different angle. I learned alot in terms of alternative constructions, saw an example of a community and had lots of interesting conversations.
The inhabitants are people like all of us, they came because it was their childhood dream or because of a very environmental consciousness or the urge for a change in their life. They might have a little bit of experience as hobby gardeners or hobby furniture makers, but all have lots to learn still and I admire their courage. One thing that stood out for me was a very strong sense of the motto Learning by doing: “If the roundhouse gets a crack, well then we have to fix it. Next time we will know what to do different.”
The ecovillage is part of the Lammas Project, which aims to show that there are sustainable solutions to the challenges of climate change, peak oil and rural regeneration. There will be also a community hub building that allows others to learn about this kind of lifestyle and benefit from lessons learned at Tir Y Gafel.
All the best to all plot holders and thanks for a great week,
Sylvia
PS: For all who would like to visit themselves. There are guided tours offered and another volunteer week is coming up in September, just subscribe to the Lammas mailing list to be kept up-to-date.
One of our contacts from EUROPEN recommended this video which reflects in a viral – web friendly way the purpose of packaging.
When it comes to discussing sustainability and product development, packaging is often seen as an easy target for policy makers. There’s a public perception that packaging equals waste. So the more packaging, the more waste is being created. Only few people take into account that packaging also prevents waste and keeps the product safe in a purposeful way (if designed smartly).
Have a look at the video clip below developed by Elipso (the French plastic & flexible packaging association) that addresses this topic.
Have you ever been in a conversation and got tired of the other person complaining all the time?
Sometimes it seems to be a popular nation-wide sport, complaining about what others did or did not do, about how bad the world is, but no of course none of us could change the world anyway.
But then sometimes you come across these little projects initiated by a few creative people and you just think: “This is really neat!”
One of those initiatives is Easy Sunday‘s. It’s a simple idea and it works. Four colleagues (of mine actually) got together and founded Easy Sunday’s. This was almost a year ago, since then they cook and bake and prepare food about once a month to then invite friends and everybody else to join them for a brunch on Sunday’s each time at a different location in Brussels.
Everybody that enjoys the food and drinks donates a bit of money, which then goes to a good cause, be it to buy school supplies for a Moroccan school, supporting handicapped babies in Vietnam or like this coming Sunday to support children with severe heart problems. Will you come too on Valentine’s Day?
For more info check their site, you can also sign up on Facebook
We’re calling on people around the world to organize an action on October 24 incorporating the number 350 at an iconic place in their community, and then upload a photo of their event to 350.org website.
And what does this 350 number even mean?
350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide—measured in “Parts Per Million” in our atmosphere. 350 PPM—it’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change.
After a long trip we finally arrived in Metz with our installation. The setup went faster than planned and also a big projector was put in place to project our e-tree animation on the wall of a big school. Everything seemed to go fine except for the Internet connection.
The e-tree project however depends on an internet connection since the animation is accessible via a website and connected with a twitter account.
After several hours of trying different connections, chasing the technical team and getting help from many different people, the official starting time of our project had passed and the stress level was rising. Since France Telecom was not willing to come and fix the problem someone had the idea of ringing doorbells at the nearby houses to see if anyone had a wifi connection we could use. After the second try it worked. A very kind neighbour came down to help us out with his connections – he even agreed to have a 100m cable being thrown from his balcony so we could get a direct connection at our both.
One hour later we finally had a good Internet connection and people could enjoy the animation. What a night! Luckily things went much smoother the day after in Brussels and since we were lucky with our location the tree was almost constantly occupied. During the 2 events over 700 messages where written on the e-tree ranging from simple expressions and messages to friends to thoughtful comments on world peace and philosophy. Try it yourself!
Here an interview that was done on our way between Metz & Brussels:
And here a video showing the e-tree in action in Metz:
I would like to invite you all to a multimedia installation that I’m putting in place with a group of artists. E-tree is an interactive project that will take place at the Nuit Blanche of Metz and Brussels the 2nd and 3rd of October 2009.
Visitors and people from the web will be able to insert text to our system, which will make a tree grow and messages will be visible on Twitter.
You can join us online the day we make the performance and participate online on the growing of the e-Tree.
Join us and express your own ideas!
Wanna see what other people write? Please follow: http://twitter.com/e_tree on Twitter
Practical info:
Metz: 02 October 2009 20pm – 02 am CET Lycée Louis Vincent (Metz, France)
Brussels: 03 October 2009 20pm – 02 am Mont des Arts/near the music museum (Bruxelles, Belgium)
For more info on this project, please visit www.e-tree.eu
The project team:
Jesús Azogue
Mira Bangel
Inge Mestdagh
Thomas Popovits
Steven Ramsdonck
David Cammaerts
James Davy
…and many nice people that are supporting us
The Age of Stupid is the new cinema documentary from the Director of ‘McLibel’ and the Producer of the Oscar-winning ‘One Day in September’. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching ‘archive’ footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change while we had the chance?
the first successful film dramatisation of climate change will open
The global premiere of The Age of Stupid will begin in New York on September 21st and move on to over 40 countries on September 22nd. It will also be streamed live online for those without screenings in their area. Look for a screening of the film near you – here.
Einstein is said to have remarked: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The new Happy Planet Index Report indicates that something like this could be driving the religion of endless growth, one of the central pillars of traditional economic thinking.
Driven by evolutionary instincts, which the writers of the Bible documented so well by letting God state ‘go forth and multiply’, western societies still have the official goal to chase the end of the rainbow. Everybody knows we have only one Earth (for the foreseeable future), and everybody who cares can find out quickly and easily, what the inevitable result of exponential growth with limited resources is. Hint: it’s not pretty.
Continuous quantitative and compounding growth is always exponential.
Glass 1, 2 and 3 of that tasty Bordeaux brings great relaxation, glass 8, 9 and 10 misery and sickness. If we grow our consumption by 1 percent every week or month, we die a horrible death.
Surprise surprise: quantity does not create happiness. Ask Michael Jackson.
Do you care about quality? Do you care about happiness? Check out the report: Happy Planet Index
All came for the natural lifestyle, but each has a different plan on how to live from the land. According to Welsh legislation 75% of one’s needs, need to come from the land. All will use hydro (and solar power) for electricity. Once the whole energy system is setup, an expected 20 000 Pound worth of power will be fed back to the electricity system. They will live in low-impact houses, which are currently being constructed from locally found building materials, such as old bricks and wood from their own forest or by reusing of existing materials such as wood planks from IBM acquired via eBay. After years of livestock on its fields, the soil is claimed as too poor for crops. Mono culture crops this is, for each single inhabitant has proven that vegetables grow here. The bio-diversity has already increased and more bird varieties have been spotted circling the land. They will supplement their income by making willow sculptures, furniture, farming fish and pigs and producing own cheeses.
Hoppi, the main contact for volunteers did a great job in organising and so I was able to help out on several pots, learning different things from stripping trees, cleaning bricks, liming a round house, repairing a water way and chopping firewood. Others helped the beekeeper to find the queen or put the reciprocal roof onto a roundhouse. We were six volunteers in total and a nice bunch of people – everybody coming from a different angle. I learned alot in terms of alternative constructions, saw an example of a community and had lots of interesting conversations.
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