Natural Step

Recently I read Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns can Change to Sustainable Practices, and I was very impressed. In the book they provide a framework for what a sustainable society or community should be and the methods needed to achieve that goal. Developed by scientists in Sweden, the Natural Step is essentially four simple rules that become guidelines for developing sustainable solutions. Already many municipalities throughout Sweden and several major corporations have successfully adopted these strategies with universally positive results.
The four rules are simply this:

To become a sustainable society we must...
1. eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of substances extracted from the Earth's crust (for example, heavy metals and fossil fuels)
2. eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of chemicals and compounds produced by society (for example, dioxins, PCBs, and DDT )
3. eliminate our contribution to the progressive physical degradation and destruction of nature and natural processes (for example, over-harvesting forests and paving over critical wildlife habitat); and
4. eliminate our contribution to conditions that undermine people’s capacity to meet their basic human needs (for example, unsafe working conditions and not enough pay to live on).
(taken from: http://www.naturalstep.org/en/faq)


I think there is so much to like about this. First, it's simple and to the point. It removes all the details that can stir people away, thinking it is too large of an issue to tackle, and gets to what is absolutely essential to sustainable living. Secondly, there is no real political or ideological spin that can drive people apart, since these four principals are derived from facts everyone can agree on. Finally, due to its simplicity it is highly scalable, from the choices an individual makes in his or her home to the actions of communities, businesses, states, or even nations.

The book has some great examples of how the Natural Step has been applied and what other communities can learn from these cases, or you can learn more about them on their website www.naturalstep.org. Maybe the most important lesson to take from this organization is not their specific framework, but that change is possible. For many of us it may seem that becoming a sustainable society is an impossibility and that in order for us to live and grow we must always take at the expense of the Earth. The communities who have followed the Natural Step or other examples like it around the world have proven this notion false and have shown that living in concert with the environment is a goal all of us can achieve.

-Andrew

compost passion

As I posted in an earlier blog, we started composting as a result of not using plastic liners in our trash.  I am in love with the compost.  I haven't even used it for anything yet, but the rich, dark, heavily scented and alive mulch just brings me a tiny bit of joy!  As with others who are starting to compost, it's been a process as I learned how to adjust the recipe to discourage flies, reduce unpleasant odors and encourage decomposition at a reasonable rate.  

What I'm noticing now, is that I'm not alone in my passion for the compost.  Anyone I've met that has a compost talks about it with a serious emotional attachment.  For example, a good friend of mine in northern Cal wrote a few months ago complaining about her frustration with not being able to find a compost bin.  She then wrote recently with the following note:  "I found a bin about a week after my rant to you about not being able to find a bin locally. You can bet I've let the city (and anyone else who would listen) know about that. After trial and error, last month I turned out a beautiful batch of rich crumbly compost and put it in the garden. This morning as I drank my cup of tea in the backyard - while admiring my plants and enjoying the activity of birds, squirrels and a lizard - I thought of you and Lisa.  I had to write and say hi. I hope you are doing well!"  Can't you just feel the magic of the compost?  And the websites, blogs, and compost classes are further testament to the attraction of composting.  I speculate it's the connection with nature, like gardening, only much easier.  The transformation of our personal garbage to nutrient-rich and life-giving planting material is really amazing if not downright miraculous. 

Try this experiment:  ask others about their compost.  I guarantee they will talk as long as you like and give you all the details of their tiniest contributions to their bins along with blow-by-blow histories of how they arrived at their current compost recipe with an energy and excitement of sports fans whose team won the national championship.  And truthfully, I'm about a 1000 times more interested in the compost!

lynn, co-owner Olive Branch  

Farming in Downtown San Diego

This past Saturday my roommate and I decided to head downtown and lend a hand at San Diego City College's urban farm. As a collaboration between the college, San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project, San Diego High School, and Garfield High School the farm that was once a small patch of campus lawn in the summer of 2008 is now a productive farm that serves as a classroom, an example of local sustainable agriculture, and a source of fresh vegetables for city dwellers who stop by its farm stand every Tuesday morning.

For several hours Saturday morning myself and a few other volunteers, helped prepare a cover crop on one of the farms lower terraces. This crop will not be harvested, but instead the wheat and lima beans we planted will be cut down to feed the soil and make it more fertile for the next planting. It was a unique experience turning soil, watering, laying seed and compost for a lifelong city-dweller like myself, and even more odd that I had to go downtown rather than out in to the country to do it.

I hope that soon changes though and that City College's curious patch of agriculture surrounded by skyscrapers becomes the norm not an oddity. By farming locally in urban centers, and doing so organically we can simultaneously reduce our use of oil (for transportation and fertilization of food), reduce our waste through composting, and increase our self-sufficiency in case of disasters or emergencies that limit external supplies. Thankfully I think it may be a growing trend. San Diego Roots sponsors several projects around the county that you can read about here. There is also Greensgrow in Philadelphia, which is a great example of brownfield reclamation. Finally we can all learn something from Cuba where the fall of the Soviet Union coupled with trade embargoes forced the development of urban organoponicos to fight food shortages.

Down the street from Olive Branch is an empty, fenced-in lot. I walk by it often and think that maybe there's opportunity in that lot for North Park's very own urban farm. Until that happens though, City College's farm is a great example of what is possible.

-Andrew