EcoZoic Detroit

Shifting our lifestyles to incorporate the use of our immediate surrounding natural systems in order to provide for our own basic needs and comforts is much more impactful to our long-term sustainability than worrying too much about smaller energy-saving gestures. If you pay attention to your landscape and begin discovering the value of the natural patterns around you, your energy usage will naturally decrease as a result of your learning to take control of meeting your own needs in a nondestructive manner. You will find that a natural extension of this work is an increased awareness of the nonrenewable resources you continue to consume, and you will find yourself turning down your thermostat and dimming the lights regardless.

So where do we get started in early November? Right now is a great time to gather leaves and other dead or dried out carbon matter from your own property--though avoid sticks or woody plants that have not been finely chipped/mulched--and from surrounding neighbors that intend to dispose of these materials, in order to grow excellent compost for planting your garden in the spring. Build circular piles of carbon matter, 1-2 meters in diameter and 3-4 feet high, adding thin horizontal layers of green/living materials (food scraps and weeds pulled directly from the soil you intend to feed your compost should do fine) to provide the nitrogen needed to attract the bacteria that will get a nice compost burn going (try a ratio of approx. 30 parts brown/carbon to each part green/nitrogen). You will want to add water to your piles as well, but just enough that if you were to squeeze a handful of your pile in your fist, you would release a drop or two of water. Adding weeds from the soil you plan to garden is great, as the weeds that are growing in your soil are naturally fixing the nutrients your soil needs for a healthy balance--part of their role in the forest succession process. However, if you do add weeds, it is important to make sure your pile burns hot enough to kill their seeds, so keep it active and moist.

Right now is the perfect time to initiate the process of healing the soil of your surrounding landscape through composting. Trucking in soil for your vegetable garden is not much more sustainable than trucking in food. We really need to be healing the organisms that sustain us, and composting is a great place to start. Eventually, you may choose to stack the functions of your compost and develop ways to utilize the heat that is a byproduct of your slowly burning compost. Start immediately to begin taking control over the production of one thing you use in your life that you know is not sustainable, and soon you will start to see how your solution can be leveraged to provide for more and more of your needs.

First off, I would like to welcome readers to our community. EcoZoic Detroit aims to provide a locally focused informational hub, and to facilitate community-building projects, in order to accelerate cultural transformations toward healthy and sustainable social systems. This is a complex task, and we strive to continually maintain open minds on what these systems might look like. As we explore, we invite you to join us in the conversation around the discovery of innovative long-term solutions to the limits we are currently facing as a society. We believe that such dialogue--informed by time-tested principles of sustainable ecological systems--will allow us to collaboratively design solutions that work for our unique communities.

As concepts and notions related to sustainability and "greening" continue to take root in popular culture, we run the risk of artificially diffusing what underlying truths fuel our societal concern for the ecological health of our planet. A slew of new "environmentalists" are embracing this trend, and jumping on the opportunity to exploit our collective fears for personal financial gain.

"Green-washing" is a serious concern to those of us who hope public awareness is the key to our collective salvation. Many long-time environmentalists and conservationists are overwhelmed by the barrage of rather unsustainable "green" products and services that seem to make others feel slightly more at ease with our collective consumptive habits, distracting from the true breadth and scope of the issue. At the same time, we cannot wait on the sidelines defeated. It is important that we continue to find ways to be a part of this dialogue, and work to direct this continuously expanding conversation towards the seeking of long-term solutions.