Recycling for Sustainability and Self-Sufficiency
I’m a natural born scrounger. I’ve always seen opportunity and possibilities in a pile of junk. It’s almost an obsession – my only vice Even before recycling became fashionable I was out there sifting through piles of junk while friends tried desperately to merge with the landscape and become invisible in order to not be [...]
Clinton Says Haiti Should Become Self-Sufficient
Here’s a case of “do what we say, not what we do”… Former US President, Bill Clinton in his role as United Nations special envoy has urged aid groups to rebuild the country’s government and put them on track as a self-sufficient nation. Did Bill try to sell the idea of self sufficiency to his [...]
Self Sufficiency an Expensive Luxury
I’ve had my work cut out for me lately, we’ve moved and I’ve been flat-out trying to set up our new 40 acre block as a self-sufficient farm. It’s a whole “family community” enterprise and while we’re all excited about the longer term potential, the workload and expense has been astronomical! We’re twelve months into [...]
Un-Sustainable Rise Of Complexity and Bureaucracy
“Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.” – Albert Einstein Bureaucracy irritates me, I mean REALLY <blanky> irritates me. All my friends hate bureaucracy. All my family hates bureaucracy. In fact, everyone I’ve ever mentioned the word bureaucracy to hates bureaucracy! If so many of us (seemingly all of us) hate bureaucracy, then why [...]
Patents for DIY Self-Sufficiency Projects
As a fabricator, I’m constantly looking online for input, ideas or even working plans for my self-sufficient living projects. One of the best sources of information I’ve found are the various patent sites. The other day I downloaded a patent for an efficient wood heater. The drawings were detailed enough to actually build a unit [...]
Consumerism and Sustainable Job Creation
There are very few humans currently living on planet earth that would dare claim that everything is rosy with our system. Yet we’ve had a hundred years – a whole century of rapid developments in mechanization, technological advance and social tinkering which promised to deliver a better world. One of the main promises of mechanization [...]
Affordable, Sustainable Housing Made Illegal!
I came by a recent copy of the Warwick local newspaper and was appalled to see the headline story was an unveiled threat by local council to vigorously pursue shire residents who were “living illegally” in sheds and other unapproved dwellings. Local council crackdowns on non-approved dwellings are nothing new. Councils, of course, have the [...]