Fri 12 Dec 2008
Permaculture in the East Bay
Written by Nicholaus Harris under Green Events, Permaculture
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Living in the Bay Area comes with major perks for those interested in environmental matters. The East Bay, and Berkeley in particular, is a major hotbed of cutting edge green ideas, businesses, and practices. Berkeley’s Ecology Center, located at 2530 San Pablo Avenue is an incredible resource for students, professionals, businesses, and enthusiasts. In their own words:
The ECOLOGY CENTER provides the public with reliable information, tools, hands-on training, referrals, strategies, infrastructure, and models for sustainable living. Our programs enable people to adopt practices that are environmentally and socially responsible. We run Berkeley’s residential curbside recycling program, the Berkeley Farmers’ Markets, Farm Fresh Choice food justice program, Terrain magazine, EcoHouse demonstration home and garden, the Ecology Center Store, and a variety of Information and Climate Change Action programs.
Tonight, the Ecology Center hosted an introduction to something I had heard mentioned over the years, but still wasn’t too familiar with: permaculture. Essentially, permaculture is an integrated system of principles that strive to develop dynamic and sustainable human communities. Christopher Shein, who is teaching “Permaculture Design” this spring at Merrit College in Oakland, included the following explanatory diagram in his presentation tonight :
Permaculture Flower
I have to admit cringing a bit at times during the presentation - not because permaculture is a bad practice (it is an incredible one with enormous potential) - but because much of mainstream society would immediately write it off as ridiculous hippie stuff. I always try to keep that in mind during presentations like this one because living in a place like Berkeley where progressive ideas and people are the norm can blind you to the realities of the outside world. To actually get the rest of the world listening, it is going to take successful demonstrations and projects, and the rest of tonight’s presentation wisely covered some of these.
Mushrooms:
There was an interesting presentation on growing mushrooms for human consumption and bio-remediation in the Bay Area. One of the highlights was a project where human hair mats were used to soak up oil from last year’s Cosco Busan oil spill in the Bay, and now mushrooms are being used to de-toxify the oil. Inhabitat has a pretty nice article about it here.
Natural Construction:
Marisha Farnsworth was the next presenter and she discussed the merits of natural construction and showed us a variety of projects. Her company, the Natural Builders, does some really cool work like the hay bale wall in the picture from the presentation:
Hay bales used as insulation
Marisha indicated that demand for natural construction in the East Bay is booming and hopes more businesses like hers spring up. Marisha is definitely one of the coolest and most inspiring entrepreneurs I’ve met in a long time! Marisha is teaching a class called “Natural Building” at Merrit College in the Spring of ‘09 - I think I’m going to enroll.
Regenerative Design:
The final presenter was Brent Bucknum who discussed an intriguing project to use bamboo to revitalize West Oakland. Brent is the founder of the Hyphae Design Lab in West Oakland. West Oakland is right next to a major shipyard, and the pollution from ships and trucks has resulted in catastrophic environmental justice and health problems for the residents. According to Brent, residents of West Oakland have a 8-10 times higher chance of getting cancer than other Californian residents! The bamboo project seeks to convert unused space into bamboo forests which would be irrigated with local gray water, and would soak up significant volumes of pollutants. I’m personally interested in getting involved in this project, and I’ll post updates about it on my blog.
