Sustaining Life One Action at a Time- Community Systems

One of the reasons that I chose to come to Sadhana Forest is to observe the ways in which people are living symbiotically with ecological systems. Her are some of the ideas that I found. I hope that they will inspire new ecologically-minded ideas in other people's lives!!

Architecture:
I have woken up every morning in a bed frame made of wood and tied together with coconut fiber rope in a dormitory hut that is made from compressed Tetra Paks.

Tetra Paks are the cartons that are used to package milk, juice and various other liquids and foods. These containers allow food to be protected from contamination by bacteria and other microbes, meaning products can sit on the shelf for months without going bad. Tetra Paks can not be fully recycled because they are made up of a number of components which are layered: paperboard (made from wood), polyethylene (a type of plastic) and aluminum. Since the polyethylene (plastic) and aluminium, cannot be separated by the recycling process and remain combined as a “polymer”. These materials are collected and compressed into sheets locally in Auroville, India. It has been used to construct both the dormitory hut and the showers as a durable and low environmental impact building material

Other personal huts,bathrooms, the kitchen, a meditation hut, and the main community building are all made with traditional natural building methods in which bamboo is tied together with coconut fiber rope and roofing is made with woven coconut husk, as shown in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUE1yLHxi6s

Daily Water Conservation: Here at Sadhana Forest, we do not have running taps for showers, hand washing, laundry, or running water for toilets. Instead, we are practicing water conservation by filling buckets directly from the well on-site and carrying them to the showers and laundry area, where we pour the water into hanging buckets that have holes in them to shower (using only biodegradable soap and shampoo) and wash our laundry by hand (it dries quickly in the heat!). To wash our hands, there are stations that have an aluminum cup on a stake with a hole on it, which we manually pour water into and wash our hands with completely biodegradable soap. To catch runoff water, banana trees have been planted in a ditch next to the hand washing stations, which are water intensive plants (aka the "banana sponge method"). These methods allow us to intricately control how much water we are using for each activity, and be careful not to waste any. I enjoy my showers here and take pride in being able to take thorough showers with half of a bucket of water with ease, and I have not felt inconvenienced by the lack of running water for hand washing.

                        

     

         

Tolets: Toilets at Sadhana use no running water and do not create waste. There are both metal and coconut hut bathrooms with separate pee toilet and a poo squat toilets (squat toilets are the culturally common in India). These are dry compost toilets, in which sawdust is mixed with the contents instead of "flushing." Urine and composted poo are both successfully used as fertilizer ("humanuer") in the reforestation work. 
You can check out this website to learn more about humanure and its value: http://www.humanurehandbook.com/

            

Feminine Hygiene: So we do not create waste, non-disposable feminine hygiene products are encouraged and sold on-site. I highly recommend these products and I have been using some of them for years, before coming to Sadhana. I have been using cloths pads (https://ecofemme.org/) and silicone menstrual cups (such as these: divacup.com). These products have saved me money, are an alternative to toxic pesticides that are used to grow cotton used in tampons, save time and create no waste. 

Food/Cooking: We have someone from the community go into town and pick up vegetables and grains from local organic farms (two in particular that I know of). Many edible greens are grown right here in the forest garden and can be used for salads and smoothies. We also grow some papaya and bananas in the garden. All of our meals are "zero waste," which means we minimize food waste and every food scrap is composted or given to the cows. 

Meals are cooked on wood burning, energy efficient rocket stoves. This stove was originally designed for clean cooking in the developing world (where wood smoke fires cause millions of deaths, as well as a huge contribution to deforestation). There stoves direct heat completely to the food, unlike common stoves which release heat into the air without directing it directly to the food. Thus, high temperatures are created with very little fuel needed and minimal smoke is produced. Food is all cooked in bulk for about 100 people each meal using only wood that is found and collected from the forest and none is cut down. 

How to build a rocket stove!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uh2VExcdbY

Dish Washing Stations: since rocket stoves produce ash, instead of using any kind of dish soap we have been using the ash to scrub and clean the dishes!I have learned that wood ashes have been historically used as a source of lye in soap making because the ashes chemically react with the oils/fats in food! We have a system in which the dishes are scrubbed, dunked in 3 buckets of clean water, and then left in a large basin to soak in hydrogen peroxide for 15 minutes. 

Solar Electricity: All of our electricity is solar. We often have about four hours/day to charge our electronic devices depending on the amount of sun that is available (often we have more on weekends because we use less of it for logistics and presentations) If there is not enough sunlight, volunteers may produce bicycle-powered energy themselves.

Zero-Waste Hut: This is one of my favorite sevas to do. I understand the management of trash to be extremely important because human populations is only growing, space for landfills is becoming more scarce, and our landfill systems do not put nutrients back into the ground as quickly as we remove them! This involves sorting ALL of the thrown away objects aka MOOP (Matter Out of Place :) ) and putting it "in place." A service called eco-services in Auroville collects all of the plastic, paper, and metal. Cardboard is reused as mulch in the forest, paper is used to start fire in the kitchen, non-synthetic fabric and food and composted, plastic bags are stored for reuse, and some objects are collected to use in the community for building purposes or any other creative needs.