Coming to a new community can be difficult, and this is coming from someone who has moved around a lot. Sometimes, though, you just find a good place to grow; the kind of place where everything you need is close if not in reach.
Welcome to Decatur, a nest of little towns just outside of Atlanta. Having lived so many places; so many big cities, it is easy to be instantaneously jaded. I am very liberal, verging on bleeding heart liberal, and being in the south...well...
The key to starting in any new place, growing in any new place is testing the soil and then developing a plan based on the results. I have long been a proponent of what I call Neo-Permaculture. Permaculture itself relies on people acknowledging their environment and essentially adjusting themselves and the environment in retroactive ways. Let's be honest, the best thing for the earth right now is to give up cars and return, as a whole back to nature. Let's also be honest and realize that is not going to happen.
Neo Permaculture accepts that idea and adjusts according where it can. Plastics aren't going anywhere, so is there a way they can be used and so on. Neo Permaculture focuses on baby steps. That being said, welcome to Decatur.
Decatur is a growing area of an already large city. It is, by and large, geared towards young, new families with a mixture of people. These are things that we can discuss as this blog and this project move forward. Suffice it to say, this is the perfect place to start so let's get started.
Large numbers of people mean large amounts of waste; particularly food waste. So, we are going on a mission to divert some of that waste from landfill by composting. Most communities and entities overall have what is called a "last mile problem". This means all along the chain of production, things have been systemitized and automated to efficiency, but the problem becomes getting that product from its final state to the customer.
In this case, the product is compostable material and the customer is someone willing to turn it into a finished product. The problem is that there is a phase in there where that finished product is just garbage. It requires manipulation and work. Compost is pretty much where we all end up, but to speed up that process it takes time and energy and money to pay people to expend the time and energy.
So it takes people willing to expend said time and energy because it needs to be done and not necessarily because they are getting paid. Other organizations have come up with ways to monetize the process, charging for that last mile. The problem is obvious. There are very few people willing or able to pay for this service. People can do it themselves in their back yards if they have the time or the space, or the will and desire. By and large, people while wanting to, don't have those things. For this reason lots of mass gets lost and thus we have a problem with a solution that yields no reward if engaged. Aside from the will to do the right thing, there is no incentive.
So, I tested the "soil" of this new neighborhood. The sheer number of people willing to step up was indicated by the number of responses I got when I said that I would do this for free. My only concern was the cost of the buckets I would have to distribute to the households. I asked for $10 per household and people flooded our PayPal account with messages about how much they hated throwing stuff out and some people even gave more to supplement the households who could not afford.
The soil is good and our preeminent goal is to make it better and so we start with a foundation and we literally and figuratively add things that make it grow better.
It's a bit chilly outside, cold and rainy, but these are the days when things happen. We are planning a lot of great things with The Life Cooperative, but first we had to make sure that the soil was good.
You can email us Thelifecooperative@gmail.com
Follow us on twitter at @thelifecoop
Follow us on facebook here.
and if you feel so inclined, make a donation to Sunlight and Rain, here
Welcome to Decatur, a nest of little towns just outside of Atlanta. Having lived so many places; so many big cities, it is easy to be instantaneously jaded. I am very liberal, verging on bleeding heart liberal, and being in the south...well...
The key to starting in any new place, growing in any new place is testing the soil and then developing a plan based on the results. I have long been a proponent of what I call Neo-Permaculture. Permaculture itself relies on people acknowledging their environment and essentially adjusting themselves and the environment in retroactive ways. Let's be honest, the best thing for the earth right now is to give up cars and return, as a whole back to nature. Let's also be honest and realize that is not going to happen.
Neo Permaculture accepts that idea and adjusts according where it can. Plastics aren't going anywhere, so is there a way they can be used and so on. Neo Permaculture focuses on baby steps. That being said, welcome to Decatur.
Decatur is a growing area of an already large city. It is, by and large, geared towards young, new families with a mixture of people. These are things that we can discuss as this blog and this project move forward. Suffice it to say, this is the perfect place to start so let's get started.
Large numbers of people mean large amounts of waste; particularly food waste. So, we are going on a mission to divert some of that waste from landfill by composting. Most communities and entities overall have what is called a "last mile problem". This means all along the chain of production, things have been systemitized and automated to efficiency, but the problem becomes getting that product from its final state to the customer.
In this case, the product is compostable material and the customer is someone willing to turn it into a finished product. The problem is that there is a phase in there where that finished product is just garbage. It requires manipulation and work. Compost is pretty much where we all end up, but to speed up that process it takes time and energy and money to pay people to expend the time and energy.So it takes people willing to expend said time and energy because it needs to be done and not necessarily because they are getting paid. Other organizations have come up with ways to monetize the process, charging for that last mile. The problem is obvious. There are very few people willing or able to pay for this service. People can do it themselves in their back yards if they have the time or the space, or the will and desire. By and large, people while wanting to, don't have those things. For this reason lots of mass gets lost and thus we have a problem with a solution that yields no reward if engaged. Aside from the will to do the right thing, there is no incentive.
So, I tested the "soil" of this new neighborhood. The sheer number of people willing to step up was indicated by the number of responses I got when I said that I would do this for free. My only concern was the cost of the buckets I would have to distribute to the households. I asked for $10 per household and people flooded our PayPal account with messages about how much they hated throwing stuff out and some people even gave more to supplement the households who could not afford.
The soil is good and our preeminent goal is to make it better and so we start with a foundation and we literally and figuratively add things that make it grow better.
It's a bit chilly outside, cold and rainy, but these are the days when things happen. We are planning a lot of great things with The Life Cooperative, but first we had to make sure that the soil was good.
You can email us Thelifecooperative@gmail.com
Follow us on twitter at @thelifecoop
Follow us on facebook here.
and if you feel so inclined, make a donation to Sunlight and Rain, here
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