Sustainable living practices can help you to
reduce your home's energy consumption by 75 percent or more and enjoy the same or better service;
heat your home without fossil fuels and produce enough clean energy to contribute back to the grid (or leave it altogether);
reduce, and potentially eliminate, your water bill;
grow your own pesticide-free fruits, vegetables, and herbs year round; and
make effective cleaning products at home that are safer and cheaper than anything you can buy at the store.
And you can do these wherever you live, whether it's on acres of land or in a small city apartment.
Fundamentals of Sustainable Livingreveals how you can become an active participant in the worldwide sustainability revolution, in as simple or as ambitious a way as you wish. Across 12 practical and inspiring half-hour lectures, you'll learn concrete strategies for making the shift toward providing for yourself and reducing your cost of living, without compromising the resources of future generations. Guiding you is Lawrence A. Gamble, an award-winning Assistant Professor of Sustainable Living and the Co-Director of the Sustainable Living Program at Maharishi University of Management. A pioneer of the discipline and living proof of sustainability's real-world applications, Professor Gamble hasn't had to pay an electric bill in more than two decades.
The significant financial rewards are only one benefit of cultivating a sustainable lifestyle, but it's a perk that can be realized relatively quickly. As Professor Gamble says, "For about the price of a daily latte, you can put enough solar electric power on your roof to offset your electricity bill. And you don't even have to give up the latte - the system will pay for itself in utility bill savings."
What Is Sustainability?
Whatever the motivation - personal finances or personal ethics - energy and resource conservation are a priority for virtually everyone. The reality of living a sustainable worldview, though, is still new to many of us. First and foremost, sustainability is not about doing without.
It's about doing more with less and working with natural systems to become co-producers of the resources we need to meet our needs, without diminishing the ability of future generations to meet theirs. Every aspect of life can be reconsidered in terms of sustainability, from your choice of home and mode of transportation, to city design and the provenance of your produce.
Fundamentals of Sustainable Livingbrings this notion to life with demonstrations of how you can implement sustainable practices where you live. You'll leave the studio for eye-opening field trips: see a thriving community orchard; watch the installation of a backyard drip irrigation system; walk through the professor's own greenhouse; tour solar-friendly Fairfield, Iowa; and witness many other aspects of sustainability in action.
Food: By cultivating fruit, vegetables, and herbs in your yard, a container, or a community garden, you can be confident that you're eating the safest produce possible. Tips to get you started include step-by-step instructions for building a simple greenhouse that allows you to enjoy fresh produce through winter.
Energy: Designing your home to collect and store solar energy pays dividends for your bottom line. Get strategies for using solar - even if you rent, have a shady yard, or can't put panels on your home.
Water: Investigate how you can minimize your dependence on the water company by collecting, storing, purifying, and using rainwater to meet your daily needs.
Shelter: Travel to the Sustainable Living Center to learn how local rammed earth blocks timber, and earth plasters can be used to create sustainable materials for regenerative buildings.
Heat: Visit the Living Soil Compost Lab to learn the recipe for good compost and how heat generated as a byproduct of the process can be used to heat water, buildings, and greenhouses, and even to create a "hot spring" in the snow.
Intellectual Exploration Meets Practical Application
Why do organics cost more? What style of washing machine uses half the energy and one-third less water? Which wild-growing plants are safe to eat? You'll get answers to these and other practical questions throughout, yet this is so much more than a how-to course.
Fundamentals of Sustainable Living zooms out to view the big picture of sustainability and the institutions that flow from it as you explore the interconnectedness between human and natural systems. The underlying science of the course, much like the field of sustainability itself, cuts across a diverse swath of disciplines, including engineering, physics, biology, chemistry, agriculture, and economics.
You'll learn how the disparate parts of sustainability come together in a holistic design process grounded in systems thinking; how energy and the law of entropy play a fundamental role; and how this movement fits in the context of other great societal shifts.
A sought-after consultant, Professor Gamble is truly inspiring. A teacher who successfully practices what he preaches can be relied upon to be knowledgeable, and he is the epitome - not only is his home solar-powered, but also it was built from straw bales with his own hands. He harvests rainwater and grows much of his own food.
And yet he understands that not everyone has the same options he has. These highly visual, informative lectures lay out the potential for a truly sustainable future if a range of possible choices are made on both the individual and institutional levels. With Fundamentals of Sustainable Living, you can understand and help build this future, preserving valuable resources for yourself, your community, and future generations.
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