Organic Gardening

I found this great article on how people look after leaving a very small or negative carbon footprint and thought that since earth day was this week that it would be a nice thing to post

Arriving at Arcosanti, an experimental eco-city in central Arizona, I was acutely aware of my non-greenness. I had spent the morning expelling carbon on my flight to Phoenix. My rental car was messy with empty soda bottles, a few plastic bags and a banana peel that I didn’t plan to mulch. A piece of paper with directions had accidentally escaped through the car window, floating off toward a patch of spiky cactus. With this kind of resume, would Mother Earth’s minions still let me inside?

“Hey, come join us,” a guy in a dress, belt and outsize personality beckoned. “Have a beer.”

The Californian graphic artist was one of up to 80 residents living and working at Arcosanti, a pilot utopian community that champions sustainable living. After a long day of working on passive solar power, gardening and bread-baking, the group was tossing back a few. And for me, after a long day of carbon emissions and gas-guzzling, a mixer with outré environmentalists was much appreciated.

“Put your empties on the rebar before you leave,” advised one of the revelers. I slid my glass bottle onto a sharp piece of metal. See, I was already contributing to the environment. (more…)