When I act on behalf of my community, I feel wealthier. You may have experienced this too if you’ve ever volunteered locally.  Most recently, I found that my neighbor (an amazing masseuse) is willing to do bodywork for me in exchange for my inoculating oak logs with shiitake mushrooms that will produce food for her family. To me, this exchange is worth more than money, directly connecting people who have unique gifts to share with one another. You can experience more joy, bui

"Mutual Aid in Action"   by   Shareable  is licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0.

"Intro to Mutual Aid"  by   Shareable  is licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0.

Laura Allen shared her favorite way to use greywater: from the laundry machine. You can reuse its greywater without changing your household plumbing, while also using its pump to place the water where you want it. Presenter: The KEPW program Talk Is Cheap recently interviewed an expert on greywater about the many benefits to fish and trees from reusing water from our homes. Here’s KEPW producer Curtis Blankinship: Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): All right, I’m here with Laura A

In Buffalo, New York, waiting for the bus just got a little easier. Like many other cities, Buffalo bus stops often lack any kind of seating. It’s a daily struggle for people who rely on public transit, as they’re forced to wait for long periods of time with nowhere to rest. Volunteers with the city’s Local Conversation, Strong Towns Buffalo , witnessed that struggle and decided to do something about it. Late last month, the group installed five bus benches around the city. B

The following comes from the  Institute for Local Self-Reliance  ( www.ilsr.org ), a national nonprofit organization working to strengthen local economies, and redirect waste into local recycling, composting, and reuse industries. It is reprinted here with permission. We’ve developed this Hierarchy to Reduce Waste & Grow Community in order to highlight the importance of locally based composting solutions as a first priority over large-scale regional solutions. Composting can

Republished from Dilate Magazine Like a lot of people, when I first heard of permaculture, I had no idea what it was, but I knew that it had something to do with growing your own food. However, once I discovered what amazing things can be done with permaculture, I was an immediate fan. Permaculture is a system, an integrated approach to farming/agriculture and land management design. The goal of permaculture design is to mimic patterns found in nearby natural ecosystems in or

“I have witnessed my garden become a tool for the education, the transformation of my neighborhood. To change a community, you need to change the composition of the soil. Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, especially in the inner city. I want us all to be ecolutionaries, renegades, gangstas, gangsta gardeners. Get gangsta with your shovel, and let that be your weapon of choice” — Ron Finley, Guerilla Gardening expert, “The Gangsta Gardener   With gr

Introduction to Permaculture by Andrew Millison is available for free download and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. See the introduction excerpt below: "The permaculture perspective has more resonance now than at any other time since the term ‘permaculture’ was coined in 1978. The Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 has the world admitting it needs to turn civilization onto a different road. P

" Tool Libraries, Mutual Aid, and Community-Led Disaster Response" by Shareable is licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0.

"Legal, Financial, & Security Basics" by   Shareable is licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0.