Practical eco principles & ethics

First Step:

What are your available resources, both material and personal.

 material resources:

  1. On your property. 
    In this section I included things like the water we use in the house which is available to be recycled and the natural water from the rain, ground water or a stream (if you are lucky enough to have one). Our waste products - our pee (good fertiliser) our compost, waste paper and card board (good for mulching). The sun - check your properties orientation and shaded areas, gradients (important for water re-cycling etc.) soil composition etc....
  2. in your area.
    Here we have the advantage of being next to an industrial estate where there are two skip firms with loads of recycling potential for raw materials and lots of firms with waste packaging timber.  We have also collected fabric, insulation, unused 'meals on wheels' meals (for the chickens), horse manure for the garden, roofing tiles for the deep bed edges, double glazed units for solar panels etc, radiators, etc.....
  3. Personal resources.
    Here is the treasure of our life's experience and skills and the chance to learn more from the people around us. I believe it is always worthwhile to treat myself to learning something new.  A new skill makes you more self confident and even if you decide not to do the job yourself your deeper knowledge will help you find someone you can trust to do the job for you - and to have a meaningful conversation with them. Even in financial terms anything you can do yourself is worth more than you think (look at the web page on economics).
    Networking with our neighbours has been hugely helpful to us especially given the short time we have lived here.  Of course the internet has pride of place as a source of learning and exchange of experience - where would we be without it!!

Eco Ethics:

This more personal and in danger of descending into a rant!! (I will try not to)
To me eco living is just intelligent common sense.  Its obvious to me that the way the human race exists is not sustainable. We are burying our heads in the sand and heading for disaster (for our children if not for us)  Tribal groups such as the American Indians and forest tribes are the only human cultures that seem to me to hold up a model that is worth following.  I believe that apart from any practical considerations humans need to experience close contact with the rest of nature to be spiritually healthy. 
The crisis facing us isn't just global warming. We also face dwindling recourses in every direction from energy to soil to raw materials.  The other plants and animals on earth are disappearing at an alarming rate. We are overcrowded and using up the earth faster than it can replenish itself.  There is a process that happens to organisms in nature that outgrow their environment - their population crashes! (check out 'catastrophe theory' and the work of Thomas Malthus).  I don't believe that endless consumption of 'consumer goods' leads to happiness only to a deadening of the pain that comes from a non-creative life.  At the best times in my life I couldn't tell 'work' from 'play',  I was doing what made sense at the time all day long and enjoying it so much that I didn't want to stop until I fell asleep.
 

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