Description of Toolbox for Sustainable City Living.
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When people envision food production or toxic cleanups, the last setting most likely imagine is New York City. But with more than half the world’s population now residing—and struggling to survive—in cities, we can no longer afford to think of sustainability as something that applies only to forests and fields. We need sustainable living right where so many of us are: in urban neighborhoods. But how do we do it?
That’s where this guide comes in. Nine years ago, the Rhizome Collective transformed an abandoned Austin, Texas, warehouse into a sustainability training center. Here, with their first book, two of Rhizome’s founders provide step-by-step instructions for city dwellers—those who have never foraged or gardened along with those who have done dumpster-diving and CSAs—with directions for producing our own food, collecting water, managing waste, reclaiming land, and generating energy.
With vibrant illustrations created by a member of the Beehive Collective and descriptive text based on years of experimentation, Stacy and Scott explain how to build and grow with cheap, salvaged, and recycled materials, making the Guide an accessible and relevant tool for all members of the community. This manual enables us to move from envisioning a future with resources for all to living it.
Stacy Pettigrew and Scott Kellogg are part of the Rhizome Collective, an educational and activist organization based in Austin, Texas. Its members received a $200,000 brownfield cleanup grant from the EPA, which they're using to turn a 10-acre dump into an ecological justice park. The bioremediation techniques they developed are being used to remove toxins deposited by the waters of Hurricane Katrina.
Interview
Sonali Kolkatar of Uprising Radio, interviewed Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew on radical sustainability on May 27, 2008. You can access the interview on the
Uprising website in the archives.
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About the Author
Scott Kellogg and
Stacy Pettigrew are co-founders of the Rhizome Collective, an educational and activist organization based in Austin, Texas, that recently received a $200,000 grant from the EPA to clean up a 10-acre brownfield that they are transforming into an ecological justice park.
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living developed out of R.U.S.T.—Radical Urban Sustainability Training—their intensive weekend seminar in urban ecological survival skills.
For more information about Scott Kellogg & Stacy Pettigrew please visit
http://www.radicalsustainability.org
For more information about R.U.S.T. and the Rhizome collective please visit
http://www.rhizomecollective.org
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Praise
"This important manual will become even more
necessary as people increasingly recognize the end
of the age of oil-and increasingly relocalize.
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living should be
on the shelves
of all city dwellers."
Derrick Jensen, author of
Endgame
"These simple, yet powerful steps can transform your
life and your concept of sustainability. Radical
sustainability--intimately connected to urban
living and urban people doing for themselves--is
critically important. This book provides us with relevant
tools to change what we do and valuable thoughts to
push the conversation forward. If you care about
low income urban people and their/our future you are
going to read this book."
Renée Toll-DuBois,
Eagle Eye Institute
"For those who are bored stiff of green lifestyle books that only seem to offer fluffy solutions indicating which product to buy, then
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living may be your new best friend."
Kimberley D. Mok, Treehugger.com
And for the Rhizome
Collective
"The Rhizome Collective is a force that gets stuff
done...a surprisingly effective model for connecting
people with dreams to the resources they need."
Austin Chronicle
"They had a really great idea of where they're going
with the site. It was so sustainable, and the practices
they're using are very innovative. We didn't see them
anywhere else."
Amber Perry,
Environmental Pr...
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Associated Articles
January 18, 2009: "Local couple pens guide for sustainable city living,"
Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY)
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Associated Articles 2
February 9, 2009: "Tools for composting include worms,"
Albany Times Unionhttp://www.mercurynews.com/homeandgarden/ci_11699093?nclick_check=1
Tools for composting include worms
By Danielle Furfaro
Albany Times Union
Posted: 02/13/2009 12:00:00 AM PST
By Danielle Furfaro
ALBANY, N.Y. — Red wiggler worms are important
members of Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew's
household.
Because the creatures, which live in a box under the
sink, eat their weight in food every 24 hours and
multiply quickly, they can easily turn food scraps
into rich soil perfect for planting vegetables.
"It's odorless and very easy to do," said Kellogg, 34.
"The worms will produce soil for you year-round."
Vermicomposting is just one of the myriad
sustainable living skills Kellogg and Pettigrew have
picked up in the past decade. They've learned to
raise chickens in a city back yard, collect rainwater
and purify it for drinking and make biofuel for a
diesel engine, all with cheap, salvaged or recycled
materials. And all on very little land.
Their new book, "Toolbox for Sustainable City
Living" (South End Press, 242 pp., $16), gives
hundreds of tips for urban dwellers to gain control
of their living conditions and carbon footprints.
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