& Retreat and Rejuvenation Center.
Benque Viejo Del Carmen, Belize C.A.
Common Sense Intentional Community
Back to Basics!
Our Mission
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Sustainability
Sustainability is a complex concept. The most often quoted definition comes from the UN World Commission on Environment and Development: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In the charter for the UCLA Sustainability Committee, sustainability is defined as: “the physical development and institutional operating practices that meet the needs of present users without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, particularly with regard to use and waste of natural resources. Sustainable practices support ecological, human, and economic health and vitality. In simplest terms, sustainability is about our children and our grandchildren, and the world we will leave them.
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Regenerative
Regeneration is renewal through the internal processes of a body or system. Something which embodies this action can be described as regenerative. The intervention by humans to introduce regenerative systems can be considered to improve the world from how we found it, and to do so in perpetuity. Fundamentally, the word “regenerative” means “the capacity to bring into existence again”; hence, if an item or system is regenerative, it has the inherent capacity to bring itself into existence once more.
Practices that
(i) contribute to generating/building soils and soil fertility and health;
(ii) increase water percolation, water retention, and clean and safe water runoff;
(iii) increase biodiversity and ecosystem health and resiliency; and
(iv) invert the carbon emissions of our current agriculture to one of remarkably
significant carbon sequestration thereby cleansing the atmosphere of legacy levels of CO2.
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100{89b9ac39287ae385323a2779a578a8774c704d4d6141226c145e82026244c120} Renewable Energy
Renewable energy, often referred to as clean energy, comes from natural sources or processes that are constantly replenished. For example, sunlight or wind keep shining and blowing, even if their availability depends on time and weather.While renewable energy is often thought of as a new technology, harnessing nature’s power has long been used for heating, transportation, lighting, and more. Wind has powered boats to sail the seas and windmills to grind grain. The sun has provided warmth during the day and helped kindle fires to last into the evening. But over the past 500 years or so, humans increasingly turned to cheaper, dirtier energy sources such as coal and fracked gas. Renewable energy resources exist over wide geographical areas, in contrast to fossil fuels, which are concentrated in a limited number of countries.
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Zero Waste
Generally, “Zero Waste” is a philosophy of eliminating the generation of materials that have no viable or economic option for end-of-use management. In reality, there are varying interpretations for when (and if) it is achieved. Does zero waste really mean zero waste? Does it consider the waste that’s produced in the production of materials upstream? Is a small amount of waste acceptable at the end of a material’s end of life? What about Waste-to-Energy? The definition of zero waste varies widely, with various organizations defining zero waste differently, each with their own interpretation as to what it takes to get to “zero.”
The generation of waste can be lowered through a variety of options, including reducing, reusing, recycling, or taking appropriate action to prevent waste through design and engineering solutions. Many individuals, companies and municipalities continue to strive to achieve zero waste goals, while our very own Waste Management Phoenix Open is the largest zero waste event of its kind in the world.
Advantages
Just where do you start when you want to “save the planet”? And in which areas should you focus most of your efforts? In a rather brave thought experiment, the Environment Agency has assembled a group of the country’s leading environmental experts to draw up a list of actions that we should all undertake if we are to try to avert the environmental horrors so often forecast if we continue with our “business as usual” lifestyles. This list contains suggestions for government, companies, councils, religious leaders, scientists and others to consider, but it also includes actions that individuals can attempt. More unusually, though, it lists the actions in order of priority.
Ecology (from Greek: οἶκος, “house”, or “environment”; -λογία, “study of”)[A] is a branch of biology[1] that studies the interactions among organisms and their biophysical environment, which includes both biotic and abiotic components. Topics of interest include the biodiversity, distribution, biomass, and populations of organisms, as well as cooperation and competition within and between species. Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, and the non-living components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary production, pedogenesis, nutrient cycling, and niche construction, regulate the flux of energy and matter through an environment. These processes are sustained by organisms with specific life history traits.
Ecology is not synonymous with environmentalism, natural history, or environmental science. It overlaps with the closely related sciences of evolutionary biology, genetics, and ethology. An important focus for ecologists is to improve the understanding of how biodiversity affects ecological function. Ecologists seek to explain:
Are you concerned about the welfare of the earth? Do you want to do what you can to save it? With bad news about global warming, dying oceans, and endangered animals flooding us on a daily basis, it’s hard to know where to start. It may seem like the actions of one person won’t make a difference, but there are actually many ways you can help. Here are some suggestions for changing your personal habits and educating others to make a fruitful impact.