nicolas esposito

Hey everyone,
About a year ago you may have heard me talk about trying to bring an Earthship Green house to the Wood land cemetery. Well, that never quite worked out. However, the idea has resurfaced, this time in our backyard in Kensington at Emerald St. Urban Farm. Starting next Friday Oct. 14th and hopefully ending Monday Oct. 17th, we will be building a self heating and cooling greenhouse using Earthship techniques.

An Earthship is an amazing design for a completely system-contained, self-sufficient house. It was developed in Taos New Mexico in the 70’s by Michael Reynolds. And over the years the design has become more and more refined. For more info, please check out http://www.earthships.org.

There is currently a race to develop the first Urban Earthship. New York is ahead of us and their Earthship is underway. Although it’s being built as a skyscraper, using some very mind blowing techniques (Like reflecting mirrors that pass solar power down the building) it’s being built as a private residence for a very wealthy person. Not saying there’s anything wrong with that. But the company in Philly, LoveLovingLove, headed by Rashida Ali-Campbell is focusing Philly’s urban earthship efforts on addressing low income housing and community sustainability. Their prototype will act as a non-profit embassy to show people how to build earthships.

And this greenhouse project will be a great first step in showing how the techniques are done and hopefully raise awareness to Rashida’s efforts. So not only do we need people for the build, but we also need people to help collect materials. We need about 60 tires (which are easy to find in Kensington). So please bring them by the farm if you find them and want to get rid of them. We also need 500 2-liter plastic bottles. I went out last night on trash night by myself and probably got about 75. So if other people can gather them from their hoods on recycle night, then we can easily get to 500. Also, I plan to go out next wed. and would love some volunteers to each take a street with me. I think that would put us over the edge.

So once again:
Oct. 14-17 is the build. We will need people pounding dirt into tires to make bricks and people cutting bottles to make walls.
Wed. Oct. 12th at 10 PM we meet at my house, 2312 Emerald St. to collect bottles
Ongoing: Please drop off any plastic bottles or tires to Emerald St. Urban Farm

Please email me if you want to take part.

Nic

phillyrooted.org
seedsofdiscent.com

Check this out! (A little last minute but better late than never): Right2Know Philly Sustainability Skill Share tomorrow at the Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum (3819 Hamilton St. Philadelphia, PA).
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=239739209405318