Humans are the only beings on this planet who need a concept of sustainability. It involves the environmental, social and economical realm of our actions. We in Camphill Clanabogan try to cover all three aspects to live a sustainable life. Our idea or concept of living a sustainable life is based on two major pillars: the concept of life-sharing and biodynamic farming.
The magic of life-sharing
With our concept of life-sharing we not only try to create an equal social space but also reduce our impact on the environment and rise our efficiency in regards to spending. The fact that we share our lives allows us to reduce a number of significant things that have proven to have a negative impact on the footprint we leave behind.
- With our carpool we can reduce the amount of cars and miles driven by individuals.
- The fact that life-sharing enables us to reduce living space in comparison to an average family home helps us improve our eco-footprint by e.g. decreasing domestic pollution and built-up areas.
- With our biomass district heating system we manage to heat 75% of our buildings in a sustainable way using renewable energy sources and reducing our oil consumption by 100.000 liters annually.
- By living in an intentional life-sharing community we are able to run our own environmentally friendly sewage treatment plant.
- By consuming our own products provided by the Farm, Bakery and Garden we can get rid of the supply chain and most of the packaging these products would otherwise bring along.
- Our own store allows us to minimise waste and reduce individual grocery runs.
- We focus on building our new buildings as low energy passive houses.
Our biodynamic Farm and Garden supply us with healthy, organic food and make sure that the following generations have the equal chance to encounter the same biodiversity and health of soil as we do. We have invested into state of the art technology for our farm to help us produce in an even more sustainable manner. The new hay dryer which is attached to the biomass district heating system helps us to produce quality hay and reduce the running hours of our tractors which not only decreases the Co2 footprint but also the amount of trips on the fields which has a positive effect on the soil.
Looking into the future
We as a community have further ambitions to reduce our footprint on this one planet we all share. Our projects in the making are:
- Introduce electric mobility to our carpool fleet.
- Extend our biomass district heating system to the whole community and reduce our overall oil consumption by another 43.000 liters annually in order to become an oil free community.
- Invest in sustainable electricity generation and storage.
- We try to build our new buildings as low energy passive houses.
The famous Irish polemicist George Bernard Shaw once said: “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” When it comes to innovative thinking - and sustainability needs innovative thinking -, we in Camphill Clanabogan try to question ourselves anew from time to time rather than trying to fit ourselves into (our own) established mindsets.