What we do
We’re involved in a wide variety of activities, all of which centre on using the theories of carbon balance and sustainability to enhance our quality of life without damaging the environment. We use a mixture of traditional techniques and modern technology to make sure our approach is economically and ecologically viable, and we offer advice in a number of areas including:
- Sustainable building techniques
- Ecologically sound methods of producing food
- Ways of producing and harnessing sustainable energy
- Sustainable forestry and landscaping
- Recycling and reusing ‘rubbish’
- Waste water management (including the use of flow forms)
- Residential educational opportunities (subject to availability)
Reduce, reuse, recycle
At the centre of all of our activities is the belief that wherever possible, people should look to turn their liabilities into usable assets. For too long, humankind has discarded that which is of no use, or neglected that which we cannot use. We look deeper at these problems, and encourage you to do the same. What may appear to be rubbish can often be recycled, reused, or serve another function altogether. All we do invest time and effort to find that out.
Current ecological projects
We’ve built a zero carbon house, Honeycombe, using sustainable methods and materials. We have a shared garden, polytunnel and orchard where we grow our own food free from additives and artificial flavourings. We have a wormery, lakes, a horse arena, stables, a workshop and a recyling storage centre. We also have a methane bio-digester, flowforms (water features that help to purify water as well as looking rather gorgeous) and a reed bed to treat waste from the Unicorn centre and return it to the local environment as clean, usable water.
Forestry
We have worked tirelessly with the Forestry Commission on a forestry plan that has seen us plant over 70,000 trees. We have also built a lake to prevent the disruption caused to the mountainside during this work from having ramifications further down the mountain. The lake captures the silt so it cannot damage eco-systems further downhill.
More sustainable ideas
We are not finished there. We are currently building a futuristic Earthship to grow exotic food for those living in the community, which will also incorporate solar showers and state of the art composting toilet facilities. Two of our most ambitious projects are currently in planning, with a perpetual garden project and a pumped hydro-plant.
Visit the Future projects pages to find out more about these undertakings - and take a look at the Visit us section if you would like to come and see them for yourself (or help us with them!).