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EcoVillage at Ithaca: A small community with a global purpose

The EcoVillage project at Ithaca continues to grow and help save the earth In recent years there has been a national push in inspiring others to think on a global scale about how our day-to-day activities affect the environment. Effectually, many people around the world have adopted a more green lifestyle in order to do their part. But the notion of living in a greener and more sustainable environment is far from recent. For decades, the conversation of sustainability has made its way into mainstream outlets with literature, marches, businesses, and campaigns dedicated to this cause. The EcoVillage at Ithaca is an example of the sustainable movement decades in the making. In 1990 while participating in The Global Walk for a Livable World, from Los Angeles to New York City, Joan Bokaer, an Ithaca visionary, met Liz Walker, a San Francisco community organizer and discussed Bokaers vision at Ithaca. Shortly after they met, Bokaer and Walker partnered up to launch EcoVillage at Ithaca. Since then the project has fully developed two neighborhoods, FROG and SONG. Neighborhoods All the houses in the FROG community are passive solar, with 14-foot high windows on the south side, and super-insulated walls. They are centrally powered by a 50KW array of solar panels just east of the neighborhood. SONG homes are very similar to FROG homes but they were individually customized, demonstrating a wide variety of sustainable building techniques. All homes are Energy Star-certified. The large Common House is sited centrally, and provides shared facilities, including large kitchen and dining areas, laundry room, library and playroom. Along with EcoVillage gatherings, it serves as an event venue for organizations from the wider Ithaca area. Still in development is EcoVillages third neighborhood, TREE. The TREE neighborhood already has seven residents living within it. Once it is complete the TREE will be a neighborhood of 40 households, with yet another variant in neighborhood layout and building construction. All homes are expected to be certified as LEED Platinum. In addition, seven homes are designed to be certified to the very stringent Passivhaus standard and will become the first Passivhaus cohousing neighborhood in the US.

The Passivhaus standards strengths lie in the simplicity of its approach; build a house that has an excellent thermal performance, exceptional airtightness with mechanical ventilation. This approach to building design allows the designer to minimize the 'heating demand' of the building and in some residential buildings only utilize a heated towel rail as means of conventional heating. Residents For EcoVillage residents, the idea of living in a sustainable community and their passion for the environment is what motivated them to move to Ithaca. In a 2008 interview with Life in the Finger Lakes magazine, Sara Cardiel, a Rochester educator, her husband Rick, a business consultant, and their two children were one of nine families who had signed on to build homes in the TREE neighborhood. Sara explained that Ecovillages have two great things going on: an environmentally friendly lifestyle and a close-knit community. The intentional community idea is something Ive been interested in since I was a teenager. In fact, besides being a sustainable housing complex, EcoVillages backbone is the community of residents that it houses. All neighborhoods have common community houses that residents come to in order to engage in activities designed for everyone. Resident life includes activities such as spending lots of time outdoors, gardening, playing, running, hiking, and biking. The residents volunteer about 2-3 hours per week to keep things running smoothly for everyone. As is typical in cohousing, community decisions are made through a consensus process in each neighborhood, and a Village Association representing all three. Community work is accomplished through a voluntary Work Team system, where residents apply themselves to whichever task areas they have most enthusiasm for. There are teams for Cooking, Dishes, Outdoors, Maintenance, Common House, Finance, Process/Steering, Community Life, and more. The community aspect reduces individual energy consumption and increases social interaction, something easily lost in more typical types of American residential neighborhoods. Focus on education As pioneers in co-housing and sustainable living residents of EcoVillage at Ithaca often teach students from nearby universities like Cornell, about the benefits of sustainability and intentional communities. In addition to this, the community offers visitors a 5-day program that focuses on teaching them the value of sustainable living and co-housing. The goal of the program is to get visitors to do the following: Gain a new vision and hope for how humans can live together in partnership with the planet Understand the link between social justice and ecological sustainability Experience a sense of belonging to the land and to a learning community Develop specific skills and knowledge to apply in their own lives and work Be motivated to take action when they get home Affording passive housing Building homes that are sustainable and environmentally friendly is not that much more expensive than building regular homes. The important thing is educating yourself on the basics of living in a greener house. Over time the amount of money that sustainability saves on energy is more than enough to make the investment worthwhile.

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