1 results
5 - Fab Cities as Infrastructures for Ecological Reparation: Maker Activism, Vernacular Skills and Prototypes for Self-Grounding Collective Life
- Edited by Dimitris Papadopoulos, University of Nottingham, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, University of Warwick, Maddalena Tacchetti, University of Nottingham
-
- Book:
- Ecological Reparation
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 28 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 01 December 2023, pp 90-103
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
On a chilly morning in November, one of the authors (Morita) was listening to a roundtable talk at an international conference on sustainability transition and economic localization held at a university conference hall on the outskirts of Yokohama, Japan. While the participants discussed various issues in their effort to localize production and consumption and restore the environment, one of the participants, a renowned Japanese permaculture designer, directed the conversation to a rather unexpected topic: the flush toilet and sewer.
Referring to his early career experience in soil analysis, he noted the serious degradation of Japanese soils. He pointed out toilets and sewers as the major causes of this degradation, because they are literally flushing human and other organic waste, which, before the introduction of these infrastructures, circulated thorough the local environment, and out to sea. As a potential solution to this problem, he then suggested a return to the compost toilet that would turn human waste into manure.
The permaculture designer’s talk seemed to have successfully impressed on the audience a rather unexpected relationship between aspects of everyday life and environmental impoverishment through the workings of mundane infrastructures. If such uneventful infrastructures can be so detrimental, the relationship between our current civilization and environment seems to be fundamentally broken. He continued speaking on his take on circulation at another session Morita attended in that same afternoon. In this session he started his talk with a simple and impressive statement: ‘microbes make soil just by the way they live’. He continued:
‘But we are now focusing so much on making money and staying away from “day-to-day living” (kurashi). If we lived properly (kichin to kurasu), this would create cycles (junkan). You can nourish nature just by the fact that you live there. … [In order to live sustainably], you must actively create a day-to-day life (kurashi wo tsukuranaito ikenai). … You cannot change everything at once. You need to make soil in order to make food. In order to change, you have to make a detour. So, you have to learn how to make soil, how to use tools. … We have to make a new social system in which our day-to-day life can regenerate our environment.’