About this Blog
Interview about compost toilets on 'Changing Lives, Going Green'
This is a blog about permaculture and sustainability and living in a time of change and transition. My main website is at www.sector39.co.uk
It is also about the trials and tribulations of trying to establish a new sustainability business, Sector39 developing the ‘Skills for sustainability‘ progamme of courses and events.
I am based in a small rural village in the Welsh borders, close to the highest waterfall in Wales.
Falls at llanrhaeadr ym mochnant
This is written by Steve Jones, someone who is passionate about sustainable development, permaculture and organic solutions and wants to meet people and work with projects who share a similar vision. I run permaculture courses and help develop green events and businesses and have also more recently worked on a couple of TV series as a green advisor.
Sector39 is a partnership of people working together to gain experience and build networks, working with permaculture principles and organic practices. Its all about putting ideals into practice and exploring the realities of the transition to a post-oil, low-carbon economy world.
I like to write about solutions much more than problems, and permaculture is all about finding creative solutions. We have to see this as a time of challenges and new opportunities, big changes are inevitable, but also the opportunity for big improvements to the way we go about doing things. I see the inevitable collapse of consumerism as our big chance to get it right!
I also have quite a lot of experience marketing and publishing and promoting causes and green businesses as well. I have an internet hosting business as a sideline, 39internet and I love working with innovative new businesses and projects. Always looking for new projects in that area.
My CV is that I have a degree in Sustainable Devlopment and am a qualified teacher in Business and Economics. I come from a farming background and have working in garden garden design and arboriculture, been involved with edible roof gardens, worked for Centre for Alternative Technology, and the Permaculture Association and set up Chickenshack housing Co-operative, as well as making cheese and running a travelers lodge on a permaculture plot in Zimbabwe.
I have moved my position over the years from simply thinking the world has gone mad in terms of pollution, consumption, waste, indebtedness and poverty to one of being a determined optimist, convinced that we can make an evolutionary step. That step is obviously learning how to live sustainably and ethically, without being in a permanent state of war with either each other or the environment. I call that permaculture.
