Sustainability at Twin Oaks
Article by Valerie, photos by Valerie & McCune |
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| Our practice of income-sharing includes cooperative ownership
of various resources including a fleet of 18 vehicles for use
by our 85 adult members. No one has a private car. When a member
needs a vehicle, they head straight for our vehicle board and
sign-out logbook. Each night one member looks at the requests
for the following day, and assigns each person one of our vehicles
for use during the time they have requested. We encourage carpooling
with financial rewards. We have our own community mechanic, who
keeps the cars in good shape so they emit a minimum of pollution.
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 Vehicle fleet scheduling board |
| Each building we build is more ecologically sound
than the previous one. Our newest residence has nine bedrooms,
two living rooms and a bathroom completely off-the-grid. The
Sunrise eco-residence also incorporates various passive solar
features including skylights, sun tubes, and south-facing orientation
with solar clearing. Other features include recycled cellulose super-insulation, retractable window insulation and compact fluorescent lighting. Over half of our buildings have solar hot water panels to pre-heat hot water for domestic and commercial use (including our tofu business which uses hot water in the tofu-making process). |
 Valerie installing solar panels at Sunrise eco-residence |
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