Although spiritual tradition abounds with the rejection of the ego self as a way of fostering empathic behaviour towards others, the implication here is that the care of the physical self is a means to sustainably maintaining care that extends to family and the broader community. Ecovillages and cohousing communities who can significantly reduce their ecological footprint by sharing resources are other good examples.In smaller ways; in our cities, towns and villages, we can all benefit from deepening community links. By finding the right balance in our own lives we provide positive examples for others, so that they can find their own balance. Tell us what's missing.

I had stuff taking up space in my bedroom.
The ‘rule of necessitous use’ and ‘the rule of conservative use’ applies, where we use only what we need, and any surplus is returned to the system, thus eliminating waste and supporting the living systems around us and beyond.

Whilst these permaculture ethics are more like moral values or codes of behaviour, they are not enough on their own.We need the principles of permaculture to provide a set of universally applicable guidelines that can be used in designing sustainable systems. Like the dust bowls of Oklahoma in the 1930s, an alien agriculture has the capacity to turn a delicately balanced ecology into desert.

This can be gardens, farms, buildings, woodlands, communities, businesses, even towns and cities. The icon of the pie and a slice of it represents the taking of what we need and sharing what we don’t whilst recognising that there are limits to how much we can give and how much we can take. Regards, Care of People begins with care of the self and extends from there to family and community.

The soil is left untilled to establish its own robust micro-ecology. Key to this is the understanding that up to one third of our ecological footprint is taken up by the food we buy, so even growing a small amount in a city allotment or container gar-den can make a difference.

There are many ways that we benefit from giving a fair share of the bounty to others in our community. Becoming independent from the system by producing your own renewable energy, growing your own food, and living in a sustainable way gives real security in life. It focuses on water cycles, hydrology, geology and climate, and then passes on to list different solutions and always includes cost/effectiveness analysis.

Though we can’t all build our own house or grow all our own food, we can make choices about what and how we consume and conserve. They mobilised a whole country to become self-reliant. When we view the earth through the Gaia principle, which regards the earth as a living, self-regulating organism, the axiom ‘What we do to the earth we do to ourselves’ becomes apparent. They have been derived from the thoughtful observation of nature, and from earlier work by ecologists, landscape designers and environmental science...Maddy explores permaculture principles which provide the framework for permaculture design.

Established fruiting trees are likely to produce more than one person can eat.

Co-housing Credit unions Socially responsible investment Car share schemes My last post in 2013 was about decluttering. Are you supporting child labour? There is no time to wait for central government to act, or eventually to react.The last ethic synthesises the first two.
The growth in human consumption and the accelerating extinction of species make clear the impossibility of continuous growth.