Wisthoffweg 48
45139 Essen
Germany
- Environment/Sustainable development
Our mission is contained within the acronym in our name, "Solar C3.I.T.I.E.S.": "Connecting Community Catalysts Integrating Technologies for Industrial Ecology Solutions". We strive to be solution providers at the household and community level for a host of related urban ecology challenges: energy production, water conservation, waste recycling, and sewage treatment, as well as poverty reduction through „green collar jobs training“, participatory community development and gender equity. Our chief objective is to expand the intensely local sustainable development work we have done over the past few years in the slums and informal areas of Cairo, Egypt to a global level so that we can create an ever wider network of stakeholders building „collective intelligence“. We share Buckminster Fuller’s faith that we can “operate our planet in such a manner as to support and accommodate all humanity at a substantially more advanced standard of living than any humans have ever experienced!”
Our activities involve the creation and installation of community-built solar hot water systems, kitchen-waste-to-cooking-gas bio-digestors, cold water rooftop storage systems and rooftop gardens, urban compost bins and grey-water recycling systems, all made locally from indigenous and recycled materials. In the future we aim to engage in capacity building for small scale wind generators, photovoltaic installation and energy efficient product components construction, slow sand filtration, water purification, community energy management and sewage treatment. Following Turner’s belief that “housing is a verb” we conceive of the urban dwelling as the fundamental unit of reproduction and power production, and use that power to recycle the waste and water in situ. We train residents not only in the hardware elements of appropriate environmental technology but in the “wetware” elements of basic science comprehension and awareness sharing, empowering a generation of “trainers of trainers” who can pass the torch to other communities and future generations.