A do-it-ourselves guide

Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew have written a book that reads as a practical interpretation of Low-tech Magazine: “Toolbox for sustainable city living, a do-it-ourselves guide”.

Both authors regard the current ecotech trend as a salve for guilty consciences and focus instead on low-tech systems and solutions that can be built and maintained by people without any scientific or engineering background, using cheap, salvaged and recycled materials.

How to depave a roadway and reclaim the land for food production? How to clean contaminated soils and water bodies? How to recycle wastewater in a scavenged bathtub? How to raise turkey, ducks, insects and fish? How to cultivate mushrooms on logs? How to build a windmill or a rocket stove? The book provides a toolbox of skills, technologies, tactics and step-by-step instructions to give city dwellers access to, and control over, life’s necessities.

Publisher South End Press has granted Low-tech Magazine permission to publish an excerpt of the book online. It gives detailed instructions on how to build a floating trash island, a low-tech way to clean up rivers, canals, lakes and estuaries. Related: How to make everything yourself / How to make your own low-tech vertical farm / How to tie the world together: online knotting reference books.

Comments

[S.P. Gass]

Thanks for posting this. I'll check out the book. Here in the Southern U.S., the Foxfire series of books is still popular.

[Br Anthony, ICXC+NIKA]

How do I acquire building plans for oven stove?