Milagro Other Green Features

Broad footpaths provide the only access to 25 of our 28 family and pedestrian-friendly homes (the other 3 are also accessible by car). Homeowners use wagons or carts to carry small loads and groceries. The community owns an electric golf car, which we all use to carry large, heavy loads.

At Milagro, part of ecological living is to encourage a responsible attitude to the waste we produce. We subscribe to Tucson’s citywide recycling system and provide community members with a separate dumpster for recyclables such as paper, plastics and glass. Occasional yard sales, thrift shops and local programs such as Freecycle [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freecycle/], plus our own ingenuity, help us reduce what we send to the landfill each week.

We covered our parking area with a product called Gravelpave2. Gravelpave2 features a porous, geotextile fabric molded directly to a one inch high integrated ring and grid system. It is made of 100% recycled plastic and is anchored with galvanized anchors. The fabric base retains gravel, is fast draining (allowing water to percolate into the soil below), and deters weeds. The ring and grid system holds the gravel in place, thus greatly reducing maintenance. Bacteria in the gravel help break down polluted runoff. For more information on this material, see Invisible Structures' website:
www.invisiblestructures.com/GV2/gravelpave.htm

A long driveway leads into our Tucson Cohousing Community's parking area. We were committed to paving our driveway and parking lot with ecological, non-petroleum-based products. We also wanted to eliminate the polluted runoff that occurs when surfaces are paved with non-porous materials like concrete or asphalt. After some searching and a few missteps, we landed on the following materials with which we are well pleased:

We paved our driveway with Stabilizer Solutions' StaLok® paving material. StaLok® is a premixed, dustless paving material made of crushed stone and engineered non-toxic polymers. With this material, we are able to patch potholes with a few shovelfuls of stockpiled material. The patch is subsequently compacted by auto traffic. Our driveway was one of the first applications of this material to a motorized road surface. For more information on this material, see Stabilizer Solutions' website:

www.stabilizersolutions.com

Many of us at Milagro use Effective Microorganisms™ (EM) Bokashi for recycling our food waste. This system, which has its roots in Japan, uses a fermented compost starter made from wheat or rice bran and Effective Microorganisms™, to ferment and transform food waste into nutrient-rich compost in less than half the time of conventional composting and without unpleasant odors. The microbes are a mixed culture of naturally occurring, beneficial microorganisms such as those used to make cheese, bread, yogurt, miso, and other foods. With composting, we not only reduce the amount of solid waste that is increasingly choking our landfills and creating toxic methane gas and acidic leachate; we also enrich our soil. More information on Effective Microorganisms™ Bokashi is available from its parent website EM America, www.emamerica.com/data/, as well as a number of other sites.