Incredible Eco-Village Built with Reclaimed Material
Chris Dews is the Founder and Director of this model ecology center, Casita Verde, and also the main coordinator for Green Heart in Ibiza. Since he was a very small child he’s been very concerned about garbage in the environment. He came to Ibiza in 1985 when he was working in the Merchant Navy. He saw that it experienced the same problems there as he’s been looking at in the rest of the world, so he started off cleaning beaches and founded the Casita Verde in 1993. He went on to found what was called the Ibiza Ecologic back in 1996 and it was then when he started building with bottles and cans.
Basically the idea is to make the kind of world where we'd all like to live. They can use this island Ibiza as the perfect example of sustainable lifestyle technique. Not only just for tourism, but for just living anywhere. He’s seen lots of things that they can apply to anybody's farm, anybody's apartment building, or your little town house as well. This is a place where you can actually see these lifestyle techniques in action and have that sensation that you can do it as well.
One of the first tenets of permaculture is the observation that nature doesn't throw anything away. The ‘waste’ product from one organism is the food for another organism, so they’ve been gathering loads of stuff out of the local garbage, as well as stuff that they’ve been given. Stuff like broken chairs that would otherwise have been thrown away are repaired, refurbished to look brand new and given a second life. One of the buildings on site started off as an old asbestos roof. The walls have been made with old beer bottles stuck together with a mixture of building plaster and local red earth, and on the outside it's covered with sand lime and coloring to make it have a beautiful texture on the outside.
For heating at Casita Verde, they use rocket stoves. They use very little wood and produce a lot of heat. The gases that they produce in the combustion chamber goes through a big fat tube which heats up a seat beside it. The seat is full of rocks and then when the fire goes out at night all the heat that is stored in the thermal mass comes out. They’ve got a nice double bed and a little office space on the other side of the building. To replace the roof, they used OSB board, which is compressed waste wood, and some yak wool which they were given from a yurt. This provides the structure with ample insulation.
A lot of the building techniques used at Casita Verde were inspired by a visit to the United States that Chris made when he went to meet Michael Reynolds, the inventor of the Earthships. He started building things in a very similar style over there. This influence can be easily seen in the community’s Media office. Up on the ceiling they have a three and a half meter satellite antenna as well as a bus shelter roof. The front window of the space is from a Renault four, and they’ve got a washing machine door as another window idea. You can see the floors are tiled in two different styles using reclaimed broken tiles. The guy who did the area near the front of the build was obviously a Gaudi fan, while the german couple who tiled the entrance did a yin-yang symbol on the floor.
Chris made the first eco-toilet on the site made back in 1996 out of beer tins and it's got a satellite antenna on the top as a roof which collects enough rainwater to wash their hands all through the summer. After the water is used, it goes off to water some nearby lemon trees. There's two deposits underneath the floor, both one cubic meter which allows one chamber to sit and compost while the other is in use. When one is full they simply move the toilet seat to the other side and put a piece of concrete over the hole. This allows the waste to sit for four months, after which it becomes soil that they can use at the base of fruit trees around the property.
They have another one of these eco toilets that is a bit bigger, so you can get a wheelchair in there. This one they built out of bricks that they made with adobe. Adobe is 60% sand, 40% red earth and some straw. The bricks are stuck together with the adobe without the straw in it. Chris used a coca-cola kiosk roof and he put a fiberglass channel around the outside to collect the water. For any gases produced in the combustion processes, they put in pipes that vent out the roof. If you extend them one and a half meters up and paint them matte black, when the Sun shines on them a convection current is created which sucks all the gasses out of the bottom chamber.
For electricity they have a wind generator, as well as an assortment of solar panels from different friends of Chris’ who've given them to him over the years. These used to cost an absolute fortune, but now you can buy a 320 watt panel for about 150 euros new. While some people worry about keeping the solar panel angled perfectly throughout the day, Chris thinks that it’s a lot easier to just lay them flat on the roof. You can't see them, they’re not disturbing anybody, and you don’t lose a ton of output. For hot water they use a solar hot water heater, which are very popular in Spain and other hotter climates. You can save more than 80 percent on your domestic hot water bill by installing one of these devices.
There is a shower and washing machine area, which has a two square meter solar panel that is connected to an old electrical water heater for the shower and washing machine. The water used here goes down to a tipper box distribution system which is made out of a couple of speed boat fuel tanks. Water comes through and fills up a tray which tips up when it's full and lets all the water out at once. This feeds a garden which has plastic lining underneath each plant. This ensures that the water is used by the plants instead of being absorbed into the surrounding soil.
When the council asphalted a nearby road in 1999, they made a channel so that when water fell on the forest, it didn't go onto the road. They just extended the pavement of this channel so that they could collect the water in a big 2 cubic meter tank. The water then goes to another settling tank, and then to the main tank there which is 80,000 liters. This allows them to limit the amount of water that they need to drive into the site.
Every accommodation there is very different, from a space that was initially used to cook rocks into lime, to treehouses and yurts. He likes guests to be comfortable, so he just puts people in the place that fits them. The treehouse is a temporary building that can easily be dismantled if needed. It’s mainly a summertime house with a live tree coming through the house which makes it difficult for sealing, but doesn't move at all with the wind or anything. It's protected by the tree.
In the end, we’re all gonna have to live in these kinds of places, because basically that's the bottom line. We can't all live in separate houses having a washing machine and a cooker and a shower and a thing, Where's the end line? We’re part of an ecosystem, and eventually we need to realize that. We’re part of a complete unit called Planet Earth. We have a part to play. Think about where your trousers come from, think about where your food comes from. Think about where your washing liquid is coming from and where's it going? All these little tiny things made by the number of people that make those changes all added up makes a massive change on the planet, and that's what Casita Verde is trying to demonstrate.
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