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Ecozoic Living is Sustainable Living
Last October 1, 2016 the whole Environmental Education class and Science teachers from St. Theresa’s College went to the Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning also known as CELL, which is located at Silang, Cavite here in the Philippines. Before I venture out on my positive experiences on visiting this magical place, I will first introduce the origins of CELL. CELL is a Non-government Organization which was built in 1998 by three Columban priests, they described CELL as an ecozoic spiritual center and also a place of restoration of the planet Earth. The nature of CELL as a Non-government Organization is found in its mission and goal which is to contribute to the Great Work, whereby humans learn to move from a stance of destroyer of the Earth Community to a stance that is mutually enhancing and to operate a spirituality center that will propagate the New Story of Creation as a means of alerting the human to the current ecological and social crisis, and awaken in them a vision that will give a direction for action at the present moment in history. To wrap things up CELL is a Non-governmental education because the place is not funded by the government but instead is independent.
When we arrived at the place, we were brought to the Brendan Hall to which we are given an introduction and a guide to the whole place. Aside from this we were also informed about the sustainable environmental practices that CELL observes.
Kuya Reynato introducing us to CELL
The Brendan Hall
The first sustainable environmental practice that they do is that they convert human waste to methane gas with the help of the biodigester. Basically the biodigester is the machine in which it converts the wastes to methane gas in the form of a flame. Kuya Benny, the one who introduced and showed us how the biodigester works, told us that the even priests would come to the biodigester and cook their food due to the methane gas that comes out in the form of a flame. This is considered as sustainable because with the help of this, they can do practical things with it so they don’t have to buy methane gas. In connection with this, there there is also this toilet that one of the priests uses. You might think “What’s so special about this, it’s just a toilet?” Well this is not just one of your conventional toilets and no it’s not the special ones that has lots of confusing buttons but instead it’s sustainable because it uses no water. This is sustainable because the collected wastes can be used for the biodigester and also because they save water at the same time since a conventional toilet is one of the appliances that consume a lot of water per flush, The second sustainable environmental practice that they observe is recycling, this can be seen below the Brendan Hall in which they store recycled objects there. It’s considered as sustainable because they are making the most out of the materials which can be still put to good use, I also think that it’s nice that they have this concept that “nothing gets wasted”. Thirdly, they also observe vermicomposting, in which they take the wastes of the worms then they use it as fertilizers for plants. This is sustainable because once again it’s the concept of “nothing gets wasted” and by doing this, the plants grow better. Speaking of plants I almost forgot to mention that they plant their own vegetables and herbs. I think it’s amazing that they plant a variety of herbs and vegetables, some of which are eucalyptus, stevia, chili, lettuce and many more. They even plant citronella, the plant that helps to ward off mosquitos. Since there are plants they also take care of animals like chickens, turkeys, rabbits and many more. Another sustainable practice that they observe is that they use aquaphonics an integrated system wherein fishes and plants grow together. For the last hands-on part of our trip we had the experience of planting our own herbs, which was eucalyptus. We were given the chance to hold the soil and water our own herbs and they even had some to take home.
Kuya Benny demonstrating the biodigester
The special toilet
The rabbit
The herbs we planted (Eucalyptus)
The students preparing for planting
The Aquaphonics
Now that I am done talking about my hands-on experiences about going to CELL, I am going to synthesize by telling my experiences on the final activity that we did, which was the interaction with us students with the people that guided us throughout our experiences in CELL and also the Science teachers. We were tasked to answer several questions which were:
- Who are we now as the new generation?
- Where are we now?
- What has to change in our generation?
- What do we do now to create a just and sustainable environment?
The whole class plus the teachers were divided into three groups, one group was for the teachers and the remaining two were the groups of students. Each group must have a representative to explain their answers but our group chose to explain ours in a form of a skit despite the fact that we were already very tired. I vividly remember that the concept of our skit is to show that since we are the generation that grew up in the 21st Century, it’s given that we grew up on technology. So we showed that sometimes we tend to focus too much on technology to the point wherein we ignore our surroundings but we also showed that technology is not all bad because it can be a great tool in order for us to be more aware about the social and environmental issues we are currently facing right now. We also explained that we are the generation that comes up with brilliant and creative plans in order to save our environment but we can’t seem to put our ideas to action, so in order to create a just and sustainable future our generation must learn to put into action what we are being taught in order for what we learn in school to be meaningful.
The Environmental Education class, the Science teachers and Kuya Reynato & Kuya Benny
