Pioneering Scottish eco-village masters art of sustainable living • FRANCE 24 English

Pioneering Scottish eco-village masters art of sustainable living • FRANCE 24 English

[Music] Finth horn in Scotland’s northeast where dreams of a greener life really do come true. With a population of 500 residents, this small fishing town is Europe’s oldest eco village. Lisa Shaw, former New Yorker, made it her home 24 years ago. I think this is one way of living an eco-friendly life. Um, our houses don’t use any fossil fuels. Um, we get electricity from windmills. They’re made from eco clay bricks and heat up with any kind of sun that comes in. And it’s just a lovely place to be. I feel like very peaceful here, connected to nature. The renewable power comes from less than a mile away, generated by three communityowned turbines. Finhorn began experimenting with the idea in the late8s and has since become a net exporter of electricity, producing more than the town needs. But Lisa’s home isn’t just fossil fuelfree. It’s also part of a co-ousing project featuring a biomass heating system that uses local wood chips in a shared laundry room. There’s about 10 families that use this and we each get either half a day or a full day depending on the size of the family. Today is my day. 10 individual machines become just two. Gray water is collected to irrigate the garden and everything has been designed to minimize the use of resources. [Music] One of the great features of this shared laundry is that it’s really hot in here because we have our biomass boiler and so the laundry dries really quickly. We don’t need dryers. [Music] The principles of sharing permeate daily life. Every Friday, the co-housing members gather around for a potluck dinner. Most of the food on the table is locally sourced. quite literally from their backyard. Lisa’s sons 13 and nine were in charge of the selection of the day. Yeah, we pretty much planted basically all of it. I remember like seeing all the things when they were really small, you know, like these leaks were just seeds. The 320 square meter garden is open to all 10 of the co-ousing families. It’s fully organic and food waste from the local vegetarian cafe is used as compost. We have kind of like a communal gardening session on Sunday. I learned how to like harvest most of the stuff there. I also from my parents of course. Fin story also began with the vegetable patch. In 1962, an unemployed couple parked their caravan and planted a garden on barren land to feed a family of five. The miraculous yields drew visitors from around the world, putting Finhorn on the map. Other initiatives soon followed, like the community’s biological wastewater treatment plant. So this is the first stage of the water which is quite cloudy and full of particulate matter and this is the last stage which as you see is pretty clear uh and there’s no particulate matter. A result achieved with no harmful chemicals just plants and living organisms. Michael Shaw Lisa’s father brought the technology to Finhorn in the late 90s. Sewage water is collected from 150 houses before flowing by gravity through a series of tanks where plants provide a home for bacteria in charge of breaking down pollutants. As we go up through the system, uh the water gets cleaner and cleaner because the bacteria do a good job. And when we get to these final tanks, there’s what we call polishing. And at that stage it is then suitable for use in a heat pump installation for about eight apartments. Since its creation, Finthorn has been a living laboratory for those seeking a more sustainable, slow-paced life. But those principles have taken on a new significance as the community embraces a greater challenge, becoming carbon neutral. The man in charge of the climate strategy is Roger Dudna. He built the community’s first permanent home in 1986 out of recycled whiskey vets. It was um the very first of our attempts to create a more sustainable place for our community members to live. And uh since that time, we have built something like 125 ecological houses. Welcome to Fendhorn 2.0. This is the area which we’re calling the winds. Uh it’s the latest development of the eco village. There are nine units there which include a number of solar panels, heat pumps, uh super insulation. Despite their effort, the community’s carbon footprint sits at 7 tons of CO2 per person, lower than the UK average of 9.5, but still a long way from net zero. Flights by both visitors and residents represent the highest share of emissions. Proof that change will require a major shift in attitudes even in an eco village. That report from Scotland with our down toear team including environment editor Valerie Dimp who joins me on the set. Hi Valerie. So you did spend a couple of days there in Findhorm filling that filming that report. What do you think now? Would you live there? I mean, if France 24 is willing to open a Fendhorn bureau, count me in. Uh, there really is something quite special about Fendhorn. Uh, you know, even tourists, locals go to Finhorn for the day, grab coffee at the Phoenix Cafe, the local vegetarian spot, and just go for a walk. Now, anybody can live in Finhorn. There are no prerequisites to live in this eco village. So, you could rent an apartment, a small house. You can even stay at the trailer park. The rental market is fairly tight, though. But there are also homes for sale and there’s even uh in the newest development an affordable housing scheme. Uh so really many different ways to live in Finhorn. But what I found really interesting, Genie, is that when you think of an eco village, what comes to mind is a more austere lifestyle, minimal comfort, when in fact, you know, you get all the modern amenities that you might think of a, you know, normal neighborhood. And I think many people think that living more sustainably means, you know, going back to the stone age. Um, and you know, it does require serious, you know, lifestyle changes, but I think Finhorn shows that you can do that as long as you’re smart about it. Tell us a bit more about the Shaw family that we saw there in that report. Why did they come to Finhorn? Yeah, well, it’s a third three generations of the Shaw family have now experienced life in Finhorn. So, Michael Shaw, um, you know, the grandfather, he’s a first generation, his Scottish, then you have Lisa, and now her kids. So, Michael Shaw, um, who we saw, uh, you know, talking about the the the city’s, uh, wastewater treatment plant. He, uh, met his American wife in the 70s in Finhorn. Lisa, uh, did not grow up in Finhorn, but when she graduated from college, she says she wanted a change from the busy, you know, lifestyle of the city. And so, with her parents and her husband, they all moved to Finhorn to build the co-ousing community that we saw in the report. Um, and so with a group of friends, they bought the land and they built everything from scratch, which shows that, you know, you need some expertise in order to do all of that. Um, and then the Shaw kids, Jasper and Griffin, uh, which you can see there, they were born in Finhorn. Uh, Finhorn does not have a school, so they go to school outside the community. Um, and Lisa and her husband, they, uh, own a company in ecological engineering. And so, you know, I don’t say you can you can say they’re an average your average family, but they are your, you know, family trying to live more sustainably, right? And obviously nothing’s perfect. I mean, you talk about the community’s carbon footprint, which isn’t quite as good as you would hope. I mean, isn’t that a bit discouraging, right? I mean, seven tons of CO2 per person. Um, it is quite high. Uh, it’s higher than you could think. Um, and so flights are a huge part of the equation. They just weigh so heavily uh in the climate balance and Finhorn having become this model for sustainability. For decades they hosted workshops, events um you know retreats for people to come and learn about their way of life. Uh but you know you know hosting people from around the globe does have a climate cost. Uh the COVID pandemic, Brexit um really put a hold on the number of people traveling to Finhorn. But again it it does have an impact. Um the community is aware of the challenge. They’re trying to offer more online courses for people to you know learn about how they live without flying to Finthorn. Uh but I think it really shows that you know technology alone won’t fix the climate problem. You know you can have uh super insulated homes low resource uh you know climate proof homes 100% renewables. If you don’t change, you know, some fundamental things about the way that you live, uh, you know, we won’t be able to rein in emissions. Absolutely. Well, in any case, it’s super interesting to learn all about it. Thanks so much for that, Valerie Dimp, our environment editor on France 24. Thanks to you for watching. Stay with us. [Music]

Today, more and more people are rethinking their way of life: what they eat, what they buy and how they move around, all in the name of environmental concerns. Some have turned to so-called eco-villages – small communities designed to have a minimal use of resources and impact on the environment. Our Down to Earth team travelled to Scotland, home to one of the world’s first eco-villages, to find out more.
#EcoVillage #Scotland #DownToEarth

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