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Our Purpose

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Our Purpose

is to share our Living Example of a Thriving Sustainable Community! 

When others see it, they KNOW  that it is possible!

The Garden of Eden in Arlington, Texas, is the first of what we hope will be a tidal wave of sustainable eco-villages to spring up all around the world, providing sustainable solutions for food production, housing, commerce, and community to many joyful and grateful people. 

Here, we are creating an evolving model for sustainable, responsible, enjoyable living that encompasses all the necessities of life - and many of the niceties too!

Based on this model, The Garden of Eden can be recreated and adapted for the many different environments and cultures that exist all around the world. 

The widespread and global rise of sustainable eco-villages has the potential to usher in an entirely new paradigm of living, where humans are THRIVING in harmony with nature and one another.  

Yet this reality shall exist only when we as INDIVIDUALS, en masse, are ready and willing to take full responsibility for aligning with such a reality at the depths of our very being.

That means truly loving ourselves, truly loving our planet, and truly loving one another.

​From that place of true love, all decisions made will be made for the benefit of all. 

Learn more about Eden 2.0 here

Our Purpose
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Super

Sustain

ability

for a life of thrival!

Because sustainability is SUPER important to us, we make it a point to use the most sustainable solution available for any given necessity, AND to simply let go of wasteful habits that are truly not necessary for maintaining well being. It is simply a matter of CHOICE. 

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Giving Back to the Earth

We have all heard of the carbon footprint- a metric of how much carbon is added to the atmosphere as a result of a person's consumption. 

We are proud to declare that the Garden of Eden has a Negative Carbon Footprint and an overall Positive Environmental Impact!

Quinn has traveled the world visited every continent but Antarctica, and seen a myriad of lifestyles and environments along the way. 

Yet even the indigenous people living on the land in their traditional ways are not having as much of a positive impact on the environment as is the Garden of Eden. 

People living on the land may "break even" with the land, giving back everything they take, in a way that can be processed and recycled by the ecosystem. 

Yet because the GoE is Removing Waste, and utilizing trash to produce usable resources that support life, our environmental impact is actually better than zero. 

Unlike almost all organizations or organisms that we have ever heard of, The GoE has the net effect of actually ADDING LIFE SUPPORT to the Earth's system as a whole.

For example, each year, the Garden of Eden produces approximately 40,000 meals for FREE. 

These meals feed our own inhabitants who are daily applying their life and energy to sustainable living. 

These meals are also shared with those who attend GoE Events, the vast majority of which between 2011 and 2015 included free feasts. 

And these meals are also given to homeless and hungry people within our own local community and further expansive city outreach a few times a year. 

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The Bottom Line

 We just use WAY LESS.  

Ultimately the most sustainable practice is to simplify. 

We use WAY less water, electricity, natural gas and ALL resources than a typical American household. Rather, we have found alternate methods of achieving the necessary functions of having a healthy body, functional house and a happy life.  

We use less gas to fuel our cars because we are not running all over town every day. We use baking soda to wash our hair and many things needing washing, vinegar to wash the windows and floors, newspaper or phone book paper to wipe after we go or just about any mess, the fresh air to dry our clothes, the sun to dehydrate our food and heat our water, and the list goes on and on. 

We wash our clothes, bodies, dishes etc using the minimum amount of soap and water needed to get the clean. We wash our clothes and bodies only when they actually need it, rather than habitually washing "just because".

We keep sets of clothes for getting dirty and sets of clothes for keeping clean. We wear our clean clothes only inside the house, and this reduced the amount of house cleaning and laundry that is necessary. 

Many, many little adjustments like this add up to create a big difference in the amount of resources we use as a community. This not only saves money and environmental damage, but it also saves us the energy of having to do all that extra washing.  

Combined Monthly Living Expenses

Cell Phones = $150 (used to consult and inspire)

WiFi = $90
connecting us with tens of thousands of people who are being inspired to live more sustainably

Electricity = $100 - $250
Mostly used to connect with the world to inspire more sustainability

Water Expense = $40
That's not just for our community, but for the tens of thousands of meals we feed on top of our own needs

Gas = $15, excluding rare travel to facilitate a conference or festival

Food = $0 

Entertainment = $0

Fitness = $0

Doctors/hospitals/medical=$0

 
taxes = $1000 (!!!!)

Total = $400 - $550 for 10-20 average people per month, BUT we spend more for taxes than everything else COMBINED!



 

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Garden of Eden

Sustainable Habits

We use  alternative solutions that utilize free and/or renewable resources to do everyday things. 

For example, rather than using an electric or gas burning stove, we do our cooking using forsaken wood that would otherwise be in the trash. In warm weather, we use our outdoor kitchen with the cob rocket stoves and cob oven. In cold weather, we use the heat of the wood burning stove that heats our living area, which would be burning scrap wood whether we were cooking or not. We also heat all our water for showers and cleaning simultaneously with heating house and cooking food. This makes it an extra-efficient use of the wood, and a great alternative to gas or electricity. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In summers we take beautiful and refreshing outdoor showers that uses water supplied from our well. 
In winter, we shower indoors in water heated by the wood-burning stove that also heats our common room. 

We turn off the lights, religiously. Since sustainability is important to us it is a natural part of the flow of our day to be conscious of what electricity we are using, and if we leave the room, we turn off the lights or fan or computer or whatever is not going to be used while we are out. If no one needs a light to see something important, they are off. 

We purchase just about NOTHING from stores - no purchase means no financial support for their unsustainable ways. If there is something we just absolutely can't get around having for some technology or construction project, we will trade for it or we get it donated through our non-profit.

We make one with the elements. We do not rely on conventional heating or air conditioning to regulate our environments. If it is chilly, we wear more clothes. If it is sweltering, we wear much less, and douse our hot bodies in a 55 degree well shower if we get too hot. 

We are conservative and purposeful about our travel - if we do go out in an automobile, it is for a purpose that serves our greater purpose of living and sharing sustainability. We don't go out cruising to clear our heads or just to get away or put the children asleep. If we do go out, it is with the purpose of making the world a more sustainable and life-supporting place such as facilitating a festival, conference or catering an event with WAY more sustainable food than available anywhere else.  When we choose to make a trip to a festival or a market, we are doing so with the purpose of spreading awareness, sharing perspective and changing people's lives for the better. And even then, we do so in the most efficient and sustainable way we know how. 

We consolidate tasks on our trips out, and we get as many things done in one trip as possible, choosing locations that are as close as possible to achieve our purpose in going out. 

We always pick up something that enriches the GoE Vortex when out. If running to the bank or the post office, at very least, the driver also stops by somewhere to pick up some cardboard or sawdust that would have otherwise been trash. Those are then used in our garden and composting toilets, respectively, and then become compost/soil.  No one ever comes back empty handed. 

We grow LOTS of our own food! With water not processed or supplied by a municipality, we pay only for the electricity to pump the water up through our well. We use NO processed or commercial fertilizers, only our own rich and nutritious compost.

We compost everything organic- paper, cardboard, food, pee and poo. It all becomes soil and then enriches our land, which enriched our food, which enriches our bodies, which we use to further the cause of living and sharing sustainability. 

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Garden of Eden

Trash to Treasure

New Paradigm sustainability means using whatever is abundantly available and renewable.

Because we live in a busy metroplex that is constantly generating waste, TRASH is our most abundant resource, and unfortunately it is essentially renewing itself. Fortunately, the Garden of Eden alchemizes that trash into treasure in many forms.  

We take the many MANY usable resources that were about to head to the landfill where they would sit and unfortunately not decompose for hundreds of years, and we put that trash to sustainable use benefiting thousands. 

We salvage a vast amount of resources from the trash - literally TONS! Every year the GoE saves hundreds of thousands of pounds of forsaken matter that would otherwise pile up in a toxic land fill.  We do this either by getting it before it is thrown away or even sometimes right after. A quick peek behind the dumpster gate or into the pile of stuff on the curb has proven a worthwhile gander many a time for the Eden Knights. We have tree trimming companies dumping whole truck loads of wood chips, landscaping companies dumping whole truck loads of leaves or other organic matter, we even have people who save their trash and bring it to us instead of throwing it away.

Ripples of Sustainability

We, as a community, are living in such a way that we have a positive- rather than negative- environmental impact, AND we are also inspiring thousands of people each year to make changes in their lives that reduce their negative environmental impact as well!

Tens of thousands of people across our social media platforms tune in daily to the shifts that we have made within ourselves and in our daily lives that make us more sustainable and responsible. 

 

We have attended many festivals where we are connecting with hundreds or thousands of others who are interested in our way of life. The connections and impressions we make at those large public events often have a truly profound impact on the people we touch, who are forever changed and enlightened by their experience with us.

 

After the SWAT Raid of 2013, hundreds of Web, TV, and Print articles and videos were published about us, reaching literally hundreds of thousands of people, all of whom became aware that we exist as a beyond organic farm and sustainable community.

 

We received waves of letters and e-mails from people all over the world telling us how they were both inspired by our way of life and by the way we handled the City's demands- with peaceful non-compliance. 

Sustainability Everywhere!

Everywhere you look around The GoE grounds, sustainability is apparent.