KISS your complicated solution goodbye!!

Is there a simplified approach to achieve a balanced sustainable decision?

I believe everything is simple and we as humans love to make it as complicated as we can so that it will sound cool!

If I can ask the following three questions everytime I make a decision whether it is life or work related... then I think my decision will have some sustainable base!!

1. Can I reduce the need as much as possible?
2. Can I capture what is available for free?
3. Can I restore/ reclaim/ regenerate/ reuse more with what is available?

Let's apply this on to something and see if it works.

Say I am trying to find a solution to achieve water efficiency in my project.

1. Can I reduce the need for water use? - I guess I can! - multi-use of a space reducing the need for more water use; waterless urinals etc.

2. Can I capture freely available rain water? - I guess I can! - a simple diversion of rain water from the roof to the landscape!! or an extravagant rain water harvesting system - it is law in my home state Tamilnadu, India to divert roof water to an underground cistern and let it percolate to the underground water table... how tough is that to do? we all know we have water scarcity! all we need to do is to care!

3. Can I reclaim the used water for something else? - I guess I can! - Tamilnadu just did - restore the underground water table by reusing the collected rain water; we can reuse water used in the building as grey water for landscape!

You see this works... through this process atleast I would have thought about how to save water even if I couldn't implement any of these on my projects... which is the next big step!!!

Try it on some of your decisions... it could be as simple as how big of an opening should I have on my west wall to have the much desired view through that opening??

food for thought!

P.S: KISS :- "Keep it Simple, Stupid!"

How do you see sustainability as a concept?... Is it socialism or capitalism or socio-capitalism??

I ran into this following link about "global mindshift"...

http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml

it is pretty cute but precise in telling the story...

sustainability is say if we call it... providing equality in terms of resource availability and resource accessability and resource usability... then what does it fall under?? capitalism / socialism???

one may say neither.. and I tend to agree with that... but what is it then?

one may ask... why bother to define??? I may say... well it certainly is the new world order now... (if you dont agree with that... please watch TV or browse the internet) the world is getting connected more and more than ever... think of the open-source era and think of blogs like this for heaven sake... you cannot deny the fact that this has something to do with the new perspective on mother earth...

I dont want to get political here in my blog by any means... but.. as in terms of sheer concept... I remember once talking to a colleague of mine about sharing knowledge and growing as a team...

and I was looked at as a socialist... coz growing as a team is not captalist...

one may ask... is sustainability about sharing knowledge... in a big picture sense I say yes... so one can make informed decisions that may be helpful to the planet we live...

socialism is a broad and age old concept... this one-ness that we try to describe and achieve in this new world order... could this be called the new socio-capitalism....

even though socialism and capitalism as concepts are mainly associated with economy... these terms have been loosely associated through out history with ways of life...

in my littlest expreince and exposure if I attempt to define this term - socio-capitalism... here it is.... in lamest terms...

SOCIO-CAPITALISM: "what ever we do should work for and benefit the mass and yet the individual should be able to reap his / her personal benefits based on his / her efforts"

I know I sound like a politician... but if you think about it... everyone who believes in this one-ness as I do will encounter somebody in their path who doesn't believe in this.. how do we explain???

food for thought!!