[Announce] Day 13: Develop a plan. Write it down. Stage it. Finance it. Implement it.

[Robert Waldrop]

30 Days Towards Sustainability

Day 13: Develop a plan. Write it down. Stage it. 
Finance it. Implement it.

If you don't know where you are going, how will 
you know if/when you arrive?

On Day 4, the advice was "Know Yourself." And this 
should not be a casual acquaintance, it needs to 
be an in depth knowledge of how and where you 
live, and what and how much resources you use. 
Without that information, you don't know your 
starting point. Sitting around in the parking lots 
of Grateful Dead concerts in the 1980s, we used to 
say, "Wherever you are, there you are," but for 
this purpose you need a more precise and accurate 
definition of where and who you are if you are 
going to journey towards sustainability. Keep 
records of your spending, what foods you eat and 
in what quantity, and how much energy you use 
(gasoline, diesel, propane, natural gas, 
electricity, biodiesel, ethanol, whatever it is 
you use). The longer you keep those records, the 
more valuable they are for planning purposes.

Knowing includes observation. What do you see 
around you in your neighborhood? What is on your 
property? What plants are growing? Where does the 
water run when it rains? Where is the sunlight and 
the shade as the sun travels across the sky during 
the day? What animals, birds, insects inhabit your 
territory?

If you start with a written plan, you have a 
better understanding of the total scope of the 
project. This is more important than most people 
understand. A plan will give you confidence in 
your project. You will know what you need to do 
and about when it needs to be done and what will 
be required to implement your project. Confidence 
will enable you to actually get started.

A plan helps you be more efficient and frugal in 
your use of labor, resources, and money. You won't 
do something, and then un-do it, or have to re-do 
it, to accommodate some other important and 
interesting project.

Contents of such a plan include:

+ Your location, its eco-system, weather patterns 
(minimum and maximum temperatures), rainfall and 
snow, prevailing winds, everything there is to 
know about a place. You should review at least ten 
years climate data for your location, or as close 
to your location as is practical.

+ Your goals, needs, desires, and maybe even a few 
wants. When you are finished with this project, 
what does the result look like? What problems with 
the site must be addressed by this report?

+ Nutrient cycles - this includes soil and its 
management and fertility maintenance, food 
production, food processing and storage, food 
consumption, and human waste management.

+ Shelter - what kind of a dwelling do you live 
in, what changes does it need to be a more 
sustainable home?

+ Access - how do you get to where you need to go? 
Where are the bus routes? What about inter-city 
travel?

+ Energy - passive solar heating and cooling, 
recycling and waste management, "demand 
destruction"/energy conservation, electric and 
natural gas usage, transportation fuel, 
insulation, caulking/weatherizing, all issues 
relating to energy and your household are 
discussed here.

+ Water - ways to reduce water use, emergency 
water sources, rainwater harvesting and storage, 
grey water.

+ Community - what is your place in your 
community? How can you help your community become 
a more sustainable place? What structures are 
already in place? What needs to be done?

+ Economics - how much is this going to cost and 
where are the resources and the money coming from? 
What other resources can you beg, barter, borrow, 
or share to implement this project? What happens 
if you lose your job? Do you have economic 
contingency plans?

+ Hazards - what hazards are associated with your 
property and area? E.g. tornadoes, is the property 
located within the potential footprint of a 
dangeous chemical release, etc. How will you 
manage these hazards? What is your plan for 
catastrophes and recovery?

+ Staging - in what sequence will these projects 
be implemented? Generally, a five year staging 
sequence is a good idea.

You may be thinking - what is this, a plan for a 
self-sufficient homestead? Well, it could be, but 
this outline (which is the basic outline of a 
permaculture design report) is equally applicable 
to urban situations. The 
answers/designs/recommendations in the city may be 
different than those for a rural property, but the 
principles and categories are the same. For 
example, you don't have to grow all your own food 
in the city to be sustainable, you do need a plan 
describing how you will get your food from 
sustainable sources.

The staging section is one of the most important 
parts of your own report. If your shelter section 
includes "painting the interior" to brighten the 
aesthetics, don't do that before you punch holes 
in the walls to blow in cellulose insulation. Do 
the painting after you have done the insulation 
and patched the holes. Write the staging section 
after you do all the rest of the planning. This 
will allow you to see the scope of the project. 
Generally, you "pick the low hanging fruit first", 
doing the easy and cheap stuff first, before 
moving on to larger, more complex and expensive 
aspects of your plan.

When you develop the budget, always add at least 
25% for cost-overruns and price increases. For the 
budgets of projects in future years, add inflation 
to the price (my suggestion is to double the 
officially reported CPI rate for your budgets that 
run into future years).

I suggest putting this written document into a 
three ring binder, so you can easily make changes 
by adding or removing pages. Keep important papers 
related to the project - maps, sketches, price 
lists, catalogs, receipts - in the binder.

The staging of this project is:

First, know yourself and where you want to go. 
Observe!

Second, develop a plan to get there and write the 
plan. Judge!

Third, finance the plan (that is, determine and 
acquire the resources needed).

Fourth, implement the plan. Act!

Note that "finance" does not necessarily mean 
money, although it is likely for most of us that 
some amount of money will be required. It can mean 
your own sweat equity and resources you have on 
hand or can find for free.

We didn't start with a written plan, and as a 
result we made mistakes and it cost us more money 
and (even worse!) more work. I am preparing a 
written plan now - a permaculture design report - 
as part of the distance-learning Permaculture 
Design Course I have been involved with for the 
last year. It starts where we are now, and carries 
our project five years into the future. For our 
household, this will end up being a ten year 
process and we are midway through that journey. 
You can cut five years off the process, however, 
by starting with a written plan. Even if it takes 
you a year to write your plan - and it may very 
well take you a year - you will end up being 
further ahead than if you just randomly do stuff. 
If you have just moved to a property, a year of 
observation will be helpful as you write your 
plan.

NB: "Writing a plan" is not an excuse for 
procrastination. Procrastination is the thief of 
time and the destroyer of future hopes. If you 
want to write a plan, you must begin to plan and 
write. Use the big categories above, and get busy! 
To help folks in central Oklahoma, I have ten 
years of climate data that I have put into 
spreadsheets. I will convert those to tables and 
post them at my energy conservation info website 
in the next couple of days so that people can 
access the information. Note that monthly averages 
are worthless for preparing a report like this. If 
someone shoots six bullets at you, and only one of 
them hits and kills you, are you on average 16% 
dead? The rule here is to design to

Make sure all stakeholders are involved - everyone 
who lives in the household should have something 
to say in this plan, including the kids old enough 
to understand what is going on.

Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City

PS. With my schedule and responsibilities, I will 
not be able to keep up with a strict "tip of the 
day" schedule. It has been several days since the 
last tip, as I was involved with preparing my 
keynote address for the Oklahoma Sustainability 
Network's annual conference in Tulsa on Sept 15th. 
http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/2006osnkeynote.htm . 
I do have plenty of material, as the result of a 
couple days of brainstorming, I have a total of 
371 "sustainability tips" that need to be written, 
so we can keep this up for quite some time and 
over the months to come develop a really broad and 
view of the practical details of the journey to 
sustainability. The ideas are also still popping 
out, I added 3 this morning. (When I get through 
them, maybe I can publish a book on the subject. 
Finally.)

http://www.bettertimesinfo.org

http://www.oklahomafood.coop

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These tips may be freely forwarded, credit for 
authorship is appreciated. They are posted online 
at 
http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/30days.htm .