Step into the one-of-a-kind Xifu Recycling House
Cherish your blessings. When I was little, I watched the adults take things that were a bit broken, repair them, and use them again. As I grew older, I too began to tidy things up and use them again. Ha ha!
The truth is, waste can be seen everywhere now, from food, water, clothes, materials, paper... Seeing things treated this way, sometimes I really do not understand. Have we really become wealthy enough for this? Can we really afford to be this extravagant and wasteful? If this is passed down generation after generation, how much longer can the Earth's resources support us?
No matter what I see, I still face life with a positive attitude. I always feel that if I start with myself, even little by little, as long as it benefits me and the environment, then I will keep at it! I live in an ecological community in Taiwan, China, where we make full use of recycled materials. From recycling kitchen scraps to make compost, wearing second-hand clothes, building houses from waste materials, and making tables from recycled wood. In this life of cherishing blessings, life has gained a lot more joy and creativity. I have gotten into the habit of trying to do everything myself first, to give it a try. This kind of life has less dependence, less waste, and more cherishing, cherishing every little bit around me. Everything nature gives us is hard-won.
In my current concept of life, nothing is permanent, as long as you have had it once. As for housing, I think a house made of natural building materials is the most suitable to live in. Why use so much reinforced concrete and put such a big burden on the Earth? Is it really so cozy for just a few people to live in a very big house? A few people living in a house they built themselves is so satisfying.
This year we built a recycled house, using not a bit of cement, and all the materials came from recycling and natural materials.
The air in the mountains is damp. To avoid the dampness, the house has to be raised. The material used to raise it was the legs of an altar table given by a friend, and the stone slabs placed underneath were picked up from the roadside.
The ground beams of the house are betel nut trees from the park, and the floor is made of recycled pallets.
The pillars of the house are bamboo collected from the mountains. Taiwan, China has a lot of bamboo. Bamboo grows fast and is a very good building material.
The walls are eco-friendly drilled mud boards donated by friends. The windows and doors were also recycled from old houses that were demolished.
The large advertising banner on the roof was recycled for us by a friend from an advertising company.
During the entire period of building the house, a few of us discussed and talked about how to fit these non-standard materials together, and how to make them work together more harmoniously. That is how we learned as we worked, discussed as we worked, and tried as we worked.
A one-of-a-kind recycled house just grew out of this.
Although it is not luxurious, not as solid as reinforced concrete, it is more resilient, more full of life, and it has our wisdom and love blended into it! Friends who love nature are welcome to come visit me. www.greencommune.tw