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David Lee Hoffman is an American tea importer. He also founded and directs The Last Resort, an ecology research center, and The Phoenix Collection, a personal tea collection. [1]
Hoffman is a self-promoted 'tea guru' and was as a vocal importer and public promoter of Chinese teas to the West, particularly puer teas in the 1970s-1990s. He began importing puer teas from Nepal in the early 1970s, and eventually ventured into remote regions in China to seek out the fine, rare, and wild teas. He became known in China as "the American Pu-erh Tea King". He was the first western importer of several teas, such as the flowering ("blossoming") tea from China, and is the subject of filmmaker Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht's 2007 documentary All in This Tea. Hoffman sold his Silk Road Tea company in 2004 and now runs The Last Resort and The Phoenix Collection.
Hoffman developed his interest in teas during his early world travels. In the early 1960s, Hoffman met the Dalai Lama while living in Dharamshala, India. Several Tibetan monks later contributed to the construction and creation of Hoffman's eastern-inspired sustainable research center in Lagunitas, California, which he calls "The Last Resort". [2]
Hoffman lives and works at a complex of home and business buildings he dubbed "The Last Resort" in Lagunitas, California. The mission of The Last Resort is to improve sustainable methods for waste management, water reuse, and food security. Using his research into vermiculture (worm composting), Hoffman created "the worm palace," a system that converts all household waste to high grade fertilizer, as part of Hoffman's quest for a "super soil". Hoffman first presented the benefits of vermiculture to the International Symposium on Earth Worm Ecology in Columbus, Ohio in 1994. Hoffman has also installed a greywater system, a two-vault composting toilet using a simple design formerly approved by the state, and solar systems at The Last Resort.
The Last Resort is also known by Hoffman as a 'living history of architectural research', where for over the past 40 years he has directed the construction of over 25 eclectic structures that constitute the complex, using low-cost and recycled materials and building techniques he learned throughout his travels. "It is an important and significant example of east-west Folk Art" according to "sustainable architect" Sim Van der Ryn, who was appointed California State Architect by California Governor Jerry Brown, and is on the architecture faculty at the University of California Berkeley.
Compost is a mixture of ingredients used as plant fertilizer and to improve soil's physical, chemical, and biological properties. It is commonly prepared by decomposing plant and food waste, recycling organic materials, and manure. The resulting mixture is rich in plant nutrients and beneficial organisms, such as bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, and fungi. Compost improves soil fertility in gardens, landscaping, horticulture, urban agriculture, and organic farming, reducing dependency on commercial chemical fertilizers. The benefits of compost include providing nutrients to crops as fertilizer, acting as a soil conditioner, increasing the humus or humic acid contents of the soil, and introducing beneficial microbes that help to suppress pathogens in the soil and reduce soil-borne diseases.
Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, town planning, rewilding, and community resilience. The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods, instead adopting a more traditional or "natural" approach to agriculture.
Vermicompost (vermi-compost) is the product of the decomposition process using various species of worms, usually red wigglers, white worms, and other earthworms, to create a mixture of decomposing vegetable or food waste, bedding materials, and vermicast. This process is called vermicomposting, with the rearing of worms for this purpose is called vermiculture.
Water conservation includes all the policies, strategies and activities to sustainably manage the natural resource of fresh water, to protect the hydrosphere, and to meet the current and future human demand. Population, household size and growth and affluence all affect how much water is used. Factors such as climate change have increased pressures on natural water resources especially in manufacturing and agricultural irrigation. Many countries have already implemented policies aimed at water conservation, with much success. The key activities to conserve water are as follows: any beneficial reduction in water loss, use and waste of resources, avoiding any damage to water quality; and improving water management practices that reduce the use or enhance the beneficial use of water. Technology solutions exist for households, commercial and agricultural applications. Water conservation programs involved in social solutions are typically initiated at the local level, by either municipal water utilities or regional governments.
A composting toilet is a type of dry toilet that treats human waste by a biological process called composting. This process leads to the decomposition of organic matter and turns human waste into compost-like material. Composting is carried out by microorganisms under controlled aerobic conditions. Most composting toilets use no water for flushing and are therefore called "dry toilets".
Night soil is a historically used euphemism for human excreta collected from cesspools, privies, pail closets, pit latrines, privy middens, septic tanks, etc. This material was removed from the immediate area, usually at night, by workers employed in this trade. Sometimes it could be transported out of towns and sold on as a fertilizer.
Biointensive agriculture is an organic agricultural system that focuses on achieving maximum yields from a minimum area of land, while simultaneously increasing biodiversity and sustaining the soil fertility. The goal of the method is long term sustainability on a closed system basis. It is particularly effective for backyard gardeners and smallholder farmers in developing countries, and also has been used successfully on small-scale commercial farms.
Les Blank was an American documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of American traditional musicians.
Samuel P. Taylor State Park is a state park located in Marin County, California, United States, which includes approximately 2,700 acres (11 km2) of redwood forest and grassland. The park contains about 600 acres (2.4 km2) of old-growth forest, some of which can be seen along the Pioneer Tree Trail.
Ecological sanitation, commonly abbreviated as ecosan, is an approach to sanitation provision which aims to safely reuse excreta in agriculture. It is an approach, rather than a technology or a device which is characterized by a desire to "close the loop", mainly for the nutrients and organic matter between sanitation and agriculture in a safe manner. One of the aims is to minimise the use of non-renewable resources. When properly designed and operated, ecosan systems provide a hygienically safe system to convert human excreta into nutrients to be returned to the soil, and water to be returned to the land. Ecosan is also called resource-oriented sanitation.
Joseph Manuel María Joaquin Micheltorena y Llano was a brigadier general of the Mexican Army, adjutant-general of the same, governor, commandant-general and inspector of the department of Las Californias, then within Mexico. Micheltorena was the last non-Californian Mexican governor before Californian native son Pío Pico took office.
Waste sorting is the process by which waste is separated into different elements. Waste sorting can occur manually at the household and collected through curbside collection schemes, or automatically separated in materials recovery facilities or mechanical biological treatment systems. Hand sorting was the first method used in the history of waste sorting. Until now this method is still used.
Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, or Sōryu-ji is a Soto Zen practice center located near Muir Beach, California, that practices in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki. In addition to its Zen training program, the center also manages an organic farm and gardens. Founded in 1972 by the San Francisco Zen Center and Zentatsu Richard Baker, the site is located on 115 acres (0.47 km2) in a valley seventeen miles (27 km) north of San Francisco and offers a variety of workshops and classes throughout the year. The land is an inholding of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and has much wildlife within its borders. In addition to meditation retreats, offerings include classes and workshops on the Japanese tea ceremony and gardening. While Green Gulch Farm has a residential monastery and retreat center, guest house, and conference center, it has also become recognized as a place where organic farmers can come to learn the tools of their trade. One of the original architects of the gardens at Green Gulch was the renowned late horticulturist Alan Chadwick—who had introduced the biodynamic farming techniques influenced by Rudolf Steiner on the farm. Chadwick's grave is marked by a stupa on site. Author Fenton Johnson writes that Green Gulch Farm, "...serve[s] as a model for living on the land in the context of a Zen Buddhist practice."
Sultan Ahmed Ismail is an Indian soil biologist and ecologist. His work has centred on techniques for recycling biodegradable waste into fertilizer using local varieties of earthworms, and on soil bioremediation.
All in This Tea is a 2007 documentary film co-directed by Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht, about Chinese tea. It follows the American tea connoisseur David Lee Hoffman as he travels to remote tea-growing areas of China. Hoffman attempts to interest Chinese tea growers and distributors in fair trade issues, and explores the importance of terroir and organic growing methods in both the quality and future sustainability of the Chinese tea market.
The Integral Urban House was a pioneering 1970s experiment in self-reliant urban homesteading. The house was located at 1516 5th St. in Berkeley, California between 1974 and 1984.
Rancho San Geronimo was a 8,701-acre (35.21 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Marin County, California given in 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Rafael Cacho. The grant extended along San Geronimo Creek.
Resource recovery is using wastes as an input material to create valuable products as new outputs. The aim is to reduce the amount of waste generated, thereby reducing the need for landfill space, and optimising the values created from waste. Resource recovery delays the need to use raw materials in the manufacturing process. Materials found in municipal solid waste, construction and demolition waste, commercial waste and industrial wastes can be used to recover resources for the manufacturing of new materials and products. Plastic, paper, aluminium, glass and metal are examples of where value can be found in waste.
Reuse of human excreta is the safe, beneficial use of treated human excreta after applying suitable treatment steps and risk management approaches that are customized for the intended reuse application. Beneficial uses of the treated excreta may focus on using the plant-available nutrients that are contained in the treated excreta. They may also make use of the organic matter and energy contained in the excreta. To a lesser extent, reuse of the excreta's water content might also take place, although this is better known as water reclamation from municipal wastewater. The intended reuse applications for the nutrient content may include: soil conditioner or fertilizer in agriculture or horticultural activities. Other reuse applications, which focus more on the organic matter content of the excreta, include use as a fuel source or as an energy source in the form of biogas.
The Sustainable Technology Optimization Research Center (STORC) is a research facility located on the California State University Sacramento campus. There are several players included in operations at the STORC including Sacramento State's Risk Management, the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS), and two professors in the Environmental Studies department Brook Murphy and Dudley Burton. The STORC facility is primarily maintained by California State University, Sacramento student interns and volunteers who use applied science and technology to address real world policy, food, health, and energy issues of present-day society. Research at the STORC encompasses engineering and science to test and evaluate new ideas and approaches of sustainable technology to solve environmental problems. Faculty and students address sustainability with an interdisciplinary studies approach. The STORC Vision is to become "an international resource for practical, scalable, and financially viable solutions in the area of sustainable technologies that are suitable for private and/or public sector operations related to the management of energy, food, water, and waste". The STORC Mission is "to demonstrate the operation of innovative commercially viable physical systems that are underpinned by sustainable technologies, and to disseminate the associated plans, public policy discourse, and scientific findings".