We love dinners... Community Diary #1

Sustainable community Canarias — Brainstorming ideas about EcoIsleta community

In February 2023 we were having problems with our “community strategy”, low engagement, lack of values, no direction, countless mistakes, and so on… but in the middle of that mess our community dinners and International dinners were born…

Why dinners

In February we had an amazing group of colivers, and for some reason, we decided to organize a meet-up in the house to look for answers and solutions about the EcoIsleta “community”…

In that beer-brainstorming we talked about EcoIsleta, our trajectory, how we got to that point, why EcoIsleta, etc…

I said I was looking for answers, but instead of answers, I was hammered by deep questions. I couldn't answer most of them, in my defense I wasn´t drunk.

With the help of Leander and Marek and after a long talk guided by questions, we opened the community to people interested in sustainability and local impact. Even if they were not living in our coliving or shopping in our organic shop…

With some clarity in our Why, we head our activities in the direction of “start talking”, after identifying one of the biggest problems in our local community. Which is, the lack of communication between remote workers and locals…

We say… Let's sit down, know each other, and see what we think and what we can do together…If we don't know each other. How can we collaborate for a sustainable future?

Personal learning

At that point, I was so grateful to all those people trying to find answers. We altogether are much stronger and smarter than any of us…

When your goal is much bigger than increasing the amount of money in your bank account, could be complicated to balance purpose with being profitable. I know we have to be profitable to pay the bills, but at the same time that is not our goal…

Community is the best way to find that balance, to ask questions, and to solve problems, it is not about me, it is about us…

Community is a process, sometimes I think we shouldn't consider ourselves a “community” because I tend to make the mistake of comparing communities. Even when they have different whys and goals, yes I know, that´s a waste of time, but I do it…

This is a learning process, and what an incredible learning process…

Dinners in EcoIsleta

Dinners were born, with a good reason, with a clear why, we knew we had to start talking, share food, and drink something along the way, Did I say drink something?…

We love food, we love cooking. Sharing food is one of the biggest experiences we still have on this planet, as human “sapiens”…

Sharing a good meal gives us the opportunity and the moments to talk and listen about our culture, dreams, fears, love, etc, doing that with people you don't know from all around the planet is just, crazy-amazing…

Cooking in a Coliving in Canarias — EcoIsleta Coliving Las Palmas

International Dinner

For some reason, we came up with the idea of our first International Dinner, open to anyone from the city and beyond, a moment to sit down, share some food from your home country, talk, and meet each other…

So far we´ve done 5 of them, normally once a month… we love it…

Community dinners

Colivers also cook together, those are intense moments to share a good conversation, dreams, and feelings with the community members you are living with…

These dinners are key for the sense of community… I have to say that we had great cooks so far…

Sharing

Coliving is a sharing experience and sharing makes us happiest and more conscious about, why we are here…

Karina Birthday party

At our 5º International Dinner, we had a birthday party. Karina is a remote worker living in Las Palmas, she and her friends have been coming to different events and dinners for the last few months, and it was so fun to celebrate her birthday in our coliving…

Wanna join the next dinner

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Dinner with us

The Power of the Sustainable Communities

In an era where environmental, social, and economic challenges are a daily occurrence, the need for sustainable communities and practices has become increasingly important. As some people see it, embracing sustainability is no longer an option but a global imperative, urging us all to reimagine the way we live, work, and interact with our surroundings.

Written By: Gala, Co-founder & Lead Writer @ Travel & Tapas

Incorporating sustainable practice into one’s life is not an easy task, especially if we are alone in our efforts. With a world not built for sustainability, finding alternative solutions requires patience, innovation, creativity, and persistence.

So, because this path is sometimes rocky when we’re on it by ourselves, coming together around the idea and supporting one another is crucial. That is where sustainable communities come into play as the key to fostering a harmonious coexistence between humans and the environment through collective commitment and mutual support to create a better future.

Eco Isleta Coliving is on its own mission to build a safe and inspiring environment where sustainable communities thrive. Working hard every day to bring people together around a mutual goal, as well as introducing and educating those who don’t know much about sustainability, Eco Isleta has already become a place under whose roof sustainability is not a topic that scares us.

In this article, we’ll help you understand what sustainable communities are, how they are created, and what these communities can be. Let us dive in!

What are Sustainable communities?

In the past few years, sustainable communities have emerged as powerful agents of change, addressing pressing environmental, social, and economic challenges that confront our global society. At their core, sustainable communities embody a commitment to sustainable practices that strive to achieve a balance between human needs and the well-being of the planet.

Communities like these recognize the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and economic factors, and emphasize the importance of reducing carbon footprints, conserving resources, promoting social equity, fostering community engagement, and nurturing local economies. By embracing these principles, communities like these aim to create environments that are resilient, inclusive, and environmentally responsible, as a collective.

With voices that hold more power than those of individual practitioners, sustainable communities educate the world around them on how sustainable practices can address the challenges of climate change, resource depletion, social inequity, and economic instability.

And, of course, with the world not seizing to come up to challenges and the urgency to confront them intensifies, the importance of sustainable communities continues to grow, providing inspiration and practical solutions for more and more people.

Components of sustainable community

Even though there are many perspectives on what sustainable communities are and what they need to encompass, what is sure is communities like these take a holistic approach to sustainability, considering a range of interconnected components and human aspects to create a harmonious and resilient living environment.

First, let’s take the list of components adopted from the Egan review and EU Bristol Accord (Office of the Deputy ... 2003; Roberts and Jeffrey 2006). According to this list, there are 8 components of sustainable communities. These components represent all the aspects of human life and societies that should be taken into consideration when building sustainable communities. According to this list, these aspects are governance, transportation and connectivity, services, social and cultural aspects, environmental aspects, housing, economy, and equity.

Of course, on a smaller scale, such as in a coliving space, governance, accessibility, education, and balance become imperatives. On a smaller scale such as coliving, the components of sustainable communities encompass energy efficiency, waste management such as recycling, composting, and minimizing waste generation, promoting public transit, cycling, and walking to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, social cohesion to foster community engagement, inclusivity, and equitable access to resources and services, and supporting local economies.

Creating sustainable community

To create a sustainable community, community engagement becomes crucial. The focus should be on encouraging active participation, collective ownership of initiatives, and collaborative decision-making.

This will empower members to contribute with their diverse perspectives, enhancing the inclusivity and effectiveness of sustainable community projects.

Long-term planning is essential for creating a roadmap that prioritizes sustainability goals and balances the needs of current and future generations. Setting up rules and educating members from day 1 is a must. Individuals can contribute by adopting sustainable practices, supporting local businesses, and actively participating in community initiatives, and leaders should facilitate this to happen.

For example, in Eco Isleta Coliving, there are very transparent and clear messages all over the space that show how important sustainability practices are. With these messages around (notes on the walls, instructions, books on sustainability, eco-friendly DIY furniture, and active conversations with the operators), colivers start understanding the importance (and beauty) of sustainable practices and come together and help each other to make them happen. The conversations about sustainability always happen and when outsiders visit the space, the members proudly take them through their sustainability achievements and practices, adopting it as their own and sharing their newly acquired knowledge further.

Without a roadmap, clear messages, and engagement, it is impossible to create a sustainable community.

What can be a sustainable community?

Here are a few examples of sustainable communities:

Nomad Colivings: These are mid to long-term accommodation solutions where like-minded individuals come together to practice mindful living, slow down, and work collaboratively on mutual goals.

Eco Farms: Living in an eco-farm community involves learning how to grow your own food, appreciating sustainable agriculture practices, and promoting eco-friendly products. These communities prioritize animal welfare, balance nature and societal needs, and fight against mass production.

Rural Coworkings: These communities aim to repopulate villages and support local economies. They repurpose existing spaces, provide education on rural life, and offer opportunities for people to have fulfilling lives outside of urban centers. This helps distribute population density and contributes to environmental sustainability.

How Eco Isleta is building a sustainable community

Eco Isleta is dedicated to building a sustainable community through various initiatives.

First, there is an emphasis on a do-it-yourself approach, creating a space and furniture using reclaimed and repurposed materials, which promotes purposeful and practical living.

Additionally, there is a promotion and support for the local neighborhood through collaboration with local vendors and small businesses. One of the key objectives of Eco Isleta is to foster a sense of unity between colivers and locals, encouraging them to share experiences, learn each other's languages, and exchange valuable skills.

Eco Isleta also offers workshops to locals, such as helping them improve their skill sets, providing insights into sustainable practices, and organizing classes for kids and teenagers on important aspects of life, travel, and work.

Maintaining and promoting local traditions and customs is another crucial aspect of community-building in Eco Isleta. The operators prioritize the use of eco-friendly products within the coliving and have implemented a strict and clear waste management system to minimize environmental impact. In addition to providing community experience and housing, the operators of Eco Isleta actively educate their members on sustainability and environmentally friendly practices, encouraging responsible and conscious living. Lastly, as the first sustainable and eco-friendly coliving in the neighborhood (and probably the island) Eco Isleta maintains a culture of continuous learning and improvement, constantly striving to enhance their sustainable practices and contribute positively to the community they have established. And that is how Eco Isleta is successfully building a vibrant and environmentally-conscious sustainable community.

What is sustainable coliving?

Our planet is facing some challenges that Sustainable coliving can help to solve.

We all know that the list is extensive, and very big, climate change, poverty, waste management, loss of biodiversity, carbon footprint, loneliness, and so on…

We are at the beginning of the end of an economic and social paradigm, the way we have been doing business for the last 200 hundred years, is no longer sustainable, too many scientists and International organizations are telling the same, we must change the way we think, live, and work…

Sustainable coliving can help cities, communities, and rural areas, to face some of these challenges…

I´m trying to read, research, and think as much as possible about what sustainable Coliving should be, for a better future.

This is a complicated path, that needs time, patience, research, and consciousness, we need to start walking to learn and to find a way to become sustainable, it is a journey…

There is no one solution or fit for all approach for sustainable coliving, what can work for me in a neighborhood, can't work for a rural space in the middle of the country, and what works in one country can be impossible to implement in others…

I´ll try to talk about some basic guidelines to understand what sustainable coliving could do, could have, or could implement…

But most importantly, we need to change our mindset, many values, principles, and the philosophy we have for traditional business, don't work in the new paradigm of a sustainable economy, and for me, this is the toughest point of all.

I´m not going to give you a list of tasks to do for sustainable coliving.

We will approach this topic from the values that should drive these spaces, because first comes the new sustainable mindset.

Reduce

We don't have to explain that we live in a world driven by increase, growth, more, bigger, etc

In contrast, the reduced philosophy is here to stay, for many reasons scientists are given evidence that we are running out of many resources on the planet. But also our levels of consumption are driving many ecosystems to disappear literally.

This is also connected with the maintenance of Biodiversity, necessary for our survival.

Any Sustainable coliving should look for ways to reduce its carbon footprint, reduce energy consumption, and waste send to the landfill.

There are many ways to tackle this topic, but first, we should be aware of consumption data, measuring carbon footprint, energy, and waste.

- Ask yourself questions about where your energy comes from, how colivers move around the city or town, what they eat, whether are we composting, and so on…

One of the strengths of the coliving industry is the sharing of assets, which minimizes and reduces the consumption of many resources, such as sharing of appliances, kitchens, workspace, bills, food, bikes, etc…

Sharing is key to tackling the reduce philosophy, ask yourself if the space is doing as much as possible to increase sharing between the community.

Also think about how sustainable is the building, sustainable architecture is growing very fast, there are many new materials, and some architects are helping owners to build very efficient units.

But connected with this reduced concept, when possible we should reuse and recover an old building.

As you can see, the answers from this topic could bring you a very long list of tasks, but avoid that approach, ask yourself questions that drive you to start implementing small changes.

Reuse

Reuse is very connected with reducing. This is a complicated topic, many customer decisions are based on the atmosphere of the rooms and common areas, design is very important and gives personality to every single Coliving.

There are very good examples of units built in old, traditional houses, authentic and unique places, that inspire and help colivers to experience a place from a very local perspective.

Many of these colivings, reuse old furniture, build their furniture, or buy second hand, but this could be difficult to implement in some cases, because of the design line of some spaces, but we need to take it into consideration.

- Ask yourself about the longevity of the furniture you have or that you need to buy…

Places that reuse buildings, furniture, and materials, have a very authentic personality.

- Ask yourself about single-use products, even if they are not plastic ones, community events are suitable for these products, how can you change this?

What about food, have you a strategy to share and reuse lefties?

Recycle

I´m not going to talk very much about recycling, it is the last one after reduction and reuse, but a good setup for separate trash is basic.

- Ask yourself how many bins you have in place.

When possible measure the amount of trash you recycle, that will give you incredible data on your work in the long run…

Local organic products, and circularity

This is a hard one because many times the “local philosophy” will crash with our strategies of saving costs. Scale economics help us to save money, bringing products from places far away from our location, but this is very unsustainable, economically and socially.

- Ask if the community members buy in local shops if they eat local products, do they buy from local producers, are you implementing strategies to help colivers to buy as much local as possible.

Turning our consumption to buy bulk organic products could be a big step forward in the sustainable strategy, this could have an incredibly good impact on the local community, because many organic farmers are small, and locals

Having a local Impact is one of the cornerstones of any coliving trying to do something good in their town or neighborhood, but the engagement and activities can change from colivings in different regions, countries, cities, etc

- Ask if we are giving back to the local community something from our resources, knowledge, time, and facilities?

- Ask if we can help to solve any social or environmental problem of our community?

Some colivings do beach cleans, others buy in local shops, some share their facilities for local events, etc, etc, etc…

Think about your suppliers, who they are, where they buy their products, what their local impact is, etc

In this case, you have to listen to the local community and find the best way to be useful to them…

Vegan dinner in Las Palmas — EcoIsleta Coliving Las Palmas

Sustainable coliving local products — EcoIsleta Coliving Las Palmas

Community Building

This is a tough one… Individualism and egocentrism have been mainstream in the last 50 years or more, but the outcomes are loneliness, depression, stress, etc

We are social, we need community, and we are meant to be with others and for others…

“Loneliness is globally recognised as one of the most significant health concerns we face today.” Conscious Coliving

Community is another strength of the colivings, coliving is a community, and it is based on a community philosophy, this is very important, and to tackle many challenges in the near future we are going to need strong and healthy communities.

On a personal level, meeting people, connecting with others, or sharing moments of joy with peers, help us to have a healthier life, this is scientifically proven.

- Ask yourself if the space helps human interaction, if there is a community facilitator, or if there is a program of activities to foster interactions…

Also to tackle the reduce and reuse philosophy we are going to have to do many things as a community, sharing workspaces, appliances, tools, means of transport, etc

- Do we have bikes in the coliving, do we share spaces and appliances?

Remote workers sustainable community in Las Palmas — EcoIsleta Coliving Las Palmas

Encourage the new conscious mindset

This looks simple, but it is very tough, as well as important, not everybody is familiar or is informed about sustainability and regeneration.

But, do we have to educate the members of the community to be more sustainable? do we have to organize talks about this topic, visits to local farmers, and share info about how to have a better impact when traveling or living in our coliving?

Think deeply about this, because could be a beautiful path for some colivings, but a complicated one for others, depending on your community's interests or goals.

In a busy world, not everyone has “time” to learn about these topics after work, in my opinion, it is something that needs a long and consistent strategy…

Housing crisis

The increase in population in cities is overwhelming and with it, the prices are going high due to the demand for apartments and houses.

Coliving could be a good tool to help cities to be more sustainable and to allow people to have a decent space to live, all together with this sharing philosophy that we have to embrace.

In some cities, we can already find big units of colivings, that can offer accommodation for reasonable prices with good services, but also a community to meet other people…

Helping people to find affordable accommodation could be the main proposition for some colivings, and it could be very useful in some locations and cities...

Technology

Good technology can help us to reduce energy, to be more efficient, and to monitor our consumption…

There are technologies in place to monitor water leaks, time and consumption of water in the shower, calculation of carbon emissions, sensors, etc…

Some of these technologies can cut costs at a high level in the long run, it is something to take into consideration, requires some research in the market but it is worthwhile.

- Ask if you can implement any technology to be more sustainable.

Conclusion of Sustainable Coliving

As you can see there are many values, topics, tools, strategies, and tasks to do to become a sustainable coliving.

Do we have to do it all at once, do we have to start working to implement everything we just talk about? I don't think that is a good approach.

Don´t think that sustainable coliving is a space that accomplishes all these issues, which is too difficult and even overwhelming.

We have to start this journey with patience, be conscious of the challenges, and tackle one topic at a time, for big units or big teams, they can go faster, but for many small units, you better take this with “philosophy”.

For me, sustainable coliving is a space that works to implement some of these values and mindsets, being a sustainable coliving is much more complicated than having solar panels or a passive building.

EcoIsleta Coliving

In EcoIsleta Coliving we are on this journey, we are doing what we can, making many, many mistakes, learning, and sharing our “travel”, we are open to suggestions to improve this post, but also you can contact us ecoisleta@gmail.com to ask for anything or to get more info…

By the way, what a long post, if you get to read all this text, you should send us an email, we have to invite you to a cold beer in a local “bochinche” in Las Palmas…