Sustainable Village started in 2001 but our roots go back to the 1960's.
Our founding inspirations include Peace-Corp type work, the back-to-the land movement, the Whole Earth Catalogs, and early environmental concerns.
1966 –
Our founder, Steve Troy started learning about sustainable development and practical ways to address poverty alleviation and appropriate technology. This led to developing
Our Vision –
an interconnected world of business, government, non-profits, and individuals working together to transcend nationalism, materialism, and all the various ways egocentrism manifests - a global team collaborating to eliminate poverty, create abundance, and prevent desertification, floods, famine, forest fires, and pollution.
Our Purpose –
an inspiration and belief in helping create a more just, sustainable, and regenerative world. This inspiration motivated our business' beginnings in 1966, guided it through all these years, and now defines our future.
Our Vision –
an interconnected world of business, government, non-profits, and individuals working together to transcend nationalism, materialism, and all the various ways egocentrism manifests - a global team collaborating to eliminate poverty, create abundance, and prevent desertification, floods, famine, forest fires, and pollution.
Our Mission –
Finding, inventing, and promoting products, systems, and strategies that can replace harmful, unsustainable, and pollution-producing practices and technologies.
Water –
Because water is the foundation for all life, and because water remains the focus of our business efforts, our impact can directly address water shortages, water pollution, erosion, aridification, desertification, water-caused crop failures, and soil health.
Evergreen, Garberville, CA 1971
A natural food store selling bulk grains, herbs, and organic vegetables but also a kind of cultural center for all the back-to-the landers in that part of northern California. Our customers started growing cannabis and asking us for things like deer fencing, irrigation line, and organic fertilizers. This side of the business grew so fast we soon ran out of room and expanded the hardware side of the business into a new location called Open Circle.
Open Circle, Garberville, CA 1975
As far as we know, Open Circle was the first retail business dedicated to supporting and supplying marijuana growers. This counts starting the first cannabis-focused grow store in 1975 (Open Circle), the beginning of drip irrigation retail sales in 1976 (Open Circle), the first retail sales of solar electric systems in 1979 (Open Circle and Real Goods), Blumat watering in the early 1980's, and many first-time new product launches like compact fluorescent lights in 1985, LED lights, greywater systems, rainwater collection systems, and many more.
Real Goods, Willits/Ukiah/Santa Rosa, CA 1978 - 1985
The first Real Goods started in 1978 with another store opening in Ukiah in 1980 with a third in Santa Rosa the next year. From the beginning, we sold small wind generators, microhydro generators, deep cycle batteries, and 12V lights, sounds systems, tvs, and small appliances. So when photovoltaic solar panels became available, most of our customers already had the basic DC systems set up so it was very easy to add solar.
According to a report from the Solar Roots Team, Real Goods was the first retail business to sell photovoltaics but we’re not sure. We split that first order with Open Circle and aren’t sure which store sold first. In any case though, we can thank the cannabis growers for launching the solar revolution. At that time, the cost of PV was more than 52 times higher than today and cannabis growers were mainly the only ones who both needed it and could afford it.- it went down from our wholesale cost in 1980 at $39/watt to 75¢/watt today. The industry tracker, SkyQuest Technology estimates annual PV modules sale each each year at $328.4 billion. This may never have happened at all or would have taken much longer without those early pioneers in northern California’s "Emerald Triangle."
Drip Irrigation and Blumats 1975 - 1982
We also to some extent helped pioneer drip irrigation. Except for on large farms, drip was relatively rare and unknown then. In the early 1980’s though the “War on Drugs” came on in full-force. At that point, almost all the cannabis was outdoor grown and the army-clad enforcers used helicopters to follow water lines and parachute down to pull plants and confiscate equipment. We searched out, found, and started supplying Blumats then as an alternative to long, visible-from-the air water lines.
Our customers could put a 55 gallon drum of water under some trees, connect Blumats, avoid needing water lines, and only infrequently visit their gardens. Soon though, all the grows moved indoors and these new outdoor systems became unnecessary. It did help us to evolve beyond drip though into using Blumats which we called, “The Evolution of Drip Irrigation.”
Green China Direct
When Deng Xiao Ping and Jimmy Carter began dissolving the "bamboo curtain" in 1979, we started an import-export company and through a hydroelectric company we worked with managed to get an invitation to visit China. At that time, not many Chinese people representing factories spoke English and we developed a thriving business finding Chinese sources and organizing the logistics. Before many years though, speaking English became more common and factories could communicate directly. We continued to import though and today can help companies negotiate terms, costs, non-compete agreements (NNN), and shipping. We took the top picture here in Shenzhen, 1980.
Jade Mountain 1979 2001
Jade Mountain started as the importing arm for Open Circle, Real Goods, and some of our other customers like Down to Earth in Oregon and The Earth Store in Grass Valley. Because the systems we designed and evolved for remote cannabis growers also had the potential to have big, life-saving benefits for poor farmers in distant places, we started exporting extensively to developing countries. We designed and supplied systems for almost every developing country of the time.
On the other side of the spectrum, Blumats became very popular for houseplants and we had hundreds of retail nursery customers selling them. This picture is from a medical clinic system we installed in Tibet. Our business model included showcasing and supplying anything that was likely to create more sustainability and we had over 10,000 products on our website in the late 1990’s. In the early 2000’s though, Google and Amazon claimed and undermined this business model and – “seeing the writing on the wall” – we sold Jade Mountain and started Sustainable Village.
Sustainable Village 2001 – present
Our focus on Living Soil and going beyond what’s commonly called “orgainic” symbolizes the Sustainable Village focus but goes back to our Permaculture, Living Soil farm shown in this picture taken in the early 1980’s.
Because the old model of selling commodities, the same items sold and advertised by multiple companies became a dead end for small businesses, we have developed over 200 new products no one else has – some inventions and some unique kits that put together multiple components into kits.
Working with cannabis farmers for so many years improving irrigation methods for the biggest impacts on plant health and yields opens doors to sharing those insights, techniques and products with growers and farmers of every stripe. One result of this that ties back to Jade Mountain days is The Sustainable Resources Conference.
The Sustainable Resources Conference
We organized these international conferences in 2003 and 2004, teamed up with the University of Colorado and Naropa University. Over 5000 people attended from almost every developing country.
The Future
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned, "We face a five-alarm global fire that requires the full mobilization of all countries. We must go into emergency mode against the climate crisis. We need an avalanche of action." The regenerative strategies, products, and systems we continuously promote and supply help our customers lessen the strain they put on the environment.We pioneered solar electric - according to the Solar Roots project, our stores Open Circle and Real Goods were the first to retail photovoltaic solar modules back in the 1970's. We still sell solar-powered water and transfer pumps, but a bigger impact on creating more affordable and clean energy comes from more efficient irrigation systems that require a small fraction of the energy. Our gravity irrigation systems, fed from rain barrels, and our agrivoltaic systems don't need any electricity at all.
THE CHALLENGE
More than 1.7 billion people worldwide don't have an adequate supply of safe drinking water - and in many places not enough water to grow enough food. Climate change, population growth, and higher temperatures threaten to increasingly make this and other water problems much worse.
BUT WE HAVE SOLUTIONS!
• The simplest and most efficient irrigation
• Easy ways to convert grass into gardens
• Rainwater collection and use
• Root demand irrigation
• Reusing Greywater
• Growing your own food
• Firescaping the land around your home
• Rooftop, vertical, capillary mat, and agrivoltaic irrigation systems
Instead of selling out and marketing purposeless but profitable products, we want to promote a more Eco-Economic model- a business approach with a larger vision than just making more and more money all the time. We hope to help evolve business systems that reward contributions to the planet, that decrease pollution, save natural resources, and create better living conditions for more people. Sustainability only means keeping things from getting worse. We need to make things better, much better. Like the soil and plants we help people cultivate, we aspire to grow a business environment that nurtures meaningful job creation, offers salaries and benefits competitive with all the polluting and meaningless career choices. Only by greatly expanding these options in fields like regenerative agriculture can we make the changes necessary to reverse harmful trends like desertification, species extinctions, poverty, inequality, climate change, and our increasing environmental challenges.
Our Purpose –
an inspiration and belief in helping create a more just, sustainable, and regenerative world. This inspiration motivated our business' beginnings in 1966, guided it through all these years, and now defines our future.
Our Mission –
Finding, inventing, and promoting products, systems, and strategies that can replace harmful, unsustainable, and pollution-producing practices and technologies.
Water –
Because water is the foundation for all life, and because water remains the focus of our business efforts, our impact can directly address water shortages, water pollution, erosion, aridification, desertification, water-caused crop failures, and soil health.
