ECOSF Spreads the Green Word
By Alastair Bland
The Ecology Center of San Francisco (ECOSF) currently has no address or permanent home base, yet the six-month-old organization’s presence in San Francisco is vibrant and growing.
Co-founders Davin Wentworth-Thrasher, Tori Jacobs and Sam Hartman have made it their goal to educate San Franciscans on living sustainably through energy efficiency and renewability, gardening, and how to support local farms and businesses.
“We’ve modeled ourselves after the Ecology Center in Berkeley,” says Wentworth-Thrasher, 26, a Sunset District resident who sells and installs solar panels to support his greater ambitions.
“They have everything we want to establish, like a book store and a place to buy products. San Francisco is a big enough metropolis that it should have a presence like theirs,” he said.
ECOSF has gained a following of San Francisco supporters by providing free energy efficiency evaluations for residents who wish to optimize their gas and electricity use and by regularly hosting garden-planting parties at homes and businesses.
“We educate people, not through classes or workshops - but through garden planting parties,” Wentworth-Thrasher says. “We’ll meet up before, do a site assessment, and with the input of the owner decide what to do with the space and what to plant.”
On Oct. 14, ECOSF conducted a garden party at Jefferson Elementary School. Kindergarten teachers Gail Kabat and Sally Bland had been working for more than a year to turn the schoolyard into a living garden space. They, along with many volunteers, had already removed most of the invasive plant species, but they did not know how to proceed with the replanting.
“The biggest question was, “How are we going to get water?” Kabat said.
“At the end of the day, Davin had directed us in putting in a drip system, an edible organic garden and an ascending herb spiral,” she said. “He wouldn’t let us take away any of the waste or diggings.
Part of the lesson was that you use everything on the site.” ECOSF hosts garden parties free of charge. Thrasher, Jacobs and Hartman provide the gardening tools, expertise and time while asking for contributions only to cover the cost of seeds, plants, soil and other materials. The three founding members of ECOSF each grows various items at their respective San Francisco homes.
Wentworth-Thrasher, who lives on 48th Avenue in the Outer Sunset’s foggy climate, successfully grows a garden of corn, sweet peas, beans, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, beets, broccoli, cauliflower and various leafy greens.
“It’s thanks to global warming,” he joked.
Another priority of ECOSF is to promote local businesses that support sustainability and environmental protection. In the Outer Sunset, Other Avenues food co-op, Judahlicious and A Happy Planet - an organic bedding and clothing store - have received the thumbs-up from ECOSF.
“We’re putting as much light as we can on these businesses and others which are helping to support environmental causes locally and elsewhere. It really makes a big difference to communities if you can support businesses in the community and keep the revenue in the local economy,” Wentworth-Thrasher said.
ECOSF’s most ambitious project yet is a planned series of books for Full Circle Children’s Books, which would educate young readers on the concept of the “life cycle of products.”
“It’s been said that Americans live in a throw-away society,” says Wentworth-Thrasher. “We want people to consider the environmental impacts of producing things, and to know what happens to them when their lives are over.”
Currently, ECOSF’s only public “office” is a weekly booth at the Saturday Alemany Boulevard Farmers Market, where members offer brochures and printed information to interested members of the public. The group hopes, however, that San Francisco will welcome the organization into the infrastructure of the city government by establishing ECOSF information desks and book loan centers at numerous local playgrounds and parks. Reading material would cover a broad range of authors and issues, such as social, economic and environmental sustainability, organic gardening, energy and water conservation, nature awareness, permaculture and natural building.
ECOSF would also like to make available for purchase such products as hand-crank blenders, hand-powered grain mills and low-flow shower heads - practical items that reduce energy costs and the strain on the earth’s environment.
The fledgling grassroots organization currently consists of just its three founders, but ECOSF, which received its non-profit status in October, aims to build and expand via a membership system.
“Members would be supporting an organization that’s promoting sustainability and ecological awareness in the City,” said Wentworth-Thrasher.
He says a line of ready applicants already waits.
“ECOSF is all about fostering a deeper connection to the Earth through gardening, and developing a respect for the community and the rest of the planet. It’s about nurturing yourself through things you create yourself,” he said.
For more information about ECOSF, call 415-846-8164.