Looking to Transition to a Sustainable Future? :: PraxEco

Are you looking to transition to a sustainable future? How about a regenerative one? Well, you just might be interested in what the people over at PraxEco are doing. Andthebee got the unique opportunity to interview an up-and-coming company that has a vision of a healthy and sustainable future. They follow permaculture principles in their methodology as a company to support a diverse range of innovative, sustainable and regenerative projects. Continue reading to learn more about PraxEco and how you can get involved in the projects of the future.

Looking to Transition to a Sustainable Future?

PraxEco :: An Andthebee Interview

“PraxEco is a community of volunteers; volunteering for a common goal of a self-sufficient future. PraxEco is building a series of machines that manage our wastes and optimizes our local consumption. PraxEco community is an Open Value Network that provides its members with the resources — financial and technical — to fund and support innovative ideas that have positive outcomes on the future of our societies. “Positive outcome” itself is a perspective, so to be transparent, our communal perspective of a positive outcome in any situation or scenario that helps our network transition to a self-sustainable future. Network members are seen as mentors in their unique field(s) of expertise. They are given the chance to foster their expertise, follow their interests, and have access to other mentors and experts in the network. In addition to the strategic web of interdisciplinary projects and products that PraxEco has already started, new (future) members that have their own projects that align with our vision, values and share our goal, could receive funding and support from the community.

The vision of this multidisciplinary collaboration is to achieve a level of diversity — in form of participants’ qualifications, skills, talents, background and interests — for the community to self-sustain with an abundance of resources. Similarly to nature, PraxEco network will slowly evolve with the expansion of its people, perspectives and projects, achieving an abundance of social, ecological, and economic wealth.

PraxEco follows a permaculture-inspired approach to a collaborative economy. The three ethical principles of Permaculture are Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share. The first two are covered considering our mission (transition to a sustainable future) and the co-creation of a multidisciplinary community of mentors and resources. The novelty of our approach is the focus on the “Fair Share” ethical principle. The profit resulting from the success of sponsored projects is distributed fairly among the “Active” community members and existing/future projects in an ethical Activity-based model:

Members are considered “Active” if they persistently volunteer one “Activity” per week. An “Activity” is any kind of involvement in existing or new projects that bring our community network c

loser to abundance; equivalent to a few hours of conventional work per week. Some examples of Activities are: mentorship, consulting, teaching, donating, connecting… This emerges a new kind of “Keystone Habit” that is for a greater good than personal empowerment. Furthermore, acquiring this habit collectively for a common goal facilitates the smooth transition to abundance, since no one is obliged to quit their jobs or change their habits. Yet at the same time, members are encouraged and motivated to persistently involve their expertise for collectively building an abundant future.”

“Life’s evolutionary story shows that systemic abundance can be unlocked through collaboratively structured symbiotic networks that optimize the whole system so human communities and the rest of life can thrive.” – Daniel Christian Wahl

“The PraxEco movement has one main objective: To transition to a self-sustainable future. In other words, our milestones can be outlined as:

Transition Economy (our “Business Model”): The existing economic model has no room for a network like PraxEco. It is inevitable that a novel adaptable economic model must be built to facilitate a smooth involvement of people in the PraxEco movement to transition to abundance with a minimal footprint on their personal lives. This milestone has been achieved through combining permaculture principles with peer to peer economy and open value networks. Thus, the Activity-based economic model.
Eliminate waste: Waste is not waste until it’s wasted. Waste does not exist in nature; the output of one system is the input of another. Following that concept, we are building open source machines that recycle plastic, compost food scraps, and turn any other form of “waste” to heat, compost, and stored methane gas that can be used as an energy source.
Optimize consumption: The biggest and most important consumption need is, with no doubt, food. We like to imagine a future where fresh, local, biodynami
c, high-quality organic produce is available, in abundance, for whoever needs it. For that, we chose to start our journey towards self-sustainable consumption with Project A: Agriculture. From plastic recycled window pots to autonomous zero-waste closet gardens, to community greenhouses… Using as much growing area as possible to grow a community’s local production of food, fibres (clothes), medicine, tools…
Fill in the blanks for extra required production.

Industry by industry, one baby step at a time, abundance will be designed through volunteering independently together.”

Prax: Praxis, Practice; in the sense of persistent, adaptable and regenerative repetition of action.

Eco: Ecology, Ecosystem, Ecotone… the interdisciplinary study of natural interactions of organisms and surrounding entities, organisms amongst each other, and with their home (environment).

“Thus, PraxEco would mean:

The regenerative study of interdisciplinary interactions of habitants and habitats through observation and application of natural phenomena.”

“PraxEco is run by the people actively involved in it. Every single detail of PraxEco is modifiable. Whether it is the name, logo, projects, or even governing processes & procedures… We cannot predict the perspectives that will lead PraxEco as the community is evolving. Thus, an open regenerative system that comprehends and includes every possible perspective must be followed. The only exception that cannot be modified, unless it has been achieved, is the mission: The transition to an abundant self-sufficient future. Our three core values are “Transparency, Adaptability, and Simplicity.” However, our collectively integrated values extend beyond definition.

Core Values:

Transparency. Integrity, trust, open-source, transparent communication…
Adaptability: Evolution, regenerative, sustainable, upgradable, modifiable, flexible, systematically considerate.
Simplicity. Efficient, effective, comprehensible, naturally smart and fact-based.

Integrated Values:

Emergence. Acquiring new properties of life as a whole; similar to how Oxygen and Hydrogen, two uniquely different elements, combine to form water that has unique characteristics and properties compared to its individual elements.
Wu Wei. Natural actions that are effortlessly in alignment with the flow of life. Harmonic Freedom. People are freer for helping each other and doing what they like or deem necessary.
Pan-selfishness, or enlightened selfishness. To be aware of and caring for every big or little self in the universe.
Convivial Empowerment. Unconventional knowledge sharing, communication, and execution. Replicable, useful, evolutive tools for the community members to better intervene or contribute to the communicating ecosystem.”

“There seem to be two answers to this question: A short-term answer and a long-term one. For the short term, before January 2018, people can involve themselves through simply contacting us using our contact form on the website. We would manually add new members to our community groups: Loomio, Trello, and Google group. Using Loomio, members’ perspectives influence every decision they choose to include it in. Trello is our temporary virtual coworking space. It is where we organize and manage projects and tasks. Our Google group is utilized to share emails, announcements and updates related to the PraxEco network.

For the long-term, by January 2018, we plan to launch our PraxEco mobile app. This application will include a forked version of the Network Resource Planning (NRP) that is currently used by Sensorica, LearnDeep, and Freedom Coop. Using this application, people can join by simply creating an account and logging in! The PraxEco App will facilitate organization by being the platform on which people can view PraxEco’s projects, tasks to be done (job openings), organizational structure, resources, process patterns, recipes, and procedures… Members can even add their own projects, resources, openings, and log their volunteered activities if they are actively volunteering; which qualifies them to get their fair share of the network’s profit.”

Note: These questions were collectively answered and delivered on November 7, 2017. PraxEco network is a continuously evolving community as more new members are contributing with their unique perspectives. To stay up to date with our most recent model, please visit our website PraxEco.com.