Earth Repair - by Leila Darwish (Paperback)

About the Book

Earth Repair is packed with accessible, and practical tools for healing and regenerating ecosystems to create thriving, fertile places and food forests.

Book Synopsis

A practical guide to bioremediation: natural techniques that are proven to heal land damaged by pollution.

In the United States and Canada alone, millions of acres have been contaminated by pesticides, chemicals, dirty energy projects, toxic waste, and other pollutants. Conventional clean-up techniques are expensive and resource-intensive and can cause further damage. Communities find themselves increasingly unable to rely on the same companies and governments that created the problems to step in and provide solutions.

Packed with valuable information from visionaries in the field of bioremediation, Earth Repair empowers individuals to heal contaminated and damaged land. It encompasses everything from remediating and regenerating abandoned city lots for urban farmers and gardeners, to recovering from environmental disasters and industrial catastrophes such as oil spills and nuclear fallout.

This fertile toolbox covers various remediation methods including:

• Microbial remediation: using microorganisms to break down and bind contaminants
• Phytoremediation: using plants to extract, bind, and transform toxins
• Mycoremediation: using fungi to clean up contaminated soil and water

From the Back Cover

Resistance is Fertile

GRASSROOTS BIOREMEDIATION TECHNIQUES TO HEAL THE EARTH

...In the energy descent future, many more people will be growing food on contaminated land; out of necessity. Earth Repair offers the hope that this can be done without fear of further eroding health and well being.
David Holmgren, author of Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability

...a book for people who will not wait around to heal the world.
Mark Lakeman, co-founder of The City Repair Project, communitecture, and the Planet Repair Institute

From urban lots contaminated with heavy metals and chemicals to polluted waterways and devastating oil spills, our toxic industrial legacy impacts our environment, our health, and our ability to create healthy, thriving local foodsheds. Conventional clean-up techniques employed by government and industry are expensive and resource-intensive and can cause further damage to the ecosystem. As the incidence of contamination and pollution continues to spread, communities are increasingly unable to rely on those who created the problems to step in and provide effective solutions that work for people and the planet.

Earth Repair explores a host of powerful grassroots bioremediation techniques that work with the many microorganisms, mushrooms, and plants that are the planet's finest and oldest disaster responders, alchemists, and healers. These techniques include:

• Microbial remediation - using microorganisms to break down and bind contaminants
• Phytoremediation - using plants to extract, bind and transform toxins
• Mycoremediation - using fungi to clean up contaminated soil and water.

Packed with valuable firsthand information from visionaries in the field, Earth Repair is essential reading that will empower communities and individuals with tools to transform environmental despair into constructive action.

... an indispensable guide for citizen scientists, permaculturists and ecological justice activists wanting to proactively address the legacy of environmental pollution we've inherited from our industrial civilization.
Scott Kellogg, educational director of the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center and author of Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide

Leila Darwish is a community organizer, urban gardener and permaculture rabble rouser, with a deep commitment to environmental justice, food security, and providing accessible and transformative tools for communities struggling with toxic contamination of their land and drinking water.

Review Quotes

"The real and imagined consequences of contaminated soil and water have been some of the greatest impediments to restoration of urban wastelands for food production. Leila Darwish combines the experience of the pioneer activists and innovators with the expertise and knowledge of remediation professionals to create an empowering guide for the large numbers of citizens looking for guidance on this issue. Earth Repair includes enough technical detail and explanation to get most readers up to speed on the subject. The case studies provide empowering examples of how low cost remediation techniques that reflect permaculture design principles can be used to enhance community resilience and advance social justice.

In the energy descent future, many more people will be growing food on contaminated land; out of necessity! Earth Repair offers the hope that this can be done without fear of further eroding health and well being."

-David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture and author, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability

" Earth Repair , what a brilliant and useful book! Leila Darwish & New Society have brought forth a book for people who will not wait around to heal the world. With a broad and deep view of the historical dynamics of thoughtless upheaval and waste, Earth Repair provides thorough, local-action strategies that communities, with or without resources, can undertake to remediate their damaged landscapes. In accessible language, this book explains how to deal with a serious local issue while also shining light on where to go to deal with the source!"

-Mark Lakeman, cofounder, The City Repair Project, communitecture, and the Planet Repair Institute

" Earth Repair is a fantastic introduction to grassroots bioremediation - an indispensible guide for citizen scientists, permaculturists, and ecological justice activists wanting to proactively address the legacy of environmental pollution which we've inherited from our industrial civilization. Within is a highly accessible toolkit of techniques and skills usable by the average person, empowering them to safely destroy or immobilize common contaminants by partnering with familiar biological allies such as microbes, worms, fungi, and plants. As we transition into a sustainable society, this book will be a key text, critical for informing communities in the process of de-toxifying our planet."

-Scott Kellogg, educational director of the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center and author, Toolbox for Sustainable City Living - A Do-It-Ourselves Guide .

"We are an odd, almost unique, creature that soils its own nest. As we've become more industrially and technologically muscular, our soiling has penetrated into the heart of Earth's systems, where we now pile our filth upon genetics, delicate geochemical balances, and climate. We have destabilized nature, and we won't find a way out the same way we came in. Darwish's good news is that nature WANTS to heal, and even knows how. We just have to use the tools she gives us."

-Albert Bates, author, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Biochar: Carbon Farming and Climate Change

About the Author

Leila Darwish is a community organizer and permaculturalist with a BSc in Environmental Conservation Sciences. Most of her grassroots organizing has centered on environmental justice issues in communities struggling with either the threat of or the enduring legacy of toxic contamination of their land and drinking water. Her focus on grassroots bioremediation stems from a deep commitment to justice and the passionate desire to empower people by providing them with simple, practical, transformative, and accessible tools for regenerative earth repair.