Off the Grid：Put into Practice

Living in a metropolis means that every necessity is easily accessible. Nonetheless, Off-grid living emphasises putting things into practice. Whether one can lead this type of life as they wish depends on whether he / she can master the knowledge and skills required.

In the Town of Golden, Canada live several off-gridders who are willing to experiment and attempt. They build a kind of house called the “Earthship”, which is designed by an American architect. In order to allow the house owners to be self-sustainable even not going outdoors, he invented this type of house which has attracted quite a lot of off-gridders to build their own homes following the design blueprint. Another feature of the Earthship is that it makes use of waste as construction materials, and the construction of it puts together the laws of nature and science, which gives birth to a kind of housing that does absoluely no harm to the environment. MOK Ho-kwong (Yeah Man) visited these off-gridders to find out the secret behind the Earthship.

Life should have been inseparably related to resources. Having experienced a great power blackout throughout the country, numerous people in Japan have had profound feelings about the hidden problems behind the dependence on the public electricity supply. As a result, Mr SUZUKI and a group of folks living in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture co-developed some renewable energy techniques. They formed a volunteer team called “Fujino Power” and devote themselves to assist and teach the locals to generate electricity at home on their own. Even living in a big city, there are still methods to arouse people’s awareness to save energy.

Yeah Man’s off-grid techniques have not been very skillful. This time, he will learn the knack from these off-grid experts, not only to bring some mind-blowing new ideas, but also to let himself have a useful lesson, and he even wants to bring these innovative concepts back to Hong Kong.