Sustainable Living in Auroville

Introduction

Auroville (City of Dawn) is an experimental township in Viluppuram district mostly in the state of Tamil Nadu, India with some parts in the Union Territory of Puducherry in India. It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (known as "the Mother") and designed by architect Roger Anger.

As stated in Alfassa's first public message in 1965, Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity.

Site

A site, approximately 20 square kilometer of barren wasteland, some 10 km north of Pondicherry and 5 km from the coast was chosen for the city.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Resident Aurovilians, Researchers and students, Day-workers for economic and service activities. Casual visitors and tourist.

AGE GROUP %

0-14 (19.62%)
15-19 (6.52%)
20-24 (5.99%)
25-29 (8.62%)
30-39 (18.30%)
40-49 (20.28%)
50-59 (15.01%)
60+ (5.66%)

The township was originally intended to house 50,000 residents. In the initial 20 years, only about 400 individuals from 20 countries resided in the township. In the next 20 years, this number rose to 2,000 individuals from 40 countries. As of January 2018, it has 2,814 residents (2,127 adults and 687 children) from 54 countries with two-thirds from India, France and Germany. The community is divided up into neighborhoods with Tamil, English, French and Sanskrit names like Aspiration, Arati, La Ferme, Auromodel and Islamabad.

Sustainable Technology and Design in Auroville

Sustainable Technology

Technology plays an important role in the pursuit for sustainable living. Within Auroville, several research institutes are continuously working on innovative processes to reduce energy and water use by modifying and integrating new and existing technologies.

Solar Technology

Solar technology is widely used within the various communities and is the largest renewable source of energy in Auroville. The most common application of solar technology is for water pumping, water heating, street lighting, and in some cases electricity generation.

Solar Electricity

Some communities and buildings run completely on electricity produced by photo voltaic (PV) panels. The PV systems used within Auroville are custom designed by Aurovillian groups, and integrate inverter and battery storage systems for cloudy and rainy days. Currently, there are 400 houses running solely on solar electricity within Auroville.

Solar Water Pumping and Heaters

Over 80% of the solar technology in Auroville is used for water pumping and heating. Many of the operations for the waste water systems, and well/boreholes rely on this form of energy to move the water. Aurovillian solar service and solution experts have formulated simple and low maintenance pumping and heating systems.

Auroville Solar Kitchen

The largest and most striking use of solar technology in Auroville is the Solar Kitchen. The concept of the Solar kitchen came out of the desire for a practical and sustainable communal space within Auroville. Currently, the kitchen serves approximately 1000 lunches a day.

The kitchen’s power system is designed as a hybrid system (solar and diesel run) with the diesel system stepping in when the solar energy generation is too low to support the kitchen operations.

The solar system component is a solar bowl design, which uses hundreds of mirrors to focus sunlight onto the heat receiver. The coils around the heat receiver are filled with water and when the water turns to steam, it is pumped below into a boiler room, and used for the cooking operations. The solar bowl is currently the largest in the world.

The diesel system component was installed to replace an inefficient, high maintenance and dangerous solar storage system which was initially installed.

Many of the cooking utensils have been customized to suit the needs and system of the solar kitchen.

Wastewater Technology

The Center for Scientific Research (CSR) has applied innovative methods to customize the available wastewater technologies to fit the various Auroville community needs. The CSR wastewater systems designs are based around tenets of simplicity, affordability, and need for minimal energy input.

More than 60 natural waste water treatment systems are in use in Auroville. Most recycling systems combine a pre-treatment device, a main treatment planted filter, and a post-treatment holding facility, usually consisting of one or more ponds or polishing tanks. Research and development has shifted to more efficient pre-treatment. Auroville has several units which are actively implementing waste water treatment systems, including CSR, Aqua engineers, and others.

Water Tank

Eri - Kulam - oorani - Ground water

Today - Majority of the structures of irrigation today are in a bad condition and are largely silted, having lost their original storage capacity because of the absence of regular maintenance as it was practiced in the past. Drainage and feeder canals, control structures, as well as know-how related to their usage are on the edge of collapse. The traditional knowledge of the people is being lost.

Remedy - The Harvest Way

Auroville Water Harvest plays an important role in this regard by setting up not only scientifically grounded solutions, also environmentally, socially, organizationally and economically viable, with the local population and main actors.

Electric Vehicle (EV)

Technology A large portion of the energy consumption in Auroville is spent on transporting people and goods. To reduce their carbon footprint, and create a healthier natural environment, Auroville is looking to expand the use of electric vehicles (small electric cars, electric bicycles and electric motorcycles). There are various working components to successfully integrating electric vehicles into the community.

1. Central to the success of EV is the installment of charging points at convenient locations throughout the community. Currently, plans are being hashed out to install charging points between the City area and Green belt area and the major obstacle facing designers is finding cheap but green options for operating the charging points (preferably having the points detached from the central grid).
2. Awareness campaigns around the advantages of EV over the currently used petrol motorcycles and mopeds are also important for the successful implementation of the EVs. However, one major challenge to full EV adoption is the number of EVs that would be required to replace existing vehicles. To address this issue, designers within Auroville are researching methods to

Effectively convert current vehicles into EVs.
Create an integrated transportation scheme that will optimize shared rides, bicycle loans, and public transportation.

Wind Technology

A wind home system consists of the following parts:

Wind Turbine – to generate energy
Tower – to raise the turbine above obstacles
Battery Bank – to store energy for lulls in the wind
Charge Controller – to charge the batteries.
Inverter – optional, to run AC appliances

“MinVayu”

Sustainable Design

Architecture and design within Auroville is highly experimental around natural architecture. Natural architecture takes advantage of local available building materials, as well as the layout and contours of the project site. By effectively planning the building design, the architect can take advantage of the natural lighting and wind direction to reduce the need for artificial lighting and cooling systems. There are two main inputs that are being experimented with in Auroville – ferro-cement, and earth blocks. Experimentation and development within the Center for Scientific Research (CSR)and the Earth Institute on these two building materials, has increased the durability and functionality of the materials.

Ferro-Cement

Ferro-cement is made using chicken mesh plastered in mortar (cement, sand and water). Since ferro-cement requires less material than reinforced cement, it is largely preferred over conventional cement for construction. Aside from the economic advantage, ferro-cement is also very flexible and is the appropriate material for ‘niche applications’. Ferro-cement is ideal construction material for infrastructure that is periodically/seldom used, and requires minimal design intricacies (such as school buildings, religious buildings, etc). Currently, the cement industry contributes about 5% to global CO2 levels. A wider scale adoption of ferro- cement in construction can therefore lead to significant reductions in CO2 emissions.

Earth Blocks

Earth Blocks (or eblocks) are building blocks made of soil, sand, and 5% of cement mixture. The eco-friendly blocks are produced by first mixing the components with water, manually compressing them with customized presses, and cured for approximately 28 days to reach a ‘dry compressive strength of 7.5 MPa” Aside from the eco-friendly input used in the production process, the use of localized inputs (soil from the site surroundings) immensely reduces the embodied energy since there is less need for transportation, mechanized block production, and firing processes amongst others. According to the Earth Institute, embodied energy for a finished wall (in MJ/m3) made of eblocks is 19 percent less than concrete solid blocks, and over 70 percent less than fired brick.

Other benefits of eblocks include the aesthetic earthen look it naturally possesses, humidity regulation provided (with proper planning and design), and the low maintenance it requires in the long run (versus cement plastered walls which require periodic re-plastering and painting).

For more information on eblocks, please visit www.eblockindia.com

Sustainable Practices and Processes in Auroville

REFORESTATION

12 MILLION TREES PLANTED IN 30 YEARS.
As the vegetation has grown the microclimate has changed.

Sadhana forest reforestation by Auroville

Daily Green Practices

The day-to-day operations from the individual level, to the organizational are centered around green practices. Although most of these practices are simple, they have large impacts on the environment in both the short and long run. Some of these practices include

1. Garbage separation. Separation of garbage based on it’s bio-degradable nature allows the garbage to be reused for compost (fertilizers for gardens and lawns), or recycled.

2. Lavatory and Eco-sanitation. Lavatory and Eco-sanitation refers to the segregation and use of excreta for agriculture fertilizers. Fertilizers produced from these materials are cheap, and good for garden and orchard applications. Communities such as Sadhana forest currently use this practice.

3. Community recycling and reuse projects. Examples of these projects include the Auroville central ‘exchange’ shop. Instead of dumping old and unwanted items in the garbage, community members are encouraged to exchange or donate these items to theshop since another community member may find the item useful. Reuse projects such as WELLpaper (organized by the Auroville unit called Women Empowered through Local Livelihood) use old newspapers and other unwanted items and create crafts and jewelry that are sold for profits.

4. Communal facilities and communal schedules. The idea behind schedules and common facilities for the community is rooted in the desire to reduce the energy consumption of the community. For example, offices within Auroville have similar tea time schedules. Since the tea preparation is done in bulk, less electricity is used in the preparation of the tea. Simple practices such as this are effective in saving energy and creating a energy-conscious community.

5. Discouraging and replacing plastic bags. Since plastic bags cannot be recycled or composted, they are environmentally unfriendly. Replacing plastic bags with paper bags, and encouraging the use of recycled shopping bags reduces the litter accumulation within the area while also saving money in the community.

6. Green messages. Planting green messages in various places increases the community’s environmental consciousness. Green messages are placed in strategic locations (communal kitchen, bulletin boards, some packaged produce, etc).

Education and Community Engagement

The Auroville community has had enormous social and economic impact on the surrounding villages. Currently, over 5000 villages are hired from the villages as laborers and service providers - villagers are hired as cleaners, construction workers, maintenance workers, and are given on the job training. While some of these jobs may be considered menial, the increased family incomes have substantially increased the standard of living within the communities. . Auroville also coordinates several outreach programs to compliment the economic growth of the surrounding communities.

Education Programs

Auroville currently runs several schools for children from surrounding communities. The school curriculums are somewhat experimental, and place equal focus on academia, environmental consciousness, social interactions and diversity. The medium of instruction is English and/or French.

Vocational Training

Vocational training is offered to older members of the community for training in sustainable trades such as recycled crafts, organic farming, instrument making, compressed earth blocks production, herbal medicine and other such industries.

Health and Environment

Awareness Health and environmental awareness campaigns are usually integrated into the education and training programs offered by Auroville. Villagers are shown simple and practical ways of living healthier lives, cleaning and maintaining their environment, and hygienic reusing their waste materials and animal excreta.

AUROVILLE : The Adventure of Environmental Awareness

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