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Lotan New Recycling StationHow did it all start and why? At the time, no municipal regional recycling program was available and our goal was to reuse and recycle as much of the waste as possible within the boundaries of the kibbutz. This effort has led to a 60 percent reduction in garbage collected by the regional council and dumped at the local landfill. Alternative building aside, the largest component of our garbage
is organic waste, which gets composted
and used to fertilize our organic
gardens, the produce
of which we sell in Eilat. This past week we also received our license
as an officially recognized organic grower for local marketing and
export to Europe. Opening Ceremony at Lotan Recycling Station
Representatives of the Ministry of Environment's national and regional offices attended the Station's opening ceremony. It was our honor, as well, to host the mayor of the Israeli Arab city of Sachnin and the directors of Sachnin's environmental projects. We are looking forward to a continued and new cooperation with the Ministry and environmental activists in Israel. The Collection Station is the first stop of the education Eco-fun
tour of Lotan's Creative Ecology Center. Here visitors learn about
the importance of recycling and their personal responsibility for
waste reduction. The Station serves as a model for empowering individuals
and communities to use their waste to construct recycling collection
point and other buildings. The Future The Lotan Eco-Team |
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©All Rights Reserved Kibbutz Lotan 2005 Kibbutz Lotan, D.N. Hevel Eilot 88855 Israel; Tel: +972 8 6356888; Fax +972 8 6356927 |
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Environmental
awareness in general and recycling in particular is a guiding principle
of our 
However,
the creative genius of the staff of Lotan's Center for Creative
Ecology was to find a use for all that junk! Thus we began our adventures
in creative alternative building with waste. Newspapers and cartons
found their way into the mix for mud coating buildings and structures.
The structures themselves contain great volumes of non-degradable
waste, instead of concrete or other construction materials.
On
January 14th 2002, we celebrated the official opening of our new
Recycling Collection and Demonstration Station. The facility, built
with the support of the Israeli Ministry of the Environment, is
an outdoor classroom and environmental sculpture in its own right.
The Station was a 100 percent community-built from tires filled
with bottles and cans, coated with a generous layer of mud (adobe.)
The
next step in expanding our educational work on recycling is the
planned Recycling Art and Education Center. This center will include
classroom/ studio, storerooms, library, gallery, and, of course,
composting toilets.