- Are you passionate about growing your own food and medicine, but have been told that the soil in your neighbourhood has lead contamination and isn’t safe to grow in?
- Do you live in a place where a lot of industrial activity used to or is currently taking place and are concerned about the toxic legacy left behind?
- Are you part of a community project, garden, urban farm, or local organization that wants to regenerate the community commons and wild lands, but have been told that the land could be contaminated and you cannot afford the more costly conventional clean-up?
- Are you living near the path of a an oil pipeline, or on a coast where there is offshore drilling or oil tankers, and want to be prepared and able to respond as safely and effectively as possible in the event of a possible oil spill?
- Do you feel a deep desire and responsibility to step up and heal and regenerate the lands and waters you call home?
Grassroots bioremediation is about all of us being able to respond directly to our circumstances and crises in empowering ways that increase our knowledge and self-determination and result in real improvements for the planet and our communities.
Grassroots bioremediation and earth repair are DIY and DIT (do it yourself and do it together) techniques that are high impact, low input, non-toxic, fairly simple and easy to replicate. These techniques and tools are affordable. They do not involve heavy machines and complicated technology or chemicals. In grassroots bioremediation, we work with nature, applying a whole systems, multi-kingdom approach to planetary recovery
There are many challenges with this work – it is not an easy road ahead. The contamination we are dealing with has built up over many decades, and there are no solutions in this earth repair toolkit that will make it disappear overnight. Though it may be lot quicker to excavate contaminated soil, bury it elsewhere, and truck in “clean” soil, it is expensive to do, and only creates more sacrifice zones. With grassroots bioremediation, the work takes more time, some say a minimum of 2-5 years, up to 30 years+, depending on the type and extent of contamination onsite. It is hard work and not as glamourous as it sounds. There is still much research to be done. But the work holds a lot of promise and will only improve as folks on the ground experiment and find out the many ways to make the tools and techniques work for them and the places they are seeking to repair and heal.