Ecological Hotel & Permaculture Hotel, Sustainable Ecolodge Ecuador

What makes our hotel an Ecological Hotel? Our Mission Statement & Vision Black Sheep Inn aims to provide a comfortable, educational experience for guests, teaching them about the local area, local customs and Permaculture, while contributing to and improving the local community and the natural environment. Our goal is to be a leader in environmental stability and ecotourism. When someone first arrives and walks up our driveway, we want to surpass their expectations.
Recycling Center & ECO-Definition & Composting Toilet Information & Goals & Offset Program
Land & People & Culture
Historically land and people are inherently tied together. Native American tradition believes that people cannot own land; in fact they believe that the earth owns the people who temporarily reside upon it. When starting the Black Sheep Inn, it was the first time we owned property. We knew that we should care for our land if we wanted our land to sustain us. Culture: All human beings have basically the same needs for food, shelter, warmth, clothing, family etc... how different societies provide for these needs is based on local climate and culture. Celebrating cultural differences and diversity is just as important as maintaining biodiversity. We believe it is important for human beings to maintain a connection to the land that sustains them: to know where the foods they are eating come from, to value the resources they are consuming, to appreciate different foods, arts, music, buildings and ways of living around the world. Everyone on earth lives in some type of community. The particular community and world we live in sustains us and therefore we must sustain them. We are neither fanatics nor purists, yet we have become conservationists. We respect our community and the earth. We choose to tread lightly whenever possible. While exploring Ecuador and traveling to other parts of the world, we hope you choose establishments that are ecologically sound, supportive of their community and that promote low impact tourism.
	Community & Education
	For over 10 years we have been living in Chugchilán and we are a part of the local community. Michelle teaches English and Computers in the local high school. Andres often repairs the town water system and phone lines. We have donated computers, phone lines and a copy machine and to the local school, health clinic, and police station. With the help of a generous donation, we have subsidized school textbooks since 2002.
Water Tubes for the Community
	One of our most successful projects has been establishing a local Library/Learning Center stocked with over 1000 Spanish language books and 8 computers. Students now have a local resource for research and investigations. Young children are becoming interested in reading. High school students are getting hands-on experience with computers. The British School of Quito has led computer workshops at the library and assisted with technical difficulties. All of these projects have been supported with the help of Black Sheep Inn guest donations. Black Sheep Inn has sponsored several workshops with tech assistance from US Peace Corps Volunteers: family planning, guiding skills in native flora and fauna, guiding ethics, first-aid for hikers, nutrition and women’s health, and knitting. Locally knit crafts are displayed and sold in the lodge and proceeds go directly to the artisans. We have encouraged community members to participate in the growing local tourism industry by opening hostels and restaurants. We also provided an interest-free loan to a neighbor enabling him to start a horseback riding business. We have organized a tourist transportation cooperative with local vehicle owners. Native Guides take tourists hiking. We now have a musical instrument lending library to help bring traditional Andean Folkloric Music back into the area.
Library/Computer Workshop

Textbooks for the School

A competent local staff of 9 full-time workers run the Black Sheep Inn. All staff members have been working with us for many years, and have become our ‘family’. In 2000 we offered a continuing adult education program for staff to improve reading, writing and mathematics skills. In 2004, we took the entire staff whale watching on the coast of Ecuador. For some of them it was the first time they had seen the ocean, let alone whales!

Being part of the small, very rural community of Chugchilán has been very rewarding and is an integral part of our lives.

Recycling Center & ECO-Definition & Composting Toilet Information & Goals & Offset Program

Zero Waste - Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

At the Black Sheep Inn, we reduce our environmental impact by buying in bulk and avoiding non-recyclable packaging. We reuse paper, cardboard, glass bottles, large plastic containers, kitchen scraps, water and human waste onsite. Trash is separated into 3 receptacles in all rooms. We produce less than one ounce of non-recyclable trash daily per person! This amounts to ZERO waste. Waste that cannot be reused or recycled onsite is brought to a new recycling center that the Black Sheep Inn is sponsoring and supporting. See www.EcoClub.com for information about our 2006 Ecolodge Award for Building a Community Recycling Center.

We offer packed lunches in unbleached brown paper. We do not sell bottled water, but instead let guests fill their bottles with ozone purified water for free. On hikes, guides and guests are encouraged to take nothing with them, nor leave anything behind.

We recycle wine and liquor bottles by building ‘bottle walls.’ The sauna, bunkhouse shower, and showers in the private bathrooms are examples of this eco-architecture. The hardest part when building a bottle wall is all the drinking that you have to do first! Large plastic containers are re-used as planters or to store milk and water. Newspaper makes good mulch for the garden as well as an alternative non-toxic mirror and window cleaner and woodstove starter. Food scraps are composted or fed to animals: chickens, guinea pigs, pigs, dogs etc. Recycling that is not done directly on site is done in Latacunga or Quito. Recycled products available in Ecuador include plastic buckets and barrels, water hoses, toilet paper, and more.

In 2005, Andres was elected by Chugchilán to be the "King of Garbage". He is working with public officials and has purchased a small property to use as a separation facility, tree nursery and a mini landfill. See our www.EcoClub.com for information about our 2006 Ecolodge Award for Building a Community Recycling Center.

	Roofs are made of a transparent material providing natural light for bathroom and gardens. Roofs also funnel rainwater to small tanks, which are used for hand washing. Using biodegradable hand soap, wastewater from the sink irrigates interior gardens. The book, The Toilet Papers by Sim Van der Ryn explains the design and process of the composting toilet. Often guests take photos inside the composting toilets and locals are impressed with the finished fertilizer produced. The condensation that accumulates around the toilet seat is proof that waste is heating up (thermophilic) and decomposing. Human feces and urine are extremely nitrogen rich. In order to balance the mixture we add "dry stuff" with every use. The dry stuff is a mixture of sawdust and pods from the cultivated lupine (chochos), which are high in carbon content. A good ratio is 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen. That means a lot of dry stuff!! The dry stuff is the “flush” and helps keep insects and odor at a minimum. We also add kitchen scraps. If the toilet ever smells of ammonia, this means that more carbon is needed. The recipe is actually simple and the toilet needs very little monitoring. The finished “humanure” is used for planting trees, bushes or shrubs, and even in the vegetable garden. It is a high nutrient fertilizer that helps everything grow.
Composting Toilet

View From Toilet
* Click for Details about Composting Toilets *
Permaculture
Permanent agriculture offers positive solutions to problems caused by the earth’s diminishing natural resources. It focuses on how to design sustainable productive human settlements that provide food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs. Permaculture combines many ecological features: organic gardening, building with natural materials, alternative energy, water conservation, composting, dry toilets, animal production and more. It is a way of inter-connecting many features so that they become more productive and stable. Permaculture copies natural eco-systems and therefore designs for production and sustainability. Black Sheep Inn is becoming a Permaculture demonstration site. We have dry composting toilets, recycling systems for gray water, and recycling of plastic, metal, paper and glass. We have planted over 800 native trees in terraced swales and will continue to reforest in this manner. We have organic gardens and a combination greenhouse / chicken-house. We have built from traditional materials such as straw and adobe.
Permaculture Education
Black Sheep Inn closed in 1998 when we sponsored a Permaculture Design Course for the community. Twenty local neighbors participated in the two-week course. Rick and Naomi Coleman, Australian Permaculturists, (see Southern Cross Permaculture Institute) renowned for their expertise, donated their time and knowledge in exchange for room and board. Jean Brown, owner of Safari Tours, and Valentina Benavides translated the course. Both have participated in several other courses throughout Ecuador. The community was receptive to the course and new ideas. Black Sheep Inn has many functioning examples of how Permaculture works which added greatly to the course. Definition: "Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people, providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way." This is a quote from Bill Mollison, an Australian who co-founded the Permaculture movement.
Water Supply & Waste Water
At the Black Sheep Inn we have 4 water sources: the town system (which we help maintain), a back up reserve from a small spring, a pond for irrigation and rainwater that is collected in small tanks and cisterns from several roofs. On average we use 2000 liters of water daily for the entire hotel; this includes approximately 21 people on the property fulltime, about 95 liters (25 gallons) per person per day. We have built ponds to help increase biodiversity and to retain water on the property. Andres has been elected to be the president of the town water system since the end of 2007. Because we have dry composting toilets, we do not produce “black water” or sewage. Gray water is much easier to treat and reuse. All water from showers, sinks, laundry etc. is recycled. It is collected in a settling tank and put through a charcoal/rock filter system. The filtered water is then channeled through a reed bed for further nutrient absorption. The reeds produce fodder for guinea pigs, llamas and sheep.
	This photo shows us installing a solar water pump installation. Two 85-watt solar panels directly power (with no batteries) a ShurFlo submersible pump that is mounted on the bottom of the raft in the pond. When it is sunny (and even on cloudy days) the pump pushes pond water over 200-feet up the hill to a reserve tank for irrigating organic gardens. The same pump powers the "Fountain of Youth" and the "Waterslide of Death." See our design for a complete Alternative Energy System. By building a new laundry washing area just up the hill from our lodge we have creates two new water resources without pumping. 1) The roof collects rainwater for laundry washing and 2) the used gray water is stored for irrigation of flower gardens at the lodge level. All laundry at the Black Sheep Inn is hand washed and line dried.

	Our greenhouse allows us to produce warm weather vegetables. It also provides shelter and warmth for the chickens in the evening. The greenhouse is heated by passive solar. We use 150 gallons of water along with thick adobe walls for thermal mass. The chickens also produce heat in the evenings, and lay eggs first thing in the morning. This greenhouse / chicken-house combination is one of the many ideas we learned through Permaculture.
	All vegetables served in the kitchen are treated with concentrated Ozone and a natural disinfectant made from grapefruit extract in order to kill bacteria. Our kitchen is safe for even the most delicate stomachs. Please indulge! One of the goals of the Black Sheep Inn is to increase onsite sustainable food production Energy Conservation We only use compact fluorescent light bulbs at the Black Sheep Inn. Conserving energy is the first step towards converting to solar and wind power. Our goal is to get off the grid and showcase alternative energy technologies.
See our design for a complete Alternative Energy System.
Tree Planting, Reforestation & Forestation When challenged by choices of how to manage our property we found that our problems often became our solutions. Terracing can control erosion. All over the property we have dug swales (water filtration ditches built along the contour of the land) and planted the lower side of them with native trees, bushes and shrubs. The purpose of these trenches/swales is to prevent erosion and water run off that is inevitable on steeply sloped properties. The reason trees or shrubs are planted on the bottom side of the trenches/swales is that the root systems help to hold the swale in place, while ‘drinking’ the water that collects in the trench. The leaves and branches that fall into the swale provide valuable organic material and help build up and create soil. The Incas terraced with rocks because they had an abundance of rocks. Swales on steep slopes eventually turn into terraces without the use of rocks. We are actually harvesting run-off in the form of water, soil and organic matter. The most common native trees that we have planted are: Capuli (Prunus serotina), Quishuar (Buddleia incana), Samil (Rapanea dependens), Yagual (Polylepes Incana), Pumamaqui (Orreopaanax spp), Racemosa (Polylepis Racemosa). We have interspersed these native trees with a few pine and cypress, as well as alder (Aliso), black walnut (Nogal) and broom (Retama). We also have young fruit trees: apple, pear, tamarillo (tree tomato), and black cherry. We are experimenting with planting sub-tropical trees in microclimates, such as avocado, papaya, lime, tangerine, and passion fruit.
	The Eucalyptus (BFW) trees that dominate the region were introduced to Ecuador in the late 1800’s from Australia. We use Eucalyptus for construction and for firewood. We do not reforest with Eucalyptus. It can be invasive taking over large tracts of land. It grows back like a weed from the same stump and seeds itself very easily. Eucalyptus leaves are highly acidic; damaging soils around their base for years after the tree is gone. They also have long shallow roots that suck up all the water surrounding the tree. For these reasons, Eucalyptus makes good firewood that burns without much creosote build-up.

	Conservation Efforts In December 1996 we were excited when INEFAN (the Ecuadorian equivalent to the National Park Service) declared the surrounding area "The Iliniza Ecological Reserve". The reserve is 149,000 hectares (357,000 acres) and includes the Iliniza Twin Snow Capped peaks, Laguna Quilotoa, a section of the Rio Toachi Canyon, high altitude paramó grasslands and enormous tracks of cloud forest. Black Sheep Inn is not located within the boundaries of the reserve, but the area is literally surrounded by it. Although we were hopeful when the area was declared a reserve, we must admit that the destruction of the forest has intensified since that declaration because of poor or non-existent management practices. All reserves and parks in Ecuador are now administered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment; INEFAN no longer exists. We are currently looking for international support to help preserve this wildlife area. Black Sheep Inn can act as a local liaison for conservation efforts. We have been working with the US Peace Corps and the Ecuadorian Government in an effort to educate the community about this Reserve. Locals need to know what a reserve means, why the forest should be preserved, and the benefits that they can receive by having a reserve in their backyard. In September 2000 two youths from Chugchilán were invited to an ornithology conference sponsored by US Peace Corps to train as bird guides for the Iliniza Ecological Reserve. In the beginning of 2001, we helped direct the filming of a documentary entitled "The Endangered Spaces of the Cloud Forest called Cloud Forest: Visions in a Dream" produced by Saving the Endangered Species (SesTV)/Cinamour Entertainment from Burbank California. The 30-minute documentary has been sold as part of a series of ecological documentaries and has been shown in Europe and the US. Visit: www.Cinamour.com. In June 2005, Phillipa Batty and Jaime Paneque Galvez did there research for their Masters dissertations in the Iliniza Ecological Reserve for their MSC in Remote Sensing and GIS at Aberystwyth University in Wales. They had satellite imagery of the forest dating back to 1979 and went out daily to take samples along with GPS readings.
(photo by Juerg Buehler) Iliniza Twin Snow Capped Peaks

(photo by Bart Lee Daily) Laguna Quilotoa

(photo by Juerg Buehler) Rio Toachi Canyon

Cloud Forest

For more information see Cloud Forest in Danger Letter and Proposal for Preserving Iliniza Ecological Reserve.

Recycling Center & ECO-Definition & Composting Toilet Information & Goals & Offset Program

In 2002-2003, we co-authored a white paper with “Seven Recommendations for Strengthening Ecotourism in Ecuador.” We wrote this collectively online via email and chats with a group called GIFEE (Grupo Internet en Favor del Ecoturismo Ecuatoriano). Our 7 recommendations to the Ecuadorian Government were: Use the INTERNET as a policy, management, educational and promotional tool. Develop school and continuing EDUCATION programs on ecotourism, nature conservation, and sustainable use. Expand CONSERVATION and improve protected areas through scientific and transparent management. Improve WASTE MANAGEMENT nationally and in the tourism sector through Reduce, Reuse and Recycle policies and plan for clean sustainable transport. Improve access to FINANCING and education for small private and community ecotourism efforts. Redesign the Tourism PROMOTION strategy of Ecuador to be imaginative, efficient and sustainable. Encourage COOPERATION with and between all stakeholders To see the entire document: www.planeta.com/ecotravel/south/ecuador/7.html OR: http://ecoclub.com/gifee.html. In 2003, we presented the 7 Recommendations to our local mayor and counselors. We also gave a PowerPoint presentation at the Catholic University (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador - PUCE) and another to the Ministry of Tourism about the GIFEE recommendations.
Read our OPEN LETTER to preserve the Cloud Forest for more history about the area.

Ecological Transportation 10% ECO Discount for guests traveling by Bicycle. Thank you for not polluting! 15% ECO Discount for cyclists that stay for two days or more.
Awards and Recognition Include:
2007
	* Winner 2007 of the 2nd EcoClub.com Earth Day Photo Essay Competition See photo at: http://www.ecoclub.com/c/index.php?act=module&module=gallery&cmd=si&img=66
	2006 * Winner 2006 International EcoClub EcoLodge Award * Winner 2006 of the 5th Annual Skĺl International Ecotourism Awards in the category of Rural Accommodation

2005

* Winner 2005 Smithsonian Magazine/Tourism Cares for Tomorrow Sustainable Tourism Awards in Conservation

* Highly Commended 2005, Best in Mountain Environment, First Choice Responsible Tourism Awards

* 2005 Finalist for Tourism for Tomorrow Award - World Travel & Tourism Council

	2003 & 2004 * 2004 Short-Listed Responsible Traveler Award * Top 10 Eco-Lodge in the World - Outside Magazine, 2003 * Eco-Certified jointly by Ecuadorian Ministry of Tourism and the Ecuadorian Ecotourism Society, 2003
2002 * Best Website – Ecuadorian Ministry of Tourism in 2002.

Memberships Since 2000 ASEC - Ecuadorian Ecotourism Association - Asociación Ecuatoriana de Ecoturismo - www.ecoturismo.org.ec. Planeta - Award winning website serves as an information clearinghouse for ecotourism - www.planeta.com. We have participated in a number of online eco-conferences. Eco-Tour.org - German homepage for ecological tourism - www.eco-tour.org (dead-link). Ecotourism Society of Pakistan - www.ecotourism.org.pk.

Memberships Since 2001 EcoClub - International Ecotourism Club - www.ecoclub.com.

Memberships Since 2002 The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) - www.ecotourism.org. Responsible Travel - promotes holidays in over 100 countries - www.responsibletravel.com.

Memberships Since 2003 Sustainable Travel International - US national body for eco-certification - www.sustainabletravelinternational.org. Eco-travel provides an Eco-Directory - www.ecotravel.com. RUES Hotel Selection – Eco-Friendly Hotels Worldwide - www.ecofriendlyhotelsrhs.com.

Carbon Offset Program
Smart About Carbon has partnered with the Black Sheep Inn. Offset your carbon emissions from INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS, VACATION TRAVEL, and EVERYDAY LIVING.
	This Carbon Calculator is sponsored by the Black Sheep Inn and your donation will partly help us to go off the electrical grid and go solar. See our design for Solar & Wind Energy. Click here to determine your carbon footprint, make a donation and help to SLOW GLOBAL WARMING!

GOALS

Black Sheep Inn’s goal is to become self-sufficient in energy, water and food production. We have made significant steps in this direction, such as researching and designing for alternative energy installations, expanding gardens, and improving water collection. The Black Sheep Inn will never be a ‘finished project’. Change, efficiency and improvements are a part of Black Sheep Inn’s everyday process. Using permaculture ideas, we are connecting existing features and buildings on our property for a more efficient use and re-use of resources. Another goal is for environmental education in the area, enhanced protection for the Iliniza Ecological Reserve, and also more participation in ecotourism conferences to share successes and best practices.

Being eco-friendly is an all-encompassing lifestyle and includes sustainability with a low impact, conservation, and community work. Click here for our ECO Definition. It starts with awareness. We are always looking for new ways to improve our facility and make it more self-sufficient.

Visiting the Black Sheep Inn is both enjoyable and educational.
Your visit supports the continuing process of nurturing the land.