Earth Repair: A Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes

Resistance is fertile - bioremediation techniques to heal the earth.

Millions of acres of land have been contaminated by pesticides, improperly handled chemicals, dirty energy projects, toxic waste, and other pollutants in the United States and Canada. This toxic legacy impacts the environment, our health, our watersheds, and land that could otherwise be used to grow healthy local food and medicines. Conventional clean-up techniques employed by government and industry are tremendously expensive and resource-intensive and can cause further damage. More and more communities find themselves increasingly unable to rely on those companies and governments who created the problems to step in and provide solutions.

Earth Repair describes a host of powerful grassroots bioremediation techniques, including:

• Microbial remediation-using microorganisms to break down and bind contaminants
• Phytoremediation-using plants to extract, bind, and transform toxins
• Mycoremediation-using fungi to clean up contaminated soil and water.

Packed with valuable, firsthand information from visionaries in the field, Earth Repair empowers communities and individuals to take action and heal contaminated and damaged land. Encompassing everything from remediating and regenerating abandoned city lots for urban farmers and gardeners, to recovering from environmental disasters and industrial catastrophes such as oil spills and nuclear fallout, this fertile toolbox is essential reading for anyone who wishes to transform environmental despair into constructive action.

Leila Darwish is a community organizer and permaculturalist with a BSc in Environmental Conservation Sciences. Most of her grassroots organizing has centered on environmental justice issues in communities struggling with either the threat of or the enduring legacy of toxic contamination of their land and drinking water. Her focus on grassroots bioremediation stems from a deep commitment to justice and the passionate desire to empower people by providing them with simple, practical, transformative, and accessible tools for regenerative earth repair.