Our Vision

At SunPod Designs and Greenhouses, we believe in a harmonious connection between ourselves, our homes, and the environment. Explore our core values and discover what drives our commitment to excellence, regeneration, sustainability, and the microbiome.

Connect Mind And Future

If SunPod Designs and Greenhouses were a person, we would be a unique entity with an immense, interconnected relationship with all life forms on the planet. Much like the most biodiverse microbiome, we strive for collaboration, intelligence, and community, recognizing that soil health, gut health, and community health are inextricably linked.

Guiding Principles

Our work at SunPod Designs and Greenhouses is rooted in several key principles:

  • Localism: Identifying local materials and re-imagining  design outflow.
  • Soil Building: Embracing composting and regenerative systematic practices, increase soil microbiome potential, creating connection and health.
  • Long Life Cycle Design:  Durable,  earth friendly chemical compination, low embedded energy.

Lets Create Connection

What sets SunPod Designs and Greenhouses apart? It's our unwavering commitment to excellence, our dedication to long life cycles through careful design choices, and our passion for regeneration and the microbiome. We offer more than just millwork and wood products; we offer a pathway to a more sustainable and connected future.

"SunPod helped me connect my home with nature, creating beauty and sustainability in one package."

Michael's Vision

 

Regeneration

Regenerative and sustainable “best practices’ are central to SunPod Designs and Greenhouses priorities and goals.  Regeneration is constant, in flux, happening all around us, which highlights the complex relationships between ourselves and the natural would.  Within the framework of SunPod, this encompasses manufacturing within capitalism, land usage in urban and rural spaces, and awareness of the role of “self” within the collective individual mechanisms of regeneration.  Due to over a century of rapid industrialization, global temperatures have risen, changing our natural environment and our relationship with it. Industrialization has also encouraged the development of new chemicals in manufacturing.

 

Manufacturing, including product design and material allocation, is integral to creating SunPod Design and Greenhouses products. However, instead of the typical extraction, movement, refinement, and assembly process, we try to incorporate an understanding of the regeneration dilemma.  Manufacturing processes and procedures go against regenerative principles and can cause toxicity and harmful by-products. We aim to carefully source our materials and investigate our products to minimize our impact on the regeneration dilemma and work to evaluate material and energy, seeking ways to transition by-product waste from manufacturing into new products.  This enables a process of understanding and creating chemical combinations that do not harm regenerative cycles, and instead support closed-loop processes that use produced waste in developing new products and materials.

 

Our products aim to connect our customers with their environment in urban and rural places, creating space and nurturing regenerative processes.  We strive to do this by adapting land usage patterns to fit a framework that supports the continued care of the regenerative mechanisms of our Earth. Agricultural and development strategies are inhibiting the natural function of regeneration, dampening its wonder through careless conduct.  There are 2.5 billion acres of abandoned farmland due to poisoning.  To negotiate a change towards centring regenerative practices, we can integrate better soil cultivation, understanding the role of the microbiome, composting, and seeking learning opportunities and better sourced products. Awareness of the wonders of regeneration will directly strengthen the natural world and our connection to it.  Improving the lives of our global and local communities.

 

Integral to our mission to develop and deliver processes and products that adhere to a regenerative model is including the role of “self” in regeneration. Like the natural environment, we are regenerating on a continuum, creating new versions of ourselves physically, spiritual, emotionally and mentally.  This process is both individual and collective, as we maintain a steadfast connection to our surroundings, we participate in global and local reciprocal processes, building a pathway towards better futures.

 

We are all designers, and SunPod Design and Greenhouses is excited about new opportunities and avenues across industries to promote regeneration.  As learners, educators, and advocates for sustainability and regeneration, we aim to continue attuning ourselves to the past, present, and future impacts of regeneration on our individual and collective health and our relationship with the world around us.

SunPod Design Vision

 

SunPod Designs focuses on using natural capital to its highest potential while findng ways to minimize the negative planetary impact.  Our products fulfill people's needs, and improve the local microbiome by making effective use of waste products.

 

Manufacturing Materials; Wood fibre is our primary resource in our design and manufacturing process.  The goal is to limit the waste products of each tree.  Trees themselves have the greatest value at the base and less at the top because thiere is more clear material at the bottom.  The further up the tree, the more knots there are, limiting the use of the material.

 

A way to find use for the weaker material is lamination because gluing multiple layers overcomes the weaknesses in any one piece.  A knot, for example, is strengthened by having clear layers around it.  This allows for use off less desirable materials which would otherwise be discarded.

 

The use of metal is another consideration in our process.  We use it as little as possible and substitute its function with a wood design.  Our primary metal usage is for attachments such as screws and bolts or hinge systems which are too impotant to be compromised. The aluminum wire lock used on the row covers can be recycled and reused.

 

Definitions

Self Sufficiency- needing no outside help in satisfying one’s basic needs, especially with regard to the production of food.

 

Sustainability- Sustainability is the practice of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It is an approach to development that balances environmental protection, social equity, and economic viability. This concept involves using resources carefully so they don't run out and ensuring that human activities don't permanently degrade the planet's ability to support life. 

 

Design- A design is the concept of or proposal for an object, process, or system.  The word design refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something - its design.

 

Regeneration- Regenerative design is an approach in which human and natural systems are designed to co-exist and co-evolve over time. The value of a regenerative  design approach is in its potential to regenerate planetary health and deliver positive outcomes for both people and planet.

 

 

 

 

Micobiome

 

Modern research, including the work acticulated by Zach Bush and his research team has concluded that the colon is the most bio-diverse microbiome on the planet. More bacteria, protozoa, fungi and parasite than, as an example, a rain forest or a coral reef. Let us say that we are quite a unique and have immense interconnected relationship with all life forms on the planet.

Composting is a natural process. It is the decay of organic matter. It can be seen on the forest floor. Our soil is the end product of this process including the collaborative actions of worms, bacteria, funi and protozoa and more. It is an interconnected web of intelligence and community. All societies sustenance is linked to the success of this process. Soil health, gut health and community health are all linked together in the process. Enduring societies achieve balance and success in the process of soil building and creating self-sufficiency.

Food stock get moved around from farms to manuacturers and to end-product retailers, and each stage presents opportunities to use discarded matter to build soil. Urban and rural land waste management has room for improvement. Many waste products could be used as an essential conmponent in building vital compost to contribute to the soil, and enhance the soil microbiome. Diversity is key. Many different waste materials can become part of a compost process, including material from different sources. Differnet life forms, require different conditions. Our survival deepends on many varied life forms being present and complexity improves all life forms capacity to adapt and connect.