Commitment to Conservation

Earth Friendly Awards
Gold Level Certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for an Existing Building (LEED EB) by the United States Green Building Council. www.usgbc.org	Backyard Wildlife Habitat Certification by the National Wildlife Federation www.nwf.org

Conservation Techniques Used at the Hike Inn

Below are samples of the conservation practices the Hike Inn uses daily. As a guest, you and your family will have hands-on opportunities for participation. The daily facility tour explains the following and more…so don’t miss it!

Composting Toilets

The Hike Inn uses five composting toilet systems, instead of regular flush toilets. Composting toilets are odor-free and use very little water. Our composting toilets work similarly to an active leaf pile in your backyard. Humans have natural intestinal flora that end up providing the bacterial base that composts the waste. Rooftop fans circulate fresh oxygen through the systems to keep them odor-free. 90% of human waste is simply water, so the rooftop fan also helps evaporate moisture, and keep the level of waste at a manageable level. The Hike Inn saves about 200,000 gallons of valuable drinking water every year by using these systems.

Composting toilet systems come in all shapes and sizes, from large, commercial systems designed to be emptied every seven years, to small self-contained units for residential homes designed to be emptied once every few months. The most primitive of composting toilets can be dug yourself, and are being used more and more at outdoor public facilities, including along the Appalachian Trail.

A book you may find helpful is:  “The Humanure Handbook: A Guide To Composting Human Manure” by Joseph Jenkins.

Solar Panels

In 2002, the Hike Inn installed 24 donated photovoltaic (PV) solar panels on the southern side of the roof of the Sunrise Room. The donation of the panels was arranged by a Hike Inn volunteer, Richard Judy, formerly of BP, as part of BP Solar’s Helios Project. Big Frog Mountain, Southface Energy Institute, Georgia DNR, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Million Solar Roof Program together provided assistance, materials, and installation services.

The Hike Inn’s solar panels produce around 30% of the Hike Inn’s total electricity.

Southface Energy Institute in Atlanta has a variety of online and on site resources related to sustainable living, including solar energy at  www.southface.org.

Rainwater Harvesting

The Hike Inn has one rain barrel, which helps to provide water for our butterfly garden and other native plants and trees. The barrel is actually a recycled 55-gallon banana pepper jug, which is covered by a fine screen to prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs in the standing water. The water is not needed for potable water, so we do not purify it.

The rain water is collected from the roof, where a chain hanging from the gutter conducts the water into the barrel. The barrel is connected by PVC pipe to an antique hand pump, which we can fill our watering cans with, or hook up a garden hose to.

Harvesting rain water at home helps divert polluted stormwater runoff from our creeks and rivers. Rain water can be used for watering lawns & gardens, washing the car, and cleaning decks and sidewalks.

Books you may find helpful are:  

• “Rainwater Collection for the Mechanically-Challenged” by Suzy Banks.
• “Gardening Without Water: Creating Beautiful Gardens Using Only Rainwater” by Charlotte Green.

Vermiculture

Everything we eat, most things we wear, and most things we build our homes with once grew from the soil. In the United States, about 50% of the average citizen’s trash is paper, food, or yard waste. These organic materials we dispose of eventually end up in a landfill, where the nutrients are packed away in sealed environment, and can’t get recycled back into the ecosystem.

Instead of sending all of our organic waste to a landfill, the Hike Inn recycles its organic waste back into soil using red wiggler worm beds. Red wiggler worms can eat half their body weight a day in organic material, and produce about as many worm castings, an excellent (and expensive) organic fertilizer. The Hike Inn’s worm beds hold about 40-50 pounds of worms, and all our organic waste, from our kitchen and our office, is composted with ease. From February 2003 to July 2005, the worms ate over 2000 pounds of our organic waste!

We routinely sift out worm castings from the bins and spread it on our organic garden, and our native plants. Each year, we are rewarded with hundreds of pounds of this “black gold”. Just to think, our leftover grits and junk mail - that normally would have been piled up in a landfill - will be fertilizing our flowers in summer!

A book that provides more extensive information on vermiculture practices:  “Worms Eat My Garbage” by Mary Appelhof, available through Flowerpress publishers and various online bookstores.

Pack It In, Pack It Out

Please help us keep our mountain settings beautiful by leaving only foot prints when you visit. If you pack it in, please pack it out.