Modeling Efficiency

A comprehensive approach to efficiency at One Community is foundational to our sustainable community planning model and one of our four principles of success. The goal is to minimize waste in all aspects of One Community. The specific areas that create our efficiency model are labor efficiency, resource efficiency, and space efficiency.

LABOR EFFICIENCY

The labor efficiency concept is simple: it takes a fraction of the time to organize and do something for 50 people vs. 50 people individually undertaking the same activity. Domestic responsibilities like food preparation, child care, and laundry are excellent examples of activities that two people volunteering to work together could accomplish with less waste, more variety, more enjoyment, and efficiency that would free up tens of hours for the community. People who enjoy certain activities like cooking or watching after children are allocated their favorite activities first and then any activities that haven’t been volunteered for are divided up by consensus and performed by teams to make them more fun and efficient. Everything is kept track of as part of community contribution.

RESOURCE EFFICIENCY

One Community is also committed to maintaining maximum resource efficiency and a zero-waste environment as a foundation of our sustainability plan. To accomplish this goal we use a combination of composting, recycling, and re-purposing of trash as building materials if it can’t be composted or recycled. To further increase our effectiveness in this area, time is spent in advance carefully calculating needs and evaluating things like non-recyclable/compostable packaging to reduce leftovers.

SPACE EFFICIENCY

While the property we have chosen for One Community has an abundance of space, our food and living infrastructure is still being designed with space efficiency as a priority. This saves building materials, saves construction time, and is an essential part of our open source goals and creating sustainability that can be duplicated virtually anywhere. It also allows us to leave more space in its natural and beautiful “nature state.” And lastly, it saves time in harvesting food and supports our social architecture by making congregation easier and more efficient too.

PRIORITIZING EFFICIENCY

Part of the efficiency model is prioritization of the efficiency categories themselves because each of the categories availability will change over time.

● Labor resources will increase with community membership and decrease with added projects
● Resources availability will increase/decrease based on consumption versus revenue streams
● Space availability will fluctuate based on what we are building, placement, and what we’ve already built

Keeping this in mind, evaluating and objectively deciding on a case-by-case basis what the most efficient and sustainable use of the model itself is, is an exciting part of what we will be sharing through our open source structure.