What's the connection between sewing a tear in your pants and taking care of chickens together with your street neighbors? These two activities would be part of what the transition may look like, at the neighborhood level. If the socio-ecological transition refers to the process of profound changes in our production and consumption systems, as well as in social and political institutions and in our ways of life, the act of sewing may seem insignificant.

We’ve spoken about the concept of the circular economy a few times already, but it’s definitely worth another look when a mainstay of economic discourse such as the Financial Times comes out with not only one piece but a whole report on the topic.

The way media coverage is shared around networks often means that we end up talking a lot about larger cities, but those are not the only places where inspiring change is happening. In this excellent piece at Shareable, we discover some fantastic work being done by co-ops in the small town of Morganton, in the foothills of western North Carolina.

They are not new, but refill shops are growing in popularity. The UK for example, “now has hundreds of refill or zero-waste shops, helping people reduce packaging.” I’m posting this short article for a few reasons, first because it’s interesting to see how value-based commerce can often be better integrated into their neighbourhood while also including other good practices. Gather, whose founder is interviewed in the article, holds events to gather (pun intended) the community in her space but also built it up differently than other businesses.