Mr Sustainable

Mr Sustainable will speak at 2:45 pm about his off-grid, solar home and how to build using solar power and sustainable building materials.  He will show pictures and discuss passive solar design and materials.

Sustainability will be the order of the entire day at the Expo.

Sustainable Lawrence is a large group of residents, businesses, congregations, and other organizations dedicated to creating a sustainable community in Lawrence Township, NJ.

Its mission is to encourage the people and institutions of Lawrence Township to cooperatively adopt fundamental principles of sustainability and to develop policies and practices that fulfill those principles.

Its policies and policies include:

• Reduce our community’s fossil fuel dependence and wasteful use of scarce metals and minerals;
• Reduce our community’s dependence on harmful chemicals and wasteful use of synthetic substances;
• Minimize our community’s encroachment upon nature (e.g., land, water, wildlife, forests, soil, ecosystems);
• Meet human needs fairly and efficiently.

The Expo is an event open to the public in which residents, non-profits, businesses, community leaders, government leaders, and experts get together to share information.

This year’s Expo will include numerous speakers, displays of electric and hybrid cards, and booths with sustainable items and information.

Previous year’s Expos were attended by hundreds of people and this year’s event is sure to please!

Open to the public.  Held at Lawrenceville High School 2525 Lawrence Road, Lawrence NJ.  Hours: Noon to 4pm.

Mr Sustainable, Dante DiPirro, will be speaking on sustainable energy & building 3/15/13 at 7 pm at 203 Hopewell Wertsville Road, Hopewell, NJ.  The talk will include principles of passive solar design, solar power, and sustainable building materials, using information from the off-grid, solar home that he designed and built.  The event is open to the public.

Solar-powered home is a shining example of what can be accomplished with innovative thinking outside the grid.

During the assault and aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, his East Amwell residence was bright with light gleaned from the sun through solar panels.

Every small step toward sustainability is a small step away from unremitting  dependence on the Earth’s finite supply of fossil fuels.

Read NJ.Com Editorial

When Dante DiPirro was 11, he built a contraption from old mirrors that directed the sun’s heat toward a single point. The makeshift solar collector was his sixth-grade science fair project.

Now, decades later, DiPirro is still experimenting with sunlight. Calling himself Mr. Sustainable, the lawyer, blogger and self-styled environmental consultant designed the system of solar panels that powers his off-grid East Amwell, New Jersey home.

See NJ.com feature news story and photographs.

Despite the storm devastation around him, “Mr. Sustainable,” Dante DiPirro of Hopewell, New Jersey, never lost power during Hurricane Sandy.   Dante designed and built a sustainable, off-grid home that gets 100% of its electricity from the sun.  The power is stored in batteries, so that even if a hurricane or other catastrophe has shut down the electric power grid, he still has power.

During Hurricane Sandy, when the grid was down for ten days in his town, Dante invited his neighbors over to warm up, refrigerate food and most importantly get drinking water-all of which he can do off-grid.  He did the same for his neighbors during the October 2011 “Halloween” snow storm, which also knocked out the town’s power for over a week, and during other recent storms.

More and more Americans are asking how they can live more sustainably.  One of the reasons Dante designed and built this home, was to demonstrate that it is doable and affordable.

He hopes that when people now start planning for the next emergency, that they consider a sustainable solution like solar electricity for their home or business. He says even if you still connect to the grid, there are ways to design the system so that you can have power when the grid goes down.

Don’t just rush out and buy a gas generator, which may still leave you out hunting for fuel when gas stations have run out or do not have electricity to pump the gas, like happened during Hurricane Sandy. Consider installing a solar system that can keep you with power during emergencies and give you clean, free electricity the rest of the year.  You’ll feel good knowing that you produce clean, free electricity from the sun, and you’ll feel even better when the grid goes down and you still have power!

Dante’s home has been off-grid since 2006.  He’s aware of only one other off-grid solar home, outside of the western United States.

Dante has worked on over 25 megawatts of solar projects.  As “Mr. Sustainable,” Dante blogs about, and dedicates himself to sustainable energy, building and living.