A few people have asked me recently ‘what do I know about septic tanks?’, which made me realise that I know very little. To date my contribution to sustainable wastewater management has been a note on my drawing saying ‘pipe connected to new septic tank designed by contractor’ or even better ‘pipe connected to existing septic tank’. Realising that I need to be a little more responsible than this, I have been googling all sorts of interesting subjects and this is a summary of what I have come up with. Most septic...

Text by Peter Stevens Photos by Ian Hall INTRODUCTION From November 7th to 15th 2005, I had the opportunity to trek and bird watch in the Maliau Basin Conservation Area, Sabah, Malaysia. I was accompanied on the trip by Ian Hall, who at that time was working with Yayasan Sabah as a volunteer architect to identify and design ecologically-friendly visitor and research facilities within the conservation area. He has spent many weeks in all of the Yayasan Sabah-run forest reserves (Danum, Imbak, Maliau) and is an observant,...

As a sometime environmentalist I often find myself joining email campaigns of the ‘save the whales’ variety, targeting careless corporations and evil industrialists. The Ecological Internet 'Forest Liars' campaign that I signed this morning was different though. It included in its many targets; household eco-warrior names such as WWF, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth. Although I moderated the tone of the pre-composed text, I still felt slightly uncomfortable hitting the ‘send’ button. This...