An interview with Amiad Lapidot, Environmental Fellow, Year II
Amiad Lapidot stands beaming with pride next to a pile of dark, luscious compost he has recently produced, not hesitating for a moment to ask his unfamiliar guest to dig in, grip a handful, and smell the magnificent garbage that he has turned into gold with the help of hundreds of diligent worms. This is his latest project, which has more than 100 families in the moshav he lives on in northern Israel, Kerem Maharal, separating organic garbage regularly. The results are so promising, he believes, that the model should be immediately duplicated in other communities. Amiad distributes the special-purpose garbage pales, adorned with instructions on what to throw in them, collects the large cans from the streets twice a week, and compiles them on a plot of land below his house. There, he embarks on a process that culminates in uniquely high quality compost within six months. "It’s a beautiful cycle," he says, pulling an apple core from a fresh pile of garbage. "This apple will become rich fertilizer, which can then be used to grow apple trees that will in turn provide more apples, just like this one."
Prior to the compost enterprise, Amiad built one of the most ecological houses in Israel for his wife and his baby son. On a different plot, his organic orchard of olive and fruit trees is tended by a volunteer co-op of some 500 families who put in an hour’s work for a bottle of olive oil and a day-long garden-of-Eden experience.
Only five short years ago, Lapidot, 37, was still a content and committed naval officer. Continuing his compulsory army service, he served in the submarines in an intelligence position, and was both challenged and rewarded. He quickly rose up the ranks, and was offered the option to acquire a university education while in service. He chose to study for a BA in geography and ecology, and an exercise in Intro to Ecology gave him the idea to research the pollution level of the Haifa Bay. The results shocked him, and possibly changed the course of his life. “When we started accumulating our results, me and my research partner used to kid around that if we threw a cigarette into the bay it would all blow up, but I never knew how bad things really were. It turns out that the Mediterranean is the most polluted sea in the world, that Haifa Bay is one of its most polluted bays, and that most of this pollution is caused by the port,” he exclaims with fierce disgust to this day. “And what’s worse: 90% of the pollution in the port is caused by the naval base”.

Worse threats to Israel’s survival
He continued to study, and acquired an MA in urban planning. As a career officer and a weekend farmer, he tended to 10 acres of his parents’ land in an organic orchard. One day while driving his tractor to the orchard he felt that he was riding in a cloud of pollution. It made him wonder whether it’s possible to engage in agriculture that doesn’t damage the environment, that doesn’t pollute the air and doesn’t use up exorbitant amounts of water. He felt that he was an accomplice in a massive crime of polluting the environment, and couldn’t continue in the same course. He left the army, ten years short of a comfortable pension, and took on life-threatening problems which he considered worse than the security threats (“ten people die in Israel every day as a result of air pollution).

Six months after he was released from the army he started working for Shatil, an organization founded by the New Israel Fund to consult and support social movements and NGOs. A week later he was accepted to the Heschel Center’s Environmental Fellows program, and on the train to Tel Aviv to attend the first day of classes, he met his future wife, Rinat. Two years later, they had a very happy ecological wedding, which used almost no electricity and recycled all its own waste but the beer caps.
 
Amiad building the walls, brick by brick       the container skeleton
The fellows program forged my outlook
”The Heschel Center opened my eyes about sustainability, and helped me forge my social-environmental perspective. The knowledge I gained there, I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. The lessons are imprinted in me forever, and on my entire outlook. Lia and Jeremy, who lead the program, pick olives in my orchard regularly, and are both amazing people. And it was during the Fellows program, while working on my final project, that I put together the compost idea.”

“But for a while, the more I learned, the more frustrated I became,” he adds. “We are a small country, with one of the worst environmental pollution levels in the world. I felt I had to find a way of living in harmony with nature, while using, and not abusing, the natural resources that are available to all of us. I set myself a goal of trying to live in as much equilibrium as possible with the environment. My next goal is to also improve the environment.”

 Inside the house His house, beautiful, warm and charming, is made of an old container insulated by packs of straw on the outside, and hand-made mud bricks on the inside. It’s climate-controlled by a variety of natural methods, and collects gray water – from sinks and showers - separately, to be reused at a later point for flushing toilets and watering the garden. On the roof, he collects 50 liters of fresh morning dew every day. He dreams of systems that will someday take the gray water, purify it with fresh rain or dew, and automatically water the garden. “It’s not an ecological house,” he says sadly. “I don’t think that’s possible. Our wood comes from replenishable sources, but we do have some concrete after all, in the compulsory shelter, and some stone, although not ceramics that have to be heated in very high temperatures. But it’s quite extreme in its approach. We used only water-based paints. I did have to comply with Israeli building regulations, I wanted it to look good so that others will want to copy it, and I wanted my wife to be willing to live here.”
OK, but how do you make a living?
Amiad’s compost enterprise is supported by the Israeli IVN venture capital fund, and the New Israel Fund, and to enhance the family budget he works at the Sun Rider Network Marketing organization. An idealist at heart, he also tries to keep his feet planted in the ground. Like most Israelis of his generation, he complains, “my parents never taught me about making money. They were ardent Zionists, driven by what’s best for the country, and money to them was dirty, a destructive force. It’s a downright revolution for me to realize that it’s OK to have money; and that although not an end, it’s a legitimate means to achieving goals. And there is nothing wrong with aspiring to live comfortably, either.”

Amiad believes the 3 tons of garbage he collects every month are based in a potentially lucrative model. He does admit to holding some naïve faith that “if you do what you believe in, money will eventually follow”. In the meantime, his house is a travel destination for people and organizations from all over Israel, who come to learn from him and interview him about the house, the compost enterprise, and the symbiotic agriculture model in his orchard. More guests arrive as we wrap up the interview, an elderly couple from way down south, who came to learn about composting. Amiad patiently explains his methods. The man asks poignant questions, his wife closely examines the red compost worms. The sun will soon be coming down on the mountains around the village. Amiad will open and close some of the three-tiered windows, to keep the warm air in, and leave the cold out. Soon to spend the first winter in his new house, he is curious to see what methods of heating he will have to employ other than the loyal Israeli sun.
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