Mission Statement:
SunPod Designs is a company with a single central goal: advocating and pioneering regenerative and sustainable best practices, from seed to sprout, salad to sustenance.
About
Michael Kruger is an innovative wood designer who focuses on designs and methods for living a lifestyle of self-sufficiency, sustainability, and regeneration. Michael is also an educator, teaching people how to successfully grow food by recognizing their unique opportunities for regeneration through connection to the living world and the community of the microbiome that connects us.
Michael has worked in the residential and commercial Millwork and building industries for 35 years. He has received professional recognition for his leadership skills and is known for his ability to deliver fine quality craftmanship while blending the needs of clients and the requirements of enterprises. In 2007 he founded SunPod Designs and Greenhouses to fuse his passion for wood design with more sustainable business practices, wood sources and relationship with the living world. His goal was to successfully grow a diverse abundance of food crops in the relatively short growing season in coastal British Columbia. He has developed excellent growing systems that are simple and successful in delivering high quality edible crops both in the regular growing season and in the shoulder seasons in our climate. Michael has maintained his decades-long commitment to running garden trials in pursuit of more ways to successfully grow edible crops in his greenhouses, mini greenhouses, row covers, and netted garden structures. These trials include experimentation in different growing conditions, seed sources and varieties, amendments, and fertilization methods. Since the inception of SunPod Designs, Michael has also developed a range of furniture and door designs that are long life wood products that support community forestry and sustainable fibre practices.
Michael is conscious of the changing world around us and hopes to help people become more aware of how to build a lifestyle focused on self-sufficiency, sustainability, and regeneration, ultimately leading to better health in all aspects of their lives. He firmly believes that the more people that are involved in caring for their own micro biome and piece of earth the more we have the possibility of healing ourselves, our families and communities and our planet. Michael is passionate about food and edible plants and loves to use fresh ingredients from his garden to create the next culinary delight.
Regeneration
Regenerative and sustainable ‘best practices’ are central to SunPod Designs’ priorities and goals. Regeneration is constant, in flux, happening all around us, which highlights the complex relationships between ourselves and the natural world. Within the framework of SunPod Designs, this encompasses manufacturing within capitalism, land usage in urban and rural spaces, and awareness of the role of “self” within the collective and individual mechanisms of regeneration. Due to over a century of rapid industrialization, global temperatures have risen, changing our natural environment and our relationship with it. Industrialization has also encouraged the development of new chemicals in manufacturing.
Manufacturing, including product design and material allocation, is integral to creating SunPod Designs products. However, instead of the typical extraction, movement, refinement, and assembly process, we try to incorporate an understanding of the regeneration dilemma. Manufacturing processes and procedures go against regenerative principles and can cause toxicity and harmful by-products. We aim to carefully source our materials and investigate our products to minimize our impact on regenerative processes within ourselves and our surrounding natural environment. Industrial ecology recognizes the regeneration dilemma and works to evaluate material and energy, seeking ways to transition by-product waste from manufacturing into new products. This enables a process of understanding and creating chemical combinations that do not harm regenerative cycles, and instead support a closed-loop process that uses produced waste in developing new products and materials.
Our products aim to connect our customers with their natural environment in urban and rural places, creating space and nurturing regenerative processes. We strive to do this by adapting land usage patterns to fit a framework that supports the continued care of the regenerative mechanisms of our Earth. Agricultural and developmental strategies are inhibiting the natural function of regeneration, dampening its wonder through careless conduct. There are 2.5 billion acres of abandoned farmland due to poisoning. To negotiate a change towards centring regenerative practices, we can integrate better soil cultivation, understanding the role of the microbiome, composting, and seeking learning opportunities and better-sourced products. Awareness of the wonders of regeneration will directly strengthen the natural world and our connection to it, improving the lives of our global and local communities.
Integral to our mission to develop and deliver processes and products that adhere to a regenerative model is including awareness of the role of “self” in regeneration. Like the natural environment, we are regenerating on a continuum, creating new versions of ourselves physically, spiritually, and mentally. This process is both individual and collective, as we maintain a steadfast connection to our surroundings, we participate in global and local reciprocal processes, building a pathway towards better futures.
We are all designers, and SunPod Designs is excited about new opportunities and avenues across industries to promote regeneration. As learners, educators, and advocates for sustainability and regeneration, we aim to continue attuning ourselves to the past, present, and future impacts of regeneration on our individual and collective health and our relationship with the world around us.
The Microbiome:
SunPod Designs is a company with a single central goal: advocating and pioneering regenerative and sustainable best practices, from seed to sprout, salad to sustenance.
The microbiome
Modern research, including work articulated by Zach Bush and his research team has concluded that the colon is the most bio-diverse microbiome on the planet. More bacteria, protozoa, fungi, and parasites than, as an example, a rain forest or a coral reef. Let us say that we are quite unique and have an immense interconnected relationship with all life forms on the planet.
Composting is a natural process. It is the decay of organic matter. It can be seen on the forest floor. Our soil is the end product of this process including the collaborative actions of worms, bacteria, fungi and protozoa. It is an interconnected web of intelligence and community. All societies’ sustenance is linked to the success of this process. Soil health, gut health and community health are all linked together in the process. Enduring societies achieve balance and success in the process of soil building and creating self-sufficiency.
Food stock gets moved around from farms to manufacturers and to end-product retailers, and each stage presents opportunities to use discarded matter to build soil. Urban and rural land waste management has room for improvement. Many waste products could be used as essential components in building vital compost to contribute to the soil, and enhance the soil microbiome. Diversity is key. Many different waste materials can become part of a compost process, including material from different sources. Different life forms require different conditions. Our survival depends on many varied life forms being present, and complexity improves all life forms’ capacity to adapt and connect.
The core value at SunPod designs is to improve microbiomes.
The Design Philosophy
SunPod Designs focuses on using natural capital to its highest potential while finding ways to minimize the negative planetary impact. Our products fulfill people’s needs, and improve the local microbiome by making effective use of waste products.
Manufacturing Materials:
Wood fibre is our primary resource in our design and manufacturing process. The goal is to limit the waste products of each tree. Trees themselves have the greatest value at the base and less at the top because there is more clear material at the bottom. The further up the tree, the more knots there are, limiting the use of the material.
A way to find use for the weaker material is lamination because gluing multiple layers overcomes the weaknesses in any one piece. A knot, for example, is strengthened by having clear layers around it. This allows for use of weaker, less desirable materials which would otherwise be discarded.
The use of metal is another consideration in our process. We use it as little as possible and substitute its function with a wood design. Our primary metal usage is for attachments such as screws and bolts or hinge systems which are too important to be compromised. The aluminum wire lock used on the row cover can be recycled and reused.
Overall, SunPod is committed to designing elegant, meaningful, long life-cycle products that are valuable in our daily lives.
Design – A design is the concept of or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word design refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something – its design.
Regeneration – Regenerative design is an approach in which human and natural systems are designed to co-exist and co-evolve over time. The value of a regenerative design approach is in its potential to regenerate planetary health and deliver positive outcomes for both people and planet.
Self Sufficiency – needing no outside help in satisfying one’s basic needs, especially with regard to the production of food.
Sustainability – Sustainability is the ability to exist and develop without depleting natural resources for the future. The United Nations defined sustainable development in the Brundtland Report as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
End-table concept repurposes sawmill off-cuts.
