Permaculture is a Design Tool SCROLL ON!

"The real systems that are beginning to fail are the soils, forests, the atmosphere, and nutrient cycles. It is we who are responsible for that. We haven’t evolved anywhere in the west (and I doubt very much elsewhere except in tribal areas) any sustainable systems in agriculture or forestry. We don’t have a system." [Mollison] Permaculture is about designing systems.

Observe nature and design human systems that utilise natural energies.	Hybernation Space	Termite Nest	The Sunflower head turns with Sun and bends in Wind	Double-humped Dromadary	We can apply permaculture systems thinking to the design of a single tool as easily to the re-design of a farm or corporation.  The designs we create are not concrete: Permaculture Designs are flexible and allow for evolution of ideas and changes in lifestyle needs.
	= Model for Storage Space	= Model for Naturally air-conditioned home	= Model for efficient clothes drying equipment, wind power and solar panels	= Inspiration for modular tanks

“Initiatives that are taken tend to evolve from strategies that focus on efficiency (for example, more accurate and controlled uses of inputs and minimisation of waste) to substitution (for example, from more to less disruptive interventions, such as from biocides to more specific biological controls and other more benign alternatives) to redesign  -- fundamental changes in the design and management.. (Hill & MacRae 1995, Hill et al 1999)."  
Today a lot of people are considering sustainable substitutions.  They are keenly aware of their impact and want to do something, to start somewhere.  Substituting a harmful product for a less harmful one is their first step. Another step is to focus on efficiency (value for their effort) their actions include choices to support public transport and libraries, hired equipment, and green government initiatives.
The most sustainable choice is for people to consider their whole-of-life and see the value in redesign for their lifestyle.  Permaculture is about helping people make redesign choices: set new goals and a shift in thinking that effects not only their home but their actions in the workplace, borrowings and investments.

Examples include the design and employment of complex transport solutions, optimum use of natural resources such as sun light, radical design of information-rich, multi-storey polyculture systems (Mollison & Slay 1991).  

"This progression generally involves a shift in the nature of one’s dependence  -- from relying primarily on universal, purchased, imported, technology-based interventions to more specific locally available knowledge and skill-based ones.  This usually eventually also involves fundamental shifts in world-views, senses of meaning, and associated lifestyles (Hill 1991).  My experience is that although efficiency and substitution initiatives can make significant contributions to sustainability over the short term, much greater longer-term improvements can only be achieved by redesign strategies; and, furthermore, that Steps need to be taken at the outset to ensure that efficiency and substitution strategies can serve as stepping stones and not barriers to redesign... ”   Professor Stuart B. Hill

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