Part 1: Institute Ecoterm Modular and Earth Natives

Sustainable ADA | May 19, 2022

Earth Natives, is run by Institute Ecoterm Modular, an institution dedicated to educating others about sustainable building with earth.

For the first article of a two-part series, Kristy Victoria Co-founder of Earth Natives joins Sustainable ADA to talk about NFTs, Cardano and Sustainability.

Vision & Mission

“We want to educate others about the earth’s qualities and how we can use them to build sustainable housing which we will do by using the profits of our NFT sales to build a house using compressed earth interlocking bricks and then donating to families in need.

In the long term, we hope to be able to teach small communities around the world how to produce the bricks themselves so that they can then provide jobs and housing for their locals as well as help us to make the future more sustainable.” – Kristy Victoria, Co-founder of Earth Natives

What is Ecoterm?

The ecological bricks have holes that form thermoacoustic chambers, which control the temperature inside the building and help to isolate noise, providing much more comfort. With Ecoterm bricks, the side of the wall that is exposed to the sun absorbs heat and heats the internal air columns.

The hot air molecules are more agitated and therefore lighter, forcing the hot air to rise, stealing and eliminating the heat from the bricks. The replacement is made by cold air that has the highest density, thus preserving an always ambient temperature and providing more comfort and more airy places.

“Soil-cement bricks represent an alternative fully in line with sustainable development guidelines. They require low energy consumption in the extraction of raw materials, they do not generate any type of pollution or waste in their production process, and they dispense with the need for burning which generates great energy savings and also minimizes deforestation as 6 to 9 trees per thousand bricks are preserved.

Moreover, in the execution of the work, the need to cut the walls for electrical and hydraulic passages is eliminated, which generates a substantial decrease in the volume of debris generated and still reduces the consumption of settlement and leveling mortars.” – Thiago Martoni, CEO of Institute Ecoterm Modular, Co-founder and Project Manager of Earth Natives.

Why did they start Earth Natives?

When first thinking about the project, we knew we wanted to use minerals as a way to teach people about earth, however we weren’t sure how to go about it. We actually minted our first NFT in July 2021 which was a simple photo of a mineral. We knew that this wouldn’t be of much interest to others so we set about creating lore and artwork that would bring people’s attention to the project and then follow this by teaching them about earth while actually building a physical house.

The lore introduces the idea of climate change and the need for a more sustainable future, the artwork uses earthy colours and minerals which the metadata is based on and the NFT comes with music that is spiritual and relates to our connection with earth.

https://earthnatives.io/

Team Behind It All

I am one of the co-founders of Earth Natives and am in charge of the community side of things as well as copywriting. I have a background in communications and became interested in sustainability when I first went to Brazil with Thiago, my husband and co-founder of Earth Natives. Through Thiago’s journey of creating his business Ecoterm Modular, I became educated in building with compressed interlocking bricks and now advocate it where possible.

Thiago has always been a farm boy at heart and has a background in advertising and marketing as well as being a soil specialist. During his struggles to produce an ecological brick, he realized that there was a lack of knowledge surrounding the material. After being in contact with an engineering university, Thiago was able to produce the compressed earth interlocking brick that we use today, a brick that is far superior in quality and efficiency. Thiago then decided to transform Ecoterm Modular into an institution to share the knowledge and educate others about building with earth.

As we both are supporters of Cardano, and with it being a more sustainable blockchain, we saw it as a means to help promote our technology while being able to give back to the community.

Challenges

The biggest challenge was funding the project which Cardano has helped solve as we are using the sales of our NFTs to build the house.

Why Cardano?

“We have always been big fans of Cardano and as it is a more sustainable blockchain, with its proof of stake, there really was no other choice. On top of this, we believe in Cardano’s mission to make the world a better place and the community it has is incredible.” – Kristy

Connection to the Sustainable Development Goals

Our project is involved with many of the SDGs, such as 4, 5, 9, 16 and 17 but the main ones would be 8, 9, 11, 12, and 13 as through building this ecological house using compressed earth interlocking bricks we are providing a new innovative way to build that is focused on a more sustainable future.

The bricks themselves provide higher quality and comfort to the house as they are a lot stronger than your average brick and due to their holes which form thermoacoustic chambers, they are able to control the temperature inside the building and also help isolate noise. The bricks require low energy consumption in the extraction of raw materials, do not generate any type of pollution or waste in their production process, and dispense with the need for burning which generates great energy savings and also minimizes deforestation as 6 to 9 trees per thousand bricks are preserved.

Moreover, in the execution of the work, the need to cut the walls for electrical and hydraulic passages is eliminated, which generates a substantial decrease in the volume of debris generated and still reduces the consumption of settlement and leveling mortars.

In a more simplistic explanation, the compressed earth interlocking bricks are ecological, low energy consuming, waste reducing, super-efficient to build with and lessen construction time by up to 30%, require fewer materials and labor, therefore, reducing the overall cost of the build and provide better comfort and style to your home.

Current Updates

We are at 100% of the construction of the house that we were building thanks to the funds from our last drop on April 23rd. After our last drop, we will have an auction of a 1/1 (an Owl with fire wings) where 100% of the funds will be going towards planting trees.

We have also just started a stakepool for Ecoterm called Terra, which means ‘Earth’ in Portuguese, and we hope this is one of the ways to help us fund and continue building sustainable housing.

How to get involved?

To help us we just need to get the word out there more, by tweeting about it or retweeting our posts and then to actually be a part of the building you would need to become a holder of one of our NFTs that made you eligible to mint our third and final drop. The profits from this drop go towards installing the ceiling and roof of the house and doing the landscaping outside.

Other Projects and initiatives

As we continue with our mission to educate others about this technology, we will remain using the same SDGs as previously mentioned. We would like to extend the project to Africa next and possibly build another house there or teach others how to produce the bricks themselves while continuing to produce content to showcase the technology and raise awareness for sustainable building.