Friday morning the geography and ICT teachers and I left with Year 11 CAS (creativity, action, service--an IB course requirement) for the Black Sheep Inn. We arrived about 5 hours later and were given a brief tour. 
We were first shown to our cabins, ours being the highest up on the hill (probably best for noise reduction). We were then explained the rest of the features and structures. The whole inn is an AWESOME place, and highly encouraging and inspiring. It's an example of a place practicing permaculture, or permanent agriculture. This term means that they try to be self-sufficient with regards to water and energy usage, waste disposal, and food production. They opened 12 years ago and have been improving/developing their permaculture since then. They have rain collection systems on the roof, providing water to wash your hands and to shower. 
The water you use to wash your hands then waters the garden in the bathroom (better than a blank wall, no?). They have a pond at the bottom of their property and solar panels to pump it up to holding tanks at the top of the property. This water is used mainly in irrigation. They do use some city water to be boiled for cooking, but it is minimal. They highly encourage guests to turn all lights off when not in use, and they have energy-efficient lightbulbs. 
Now back to those bathrooms and their system of waste disposal. They use ingenious dry-composting toilets in order to not waste water and to produce a rich fertilizer. As seen in the instructions, once you pee or poop, you just add a scoop of sawdust. 
This dry stuff not only produces the ideal ratio of nitrogen to carbon of 1:30, but it reduces the flies and nearly eliminates the smell. It takes about 6 months for one side to fill up, and then you sit on the other side. The rich fertilizer is then used on their vegetable and herb gardens. This last area, food, is the one area where they want to become more self-sufficient. Currently they buy almost all their food (which is all vegetarian and muy, pero muy sabrosa). And while buying locally does greatly help the community, they would like to have more time and expertise to grow almost all their own food. 
As we set off to tour the town of Chugchilán, we passed their pig and her 4 little 4-day old piglets. You might wonder why a vegetarian place has a pig. It was given to them as a gift by someone to whom they had given an interest-free loan for starting his own business in town. And now it's a great way to get rid of scrap food!
In addition to the great things Black Sheep Inn is doing at its own facilities, it is also helping develop the local community. Chugchián only has about 100 people, but it has a school of about 300, meaning kids walk from up to 2 hours away! With help from this school, Andy and Michelle (the owners) 
have opened and supplied resources for a local library. BSQ has donated some computers, as have other guests and organizations, and little by little they are getting more books. The people know how to read, but there is nothing of quality TO read, so they don't. Also, it's an entirely agricultural pueblo, so technology skills are limited. 
After the library, we saw the recycling/waste disposal project Andy and Michelle started about 2 years ago. They set up 3 sets of garbage cans around town, to be divided into inorganic and organic. Granted, no one in the town actually separates the garbage yet, but they are making slow progress with the workers who clean the streets, so there is hope, however small. 
Once they separate the garbage themselves, they take it to the building they recently finished (thanks to funding from an ecoclub.com grant), take out the cardboard, metal, and two specific types of plastic that can be driven to Latacunga, 2 hours away, in exchange for money. A full truckload gets about $10, but it's enough to make the townpeople slowly realize that there is value in separating their garbage. 
What they can't get money for in town they either put on the compost pile and then the garden, or they put it in the landfill that is currently about 6 feet deep. Anyway, it's the cleanest garbage place you'll ever see, and a great model for other towns, almost all of which in Latin America have a serious garbage problem. In the evening we took a 1 hour ridge-walk hike with spectacular views, then had a bonfire at night and crashed in super comfy and multi-blanketed beds!
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