Many of us work 45 years of our lives in hopes to retire with a financially stable life. A life known as our golden years or simply put, retirement. Others have a passion for change and even though, their age most-commonly becomes a deterrent, they don’t stop making their lives and the world around them better.
Living in the post 65 year old era, Michael Kerfoot, owner and operator of Sunergy Systems out of Cremona, Alta. shares a passion that not only ignites the thoughts of young people around him about green energies, but provokes ideas of success in seniors who soar.
With “nearly 40 years experience working with composting toilets, passive solar home design and construction, greywater treatment, insulating window covering research, and many other environmental or energy-related projects,” Kerfoot continues to bring his innovative mind to younger generations on how, we as people can create a greener future for ourselves and the world.
“I created Sunergy Systems in 1976,” Kerfoot said. “It was a good exercise as it required me to define what I wanted to do – to help people live in a more responsible way through energy and resource efficiency.”
Attitudes of change, efficiency and success provide Kerfoot the ideals and drive to keep himself young and current in technologies that will help green our future, thus reversing the environmental damage from hundreds’ of years of human terror of the world’s natural habitats. Kerfoot has seen the change our society has gone through with little environmental consciousness over the last 40 years and wants to bring to the light, the development of efficient technologies.
“I hope that we can learn to live more lightly and equitably. I hope that greed and ostentatious living will be seen as outliers of recognition.
“ I hope that consideration of nature will be a hallmark of all undertakings.”
Since developing his own educational course in 1976, Kerfoot has been emerged with like-minded people across the world, creating a new sense of healthy and efficient living. Kerfoot is one person out of many that grew from a handful to a crowd, to a respectful community of ‘green-beings’ focused on creating a better environment for all to live in. Kerfoot knows that whether a person is 20 years old or 70, they can, too, attain the betterment of our society through hard work, dedication and belief.
“Combine fun with a vision that serves to better the world and it will work,” Kerfoot explained. “Work with others, [plus] other mundane stuff.
“Be wary of people with money – they will take advantage of you more likely than most. The more you depart from the common path, the better job you must do carving out your own trail. Avoid ‘psychic sinks’ – those situations that distract your attention, time, money.”
When everyone begins to do their own part to be green and create efficiency at home and work, it starts to catch on. It becomes a trend that never dies but helps to recycle naturally, what we have forgot about in our world. Kerfoot says “behavior change is encouraged” and when this occurs, “shift happens.”
“When a homeowner is generating a major portion of their own power they are more likely to become better connected to their own consumption patterns and make efforts to reduce demands.
“They become environmentalists in the best sense.”
40 years of green technologies in mind, Kerfoot anticipation for the future continues to blossom like his own ‘senior’ energy for a more prosperous and efficient world.
“It is true that not many others would have wanted to work as obsessively as I, but when I go down to my shop, nature says ‘thanks’,” Kerfoot shared.
“The shop looks after its sewage, provides its own water and generates twice as much power as is needed.
“What more do you want in life?”