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The Igorots, one of the few unconquered indigenous people of South East Asia, have thrived for centuries in the mountains of Northern Luzon in the West Philippines Sea. While over the last 300 years, Spanish, Japanese and Americans have colonized the Philippines archipelago, they were unable to dominate the various Igorot tribes that lived in the fertile valleys of the mountainous region.

It was here, in the land of the Igorot people, that the Asian ecobrick movement was ignited in 2011. It began as the resistance and rebellion of Igorot villages to the plastic of American, Swiss and Filipino companies distributing packaged food products in their traditional territory. However, the resistance movement soon spread to the rest of the Igorot region, to the next door provinces and throughout the Philippines.

And beyond!

Today, the resulting global ecobrick movement can can only be understood in the light of the Igorot's remarkable cycle-centered culture.

An ancient ecological ethos for our modern moment

Like many other indigenous peoples around the world, the concept of waste does not exist in the Igorot language prior to the arrival of European colonizers. All the materials that Igorots used, had their own cycles of use and reuse. For the Igorots the cycles of life around them were so important, that their culture was centered upon them. To this day, cyclocentric Igorot society continues to thrive— the forests and terraced hills of their land being some of the most verdant and biodiverse in the Philippines.

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Underlying Igorot cyclocentric culture is their concept of ayyew— a term that has no corollary in Latin languages or Western philosophy.

For the Igorots ayyew is a virtue to be cultivated and appreciated in the same way that courage, honor, or wisdom. Whereas Western virtues tend to be social, ayyew is ecological. As one of their guiding values, ayyew directs the way Igorots go about living their lives— in particular their relationship to the animals, plants, birds and bugs around them.

In other words, being ayyew refers to the cyclical contribution a person is adding to a particular cycle (like that of a rice paddy, oak forest or cabbage garden). In this way, a person, household or community is admired and respected to the degree in which they are enriching the cycles of life of which they are part.

When Igorots refer to a person or process being "ayyew" they are referring to how well that person is in sync with the cycles of life around them. When someone is ayyew, it means that they are moving towards harmony with ecological cycles. If someone is not ayyew, well, that means they are jamming things up and causing trouble for the plants and animals, fields and forests around them.

All aspects of Igorot life and culture are guided by the virtue of ayyew. Men, women, households and communities are admired and respected to the degree in which they embody the principle. Ayyew means to not just to be in sync with a cycle, but to tend to its spin.

— Banayan & Maier, Tractatus Ayyew, Cycles that Spiral

One of the best ways to understand the concept of ayyew is how Igorots manage their food. To begin with, Igorot villages are almost completely self-sustaining— almost all their food grown in the valleys around them. How they grow their food, eat it and throw away left-overs (burned rice, vegetable cuttings, husks and shells, etc.) illustrates a varying level of ayyew...

• Throwing food leftovers into a garbage can would not be ayyew as it causes a mess for humans and doesn't help the field or animals when it is dumped in a mixed pile!
• Composting food leftovers would be ayyew as it contibutes to the garden that provided the food in the first place.
• More ayyew would be to feed the leftovers to the family chickens, who, well fed provide eggs in return
• And even more ayyew would be to give the leftovers to the family pig, who grows fat and provides even richer fertilizer for the garden (and meat later on!).

The way that land is managed provides another example of Ayyew...

• A farmer who turns a barren hillside into a cabbage field is being ayyew. In doing so, he has added several new species to the space and is generating sustenance for themselves and the community.
• A farmer who turns a cabbage field into a rice padding is also being ayyew. In doing so, water is captured and pooled to grow not just rice, but provide home for snails, frogs, mudfish and more.
• A gardener, who plants a paddy with fruit trees is also being ayyew. In doing so sustenance is provided for not just humans, but birds and bugs of all kinds
• A man or woman who protects the verdant oak forests on the top of the local hills is even more ayyew— for what has more cycles of life than a forest?

In this way, being ayyew is not a state of being, but a process of being that has a direction: a way of living that leads to ever more abundance from ever more sync with the surrounding cycles of life.

Igorot farmers tending their terraced rice paddies side-by-side the forest. Natonim, Mt. Province. Photo by Gladys Maximo

An Ayyew View of Plastic

From the Ayyew perspective, materials are neither good nor bad— it all depends on how one puts them back to use in synk (or in conflict) with the cycles of life. Consequently, in the Igorot language, there was no word for “waste” or “trash” to condemn a material as 'used-up' or 'useless'. Instead, every material presents an ecological opportunity that can be embraced– or not.

Including plastic.

From this ayyew perspective, ecobricking arose in Igorot villages as a way to put plastic to good, green use.

Rather than burning or dumping plastic (where it contaminates rivers and fields) Igorots observed it was much better to keep it in its solid state. Rather than send plastic bottles off to be burned, recycled or dumped somewhere else, far more ayyew was to put it to use locally in its solid state. From this perspective, it was a short leap to packing and securing plastic into PET bottles— and then in the stone building Igorot tradition, put these "bottle bricks" to use to build gardens and walls.

Of course, it's possible to strive and sync even better with the surrounding ecological cycles. An ayyew ecobricker strives to move from modules to gardens to earth and ecobrick green space structures that sequester plastic and CO2.

Inspired by this deep and powerful Igorot concept, the Global Ecobrick Alliance has developed our principles, techniques and applications around the concept of Ayyew. Ayyew fits in closely with regenerative philosophy and guided our development of the regenerative guiding principles. that underlie the work of the Global Ecobrick Alliance and the global ecobrick movement.

A Guiding Green Principle

The concept of ayyew has great relevance for us in the ecological downturn of the 21st century as we strive to solve ecological challenges. Moving on from linear, black and white judgements, we can shift instead to acceptance. And from there, steadily increase our alignment and contribution to ecological cycles.

Ecobricking is just one modern manifestation of the Ayyew concept.

Building on the concept of Ayyew, the co-founders of the Igorot ecobrick movement have gone on to develop a theory of what green should really mean. Their Tractatus Ayyew lays out a theory or Earthen ethics using plastic as an example for how ayyew can help us solve our modern ecological challenges.

🍃 Our GEA Principles

The full ayyew inspired principles of the ecobrick movement

🍃 Earthen Ethics

Read the Earthbook version of the Tractatus Ayyew