This Eco-Libre 2025 Annual Report will discuss the state of the Eco-Libre project at the end of 2025 and the progress we made throughout the year 2025.
What is Eco-Libre?
Eco-Libre is a volunteer-run project that designs libre technology for sustainable communities.
Eco-Libre’s mission is to research, develop, document, teach, build, and distribute open-source technology that sustainably enfranchises communities’ human rights.
– Eco-Libre’s mission statement
We aim to provide clear documentation to build low-cost machines, tools, and infrastructure for people all over the world who wish to live in sustainable communities with others.
Executive Summary
- Continuing search for land in Ecuador
- New Eco-Libre Logo
- First Release of Life-Line Project
- Two Prototypes of Life-Line Project
Michael Altfield started Eco-Libre in 2023.
In the past 3 years, Eco-Libre has created four projects (licensed CC BY-SA) which address some of the essential requirements for a new community’s basic human needs: clean water, shelter, electricity, and ecological processing of waste. By releasing these designs under a libre license, it allows for other communities to build their own infrastructure with minimal effort, and it encourages collaboration on standardized design concepts.
As Eco-Libre’s projects mature, we will build experimental prototypes in our own community. To that end, Michael is currently searching for land in Ecuador to establish Eco-Libre’s first physical site.
In 2025, Michael contracted a local NGO (which focuses on Conservation to protect Ecuador’s biodiversity) to assist in the search for land.
The priority focus for Michael in 2026 is to buy land where Eco-Libre can physically iterate on projects.
In 2025, we commissioned an artist to create Eco-Libre’s first logo.
In 2025, we also finished merging Jack’s contributions to the Life-Line project, which culminated in the release of Life-Line v2025.10.
Unfortunately, Jack stopped contributing to Eco-Libre in 2024. Eco-Libre only has 1 active member. If you’d like to help, please contact us about volunteering.
Projects
Land Search
In 2025, Michael contracted a local Ecuadorian-based NGO to help acquire land, which will host the future headquarters for Eco-Libre.
By working with a local NGO that specializes in conservation, Eco-Libre is able to minimize our negative environmental and social impact while maximizing our support of local ecosystems, endangered species, and providing funding to a local org that’s actively protecting the biodiversity of the local region.
With this professional assistance, we hope to finish the land purchase in 2026.
Logo
In 2025, Eco-Libre finally got a logo!
The logo is a half golden “rising sun” and half green “gear”. It symbolizes a new age of sustainable technology.
For more information about our new logo, please read New Logo (2025)
Life-Line
The Eco-Libre Life-Line project is a series of components making up an infrastructure to deliver a clean water pipeline to a community. This includes:
- Collection of raw surface water (eg from a stream)
- Removal of large organic debris & sediments
- Removal of small particles
- Removal of harmful bacteria & parasites
- Clean water storage
In 2024, Eco-Libre started to work on a prototype of the Life-Line project with the Fruit Haven community in Ecuador. This video (by Boris Plotkin) shows the construction of the first prototype.
Can’t see video above? Watch it on PeerTube at tilvids.com or on DailyMotion at dai.ly/x9wjbp4
In April 2025, Fruit Haven built a second prototype of the Life-Line system.
Special thanks to Vegan Beasts and the FH2 community, who built the prototype weir shown above.
In 2025, Michael finished merging Jack’s contributions to the design of the Life-Line project, which required optimizing the mesh objects of the screens in FreeCAD. This process was documented in three articles on the Eco-Libre website:
- Part 1/3: Troubleshooting Large FreeCAD File Sizes
- Part 2/3: Optimizing Expanded Metal Mesh in FreeCAD
- Part 3/3: Life-Line v2025.10 Released
Other Projects
In 2025, Eco-Libre did not make any changes to our Launch-Nest, Genesis-Booth, or Treasure-Tower projects.
Contribute to Eco-Libre
If you’d like to help Eco-Libre reach our mission to enfranchise sustainable communities’ human rights with libre technology, please contact us to get involved 🙂
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