John The Foreigner Recycled House Builder in Pingtung

I recently caught the end of a news story on ChannelNewsAsia about a foreigner in Pingtung married to a Taiwanese who recycles things to build his own house, teaches people how to make bricks out of paper to build houses, teaches pizza making, has a coffee shop… I didn’t catch any other details except at the end of the story they said reporting from Pingtung county in Taiwan. I apologize for lacking any other info but this is really all the info I caught in the news story.

Anyone have any info?

I don’t have any personal knowledge of it, but the stuff below appears to be about the subject you saw on the news.

Here’s a Chinese-language webpage with pictures, from January of 2014, I think–I guess this is about the same person as the one in the news show you saw:

Here are some videos that I guess are about that same subject; I think the videos range from 11 months ago to four years ago:

About three minutes, NTDTV:

Three minutes:

Ten minutes, CTS:

Five minutes:

Not quite two minutes, China Times:

About 3 1/2 minutes, CTS:

Edited to add:

The man’s name is John Lamorie. Here are some more links:

“Eco-friendly house made of paper,” Da Ai Headlines (Da Ai Television, Tzu Chi Foundation), August 16, 2012

“Expat builds paper buildings with wife,” Taiwan What’s Up?, May 15-31, 2011, page 4
https://taiwanwhatsup.immigration.gov.tw/public/epaperHTML/15131771271.pdf

“Top NIA official lauds ‘Paper House’ builder,” China Post, March 18, 2011
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2011/03/18/295094/Top-NIA.htm

“Taiwan couple builds school with donated wastepaper,” Reuters, January 6, 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/06/us-taiwan-paper-idUSTRE6051CF20100106

“Couple builds house from paper,” Taipei Times, January 2, 2010

I’ve been to their farm twice, and just wrote about it for TRAVEL IN TAIWAN. It’s in this issue: issuu.com/travelintaiwan/docs/tr … 2015.11-12

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Thanks, Steven! I’ll read it, for sure.

Great article. I read about half of the Travel in Taiwan issues but I need to start reading all of them.

Just finished it. It’s a great read, very well-written, and those folks and what they do are really interesting.

That must keep them very busy!

Interesting. Someone like that would probably be jailed back in the ol’ country.

Nice to know there are some foreigners out there teaching such things to the great unwashed masses of Taiwan.

There’s another guy I know making environmentally friendly products and organic pizza in Meinong, very popular also. He also very effectively uses some local organizations and local governments to promote his products and ideas.

The ex GM of HP was interviewed recently, he was one of the first to promote recycling of kitchen scraps in Taiwan to use for organic produce, people thought he was banking mad. He has his farm out in Sanzhi.

I read the papers guy blog/Facebook before, they have had to deal with some unsavory neighbors, it is is pingdong after all!

As in HP Foods, or Hewlett-Packard? It’d be interesting if the former. I suspect those companies do the stupid shit they do because the government tells them to, rather than because they want to.

Ha … I think that’s just people. Do anything good or useful anywhere in the world, and there will always be someone who wants to fuck you over, just because it’s entertaining to stomp someone’s life into the dust and say: “See? Told you that would never work”.

pIngdong is a whole other level, need to be careful in Taiwan’s Wild West.

The organic farm is owned and run by the first GM
Of Hewlett Packard in Taiwan, when he retired he stayed in Taiwan and set up the farm, decades ago!

Thanks for that info, headhonchoII.

The organic farmer’s name is Pierre Loisel. Here are some print articles on Mr. Loisel, and somewhere in those articles there’s also mention of a National Taiwan University science professor named Wu San-he (吳三和), to whom Mr. Loisel gives credit for his help:

“Pierre’s Organic Experiment: Can Vegetables Cure Cancer?” The Wild East Magazine, January 11, 2015

“A farming revolution in Taiwan,” SKNVibes (St. Kitts and Nevis), June 4, 2014
sknvibes.com/news/newsdetails.cfm/87508

The article linked immediately above can also be found here:
taiwanembassy.org/KN/ct.asp? … agesize=15

“Super-charged compost,” pages 13-16, subtopic in “Rethinking kitchen waste,” pages 4-19, in Tzu Chi: Buddhism in Action, Summer 2012
enquarterly.tzuchiculture.org.tw … 202012.pdf

“Community Compass: French Canadian touts his organic dream in Taiwan,” Taipei Times, September 30, 2008
taipeitimes.com/News/front/a … 2003424613

“Taipei YWCA members growing insecticide-free veggies in Sanchih,” China Post, March 18, 2002
chinapost.com.tw/news/2002/0 … i-YWCA.htm

Here are some videos of or about Mr. Loisel and Prof. Wu San-he (吳三和):

This a Taiwan Outlook English-language interview of Mr. Loisel:
youtube.com/watch?v=CgZ_WjlXHu0

This looks like a 53-minute Chinese-language lecture by Wu San-he on organic farming in Taiwan:
youtube.com/watch?v=jJKSVI8Yx3Q

This looks like a Chinese-language TED talk by Mr. Loisel:
youtube.com/watch?v=u0XXwSOMZ-M

This is a Chinese-language TVBS video featuring Mr. Loisel:
youtube.com/watch?v=IA4qdBSKGGM

Saw another news story about him on ch52/ch507 MOD, englishnews.ftv.com.tw. Interesting stuff. Still building recycled houses.

Something about “Pingtung Newspaper Estate”. Looks like he has built multiple houses all out of paper and recycled materials.

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