In Bloomington activist history, Lucille Bertuccio is legendary. Known for, among other things, protests against deforestation, it's a character-telling anecdote that she once shouted, "Get your hands off me, I'm an old woman!" to police officers as they arrested her at a protest.

Bertuccio has mellowed some these days, committing most of her time to teaching wild edible plants and horticulture classes at IU and tending her natural habitat garden. With Oct. 20 marking the opening of the 17th Bioneers Conference, the Alternative sought her thoughts on this year's video conference.

A Bioneers slogan is, "It's all alive, it's all intelligent, it's all connected."

"It is all relative, because we are connected to this planet genetically. That's why so many things can affect us, why bacteria can affect us. Genetically we've got more in common.

"Bioneers approaches environmentalism from all different sides, from racism, social equity. That's why I say it's all connected, because you really can't take one strand away from what's going on in the globe. When people say, 'Oh, what's the environment got to do with anything? I'm worried about food for my family,' the environment has a lot to say about that. If we poison our environment, we're poisoning our families.

Why do we do that?

"I think it's because we are so disconnected. We don't know where our food comes from. You ask a child where his food comes from, he says, 'The supermarket.' Because children aren't out there planting seeds, watching things grow, and I think it's a shame really, because that connection is missing.

"The Commission on Sustainability just had a meeting on some of its projects. One of the persons there started talking about ZERI, which is a method of using all five kingdoms in everything you do so that loops get closed, so that we don't have waste. It's a very interesting concept. Not one of the Commission members had heard of that before.

"It's a way of looking at what we do and how we do it and thinking about how nature does it. How does nature keep water clean, keep production going, keep the air breathable? These are the things that we have to learn how to do. The whole system works with the energy of the five kingdoms.

"We are doing ourselves a disservice because we think that the environment is something extraneous. The Bioneers really talks about pulling it all together and making sure we understand the connections between the environment, social justice and economics."

What speakers are you excited to hear at Bioneers?

Paul Stamets! He says that mushrooms are essential at breaking down waste products and toxins. He claims that they can break down PCBs. Mycchorrizal fungi, which live in forests and grow on roots of plants, help the plants to absorb nutrients and water.

His particular speech is going to be on how mushrooms can save the world. He's saying that you can change this in place — you don't have to go everywhere else.

Michael Pollan is talking about local food.

"Local foods are important. Our food travels about 1,400 miles to get to us. We're spewing exhaust, creating more global warming, using peak oil. Local foods taste better, they're better for you, and economically they're good because they don't waste any fuel getting here.

"Paul Hawken is an economist who ran a gardening company. He believes that business has to close the loops, too. Business has to learn the kinds of things that nature does.

"There is not waste in nature, everything is food for something else. When a leaf falls off a tree, it is not a waste. It gets decomposed by the bacteria, it's food for them and they break it down into nutrients that then the plant can use again to grow more leaves.

"You can't take one strand out because this connects to social justice! Who gets harmed by dump sites the most? Poor people get the brunt of this. Rich Americans throw things away and think it's gone. It's never gone. It ends up somewhere and where it ends up is in poor, undeveloped areas."

What successes have you seen made thanks to the Bioneers conferences?

There's been a lot of work done about the grey water — the water from your dishwasher and washing machines. That grey water can go through a living system, with plants in it, and those plants will take out the pollutants and when the water comes out of it, it's clean.

"Water will be the new peak oil. Water is absolutely necessary, nothing can live without water. We have to think about water as an endangered resource."

Elizabeth Dilts can be reached at edilts@indiana.edu.