While touring an ecovillage here, a few features you might expect from a rural communal dwelling are noticeably absent: no hippies farming in the nude and no daisy chains or peaceniks in tie-dyed clothes smoking weed.

These are stereotypes the residents of Whole Village, a ecologically based community in this southern Ontario town, would like to shed.

Most ecovillages - and four emergent ecotowns in Britain that the government there gave the green light to build in July - are not sanctuaries for aging draft dodgers or meccas for free-love radicals experimenting with psychedelic drugs. Rather, many ecovilles, like the one in Caledon, are home to business-minded people such as architects, doctors and teachers, working together to run an environmentally sustainable co-operative.

Communes, popular with hippies in the 1960s, have evolved into ecovillages around the world, dozens of which are funded by mainstream organizations like the United Nations, with residents who strive to create socially, economically and ecologically sustainable lifestyles. They are communes 2.0 - 21st century communities that integrate ecological design, permaculture (farming without the use of pesticides or technology) and alternative energy.

Far away from strip malls and other offspring of suburban sprawl, Whole Village provides the kind of model urban planners are now looking at for larger sustainable development.

Here, every decision is put to a consensus at weekly meetings. If one of the 25 or so villagers disagrees with a motion, they go through a checklist of problem-solving techniques called the formal consensus process.

"You never know, maybe that one person who is against that issue is the person who is an expert in that area. This makes it possible for every voice to be heard," resident Shane Snell said.

Over 191 acres, the residents farm, organically, many varieties of vegetables, fruit and grains for themselves and also to sell. They have a grove of maple trees for syrup and keep bees to make honey to sweeten food instead of using sugar.

It's not that the residents eat solely from the land - "I like the odd banana," says one - but they could, even in the winter, if they had to. They're not entirely off the grid yet either, but it's a goal.

They have built an elaborate engineered wetland - three huge cubicles underground filled with sand, gravel and other natural materials that filter sewage water, making it pure enough to put back on the land.

"It's basically speeding up the process that would happen naturally in a wetland," he said. "The guys who designed these systems claim you could drink that water - I don't think anyone is going to try it but it's very clean."

The 11-unit home in Whole Village is powered with Bullfrog Power - a company that uses renewable energy such as hydro and wind to provide electricity. They also utilize geothermal energy and are in the process of installing solar panels.

Their resident architect added skylights to allow natural light into each room, which saves on lighting costs. There is also a stone masonry heater in the main living room which provides heat.

In July, the British government approved construction of four ecotowns in Britain, proclaiming them "carbon-neutral communities." When built, they will be the first national government-funded ecotowns in the world.

Critics say they ghettoize environmental practice, which should be happening in all developments, but Lee Davies, a spokesman for the Canada Ecovillage Network, counters they are good trial runs.

"They are models for people to build on," he said. "You can have roof gardens or shared gardens and places where people could make a contribution for room and board. The (ecotowns) will get people thinking about composting and water and sewage systems."

Powered entirely by wind and solar power, the British ecotowns will have zero carbon dioxide emissions, according to a British government website.

Forty per cent of the town must be green space, with at least half available to the public. There will also be charging points for electric cars.

The more than 5,000 homes and buildings will use less energy and be low cost. The government said a minimum of one job per household should be available that can be reached by public transit, bicycle or on foot.

The movement for larger developments, like ecotowns, Davies explained, helps break down the hippie-commune stereotypes that have made it difficult for some projects to get building permits.

"It's not the 1960s anymore, you know. it's the next century" Davies said. "Back then, you would tell people you were part of an eco-movement and they would say 'what the heck is that?' but now you say, 'I'm involved in ecovillages and trying to establish sustainable living communities,' (and) they understand."

According to the Global Ecovillage Network, there are more than 1,000 ecovillages in the world and around 30 in Canada. Massive training centres are being built, like at Findhorn, northern Scotland, which draws energy from four 225-kilowatt wind turbines and has a biological sewage treatment system - known as the Living Machine - solar water-heating systems and geothermal heating. Findhorn educates about 9,000 people a year from over 50 countries.

Snell said he would like to see a training centre like Findhorn built in Canada.

While there are no plans yet for a federally funded ecotown in Canada, some municipalities are backing urban ecovillages such as Vancouver's Southeast False Creek. More than 10,000 people live in the community, which has shared gardens and green buildings. Part of the development includes the new Athletes Village for the 2010 Olympics, which will be turned into more green housing units after the Games, said Mark Roseland, director of the Centre for Sustainable Community Development at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University.

"These demonstration projects are really important because people can actually go and see and say, 'you know, this is how I'd like to live.' "

The ecovillage model may also have an effect on suburbs in the future, though Roseland noted making suburbia sustainable won't happen overnight.

"Closing shopping malls and Walmarts could provide the skeleton, the infrastructure for building communities. Ecovillages, for the most part, are rural intentional communities, but the ideas transfer - sharing laundry facilities, for example, or car-sharing."

A wasteful consumerist lifestyle and urban sprawl are just some of the social drifts Snell, a former manager with several grocery chains, wanted to change when he joined Whole Village and the ecovillage movement.

Snell believes eating organic food, free from the "poisons" in manufactured food, is a more than a growing trend - it's a necessity.

"We will all have to move towards organic because of environmental reasons, because the chemicals we spray on commercial crops are all petroleum or natural gas based," he said. "Fossil fuels are depleting - so even if there were no health concerns with conventional farming - which there are - the problem is we just can't sustain it."