Sustainable House Day – Sept 9
Here’s a great opportunity to have a tour of one of the Illawarra’s most sustainable homes – the Rowes’ residence in Shellharbour.
Illawarra Freecycle
FreeCycle is a great way to give a new life to stuff you no longer want, and to divert still-useful waste from landfill tips. Here are some of the useful things I’ve picked up…
The Cost Of Raising Your Own Pigs For Meat
A complete summary of the costs for our first foray into raising our own pigs for meat, from piglet purchase right through to slaughter and butchering.
Feeding Swill To Pigs
There was a little bit of discussion about feeding scraps to pigs on my original entry about our pig project. There are quite strict laws around the feeding of scraps and waste to pigs in Australia (and many other countries), and you really need to make sure you’re doing the right thing. The NSW Department … [Read more…]
Cleaning Up Broken CFLs
Not long ago I dropped and broke a compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) in the garage. D’oh! I had a vague recollection that there’s a procedure you should follow to safely clean up broken CFLs, due to the small amount of mercury inside them. So, geek that I am, I jumped on the computer to look … [Read more…]
So What Can We Do With Old TVs Today?
Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/h2oalchemist/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 The proper disposal of ewaste (electronic waste – old TVs, stereos, computers, faxes, printers, etc) is becoming a significant issue. These products contain toxic materials such as lead, cadmium, beryllium and brominated flame retardents. People are upgrading to flat-screen TVs in record numbers, leaving them with huge unwanted … [Read more…]
Swap Lightbulbs For CFLs For Free
If you live in the Kiama area, you have an opportunity tomorrow to swap up to 6 old lightbulbs or fluorescent tubes for brand new energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) for free. Just take your old bulbs to the Minnamurra Waste and Recycling Centre (the old Minnamurra tip) between 10am and 2pm tomorrow (Thursday 13 … [Read more…]
Triple J Hack – Waste
While we were at the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge launch last night, Ally (one of the Super Challenge coordinators) and her partner Richard were simultaneously appearing on Triple J’s Hack Half Hour on ABC2. The topic of the show was Waste. You can find the episode here (it’s episode 7, 3 Nov 2008), or download … [Read more…]
Kiama Council Composting Workshop
This afternoon I attended Kiama Council’s Composting Workshop, held at the Girl Guides’ Hall down in Hindmarsh Park. It was run by Josephine St John, council’s Waste Minimisation Officer. What a great event! I had really thought I wouldn’t learn much from this workshop, but I thought it was a good opportunity to meet some … [Read more…]