What Waste?
A measure of a persons freedom is the number of things they can do without - Anon
At Happy Earth we’ve embraced the art of smart, low waste living. Here’s some examples of what we’re getting up to:
Reduce - The art of having more life and less crap!
- Growing food in the backyard and at a local community garden – only package free food there!
- Buying organic dry foods in bulk and minimising processed and packaged foods – see Local Green Directory
- Always having a pile of calico shopping bags in the car, and one in the handbag, and taking containers with us when shopping too
- Triumphing over cleaning product marketers psychological games, and sticking to simple green cleaning stuff - see Green Cleaning
- Displaying a ‘No junk mail’ sticker on the letter box. This saves us 40kg of junk mail a year!
- Thinking twice about what we want and if we really need it, saving up for stuff that really lasts, instead of cheap stuff that won’t
- Keeping a ‘Keeper’ (For the girls only - cause we’re special!). If you don’t know what that is, check out - http://www.moonpads.com.au
Creative reuse
- Making friends with a local lawn mowing company – grass clippings are fabulous free mulch. We’ve mulched over 600 m2 with them. And it saves the mowing company a trip to the tip. Local tree lopping companies may also have free wood chip mulch, which is great for defining paths. You have to be happy with what you are given though - we ended up with a massive pile of eight cubic metres of woodchips, which goes a long way!
- Reusing the concrete driveway to create beautiful mosaic paths that meander through the garden.
- Using gifts from nature – we’ve made a fruit bowl out of a fallen palm sheath, used sticks to hang up prayer flags, and framed pictures with bark. These get complimented more than anything in the house!
- Asking coffee drinking friends to save us Mocconna coffee jars – they make fantastic jars for storing dried foods. We've also been experimenting with putting old coffee grinds from the local coffee cart in the soil around our acid loving plants like the blueberries, to make the soil more acidic.
- Keeping an eye out for piles of dirt, rocks or pavers out the front of homes that look unwanted (as often happens during renovations), and asking the owners if they are unwanted. Often people are glad to have someone take them off their hands and they can always be used in the garden!
- Discovering the treasures in second hand and old wares stores, and checking out ebay to find funky pre-loved furniture, clothes and all sorts of goodies
- Decluttering and donating things we no longer use
Recycle – The art of turning one thing into another
- Feeding all our food scraps to a compost and worm farm. Nothing makes a garden smile like beautiful compost and worm castings!
- As a last resort, if we can’t manage to avoid waste, or reuse something, it ends up in the yellow top bin if it’s recyclable.
- Supporting the recycled products industry by using recycled office paper, toilet paper etc.