Christmas is upon us and my faithful Wollemi Pine, which doubles as a Chrissie tree, has died.

Not only have I spent the past week mourning my favourite tree but I’ve also been trying to think of an alternative one for Christmas. I am not really one for buying a new pine tree every year and I really didn’t want to buy a plastic one. I have bought a few living potted trees in the past but they have all died on me, despite my repotting efforts - so I didn’t want to do that again either. (more…)

How’s this for a low impact bath. My kids recently had a bath in my brother’s backyard.

The bath was found lying around my brother’s property – he previously used it as a worm farm.

The water was collected in a tank and the heating came from burning reclaimed wood (see the ashes under the bath).  The air conditioning and heating – well that was provided by Mother Nature.

A friend of mine has a fantastic worm farm that lives in the corner of his garden. When I say “in”, I mean literally in the vegetable patch.

The worm farm is basically a bottomless bucket that has been sunk into his vegetable patch. The top of the bucket is level with the top of the vegetable patch’s top soil. (more…)

Ok, so it’s not quite spring but since spring cleaning is such a mammoth effort I’m starting early.

But I’m not going to throw any of my unwanted stuff out. Instead I’m going to keep it all out of landfill by rehoming, reusing and recycling.

Like a good spring clean – that is never quite finished - I plan to keep updating this page as I go. I’d love to hear your ideas about ways you’ve rehomed, reused and recycled your stuff. Please add them to the comments below and I will try to incorporate them into this story.

I’m starting with all the unwanted clothes in the house. This is what I did or am about to do. (more…)

While I recycle, compost and try to rehome stuff I definitely know that I couldn’t live a whole year without generating any rubbish.

That’s why I think these guys are amazing! They managed to live a whole year without generating any rubbish – well just one super market shopping bag of rubbish.

The Christchurch (New Zealand) based couple Matthew and Waveney consider themselves a normal couple. Matthew works 30 hours a week, and Waveney works part-time and studies. They have no kids, own a car (but bike a lot) and eat meat (although not every day). They also live with their dog and two chickens.

However, their rubbish free year puts them more in the category of ’super’ rather than ‘normal’ couple. (more…)

Yay! My book is here. Well not exactly my book exclusively – a book I’ve contributed to. Yep, this is a blatant plug but it’s the first book I’ve written for, and it does relate to Greenfoot because the copy is about composting and building a worm farm.

The book is called Growing Stuff: An Alternative Guide to Gardening and it’s published by UK company Black Dog Publishing. It probably won’t hit shelves here in Australia until next month.

The book follows on from the two books - Making Stuff and Making Stuff for Kids - and it covers all sorts of gardening stuff from getting started, planting edibles and flowers to attracting wildlife plus a few other quirky things. It contains loads of practical advice, greats pictures and how-to guides.

For more info about the book, download the press release. Or check out what I’ve written about composting and building a worm farm.

It’s amazing how much household waste can be reduced through composting organic scraps. I’ve been doing this for years so I don’t really notice any reduction in my rubbish anymore.

However, over the New Year break my family and I shared a holiday house on Smiths Lake with two other families. Since the house was a holiday rental there was no composting or worm farming facilities so all our organic scraps went straight in the bin. I was amazed at how quickly our bins filled up and how much was thrown out that could have been composted. It was enough to make me cry – well almost. (more…)

It’s 2009, and to mark the new year South Australia has banned plastic shopping bags.

There’s an interesting post over at the We Knit, Sew, Bake blog reminding people in the state to bring their own bags when shopping or they’ll have to buy reusable ones.

I think this ban is a move in the right direction, and hope this law will soon become national. It certainly has worked well in other countries I’ve been to.

Since it’s World Environment Day today, it seems apt to be thinking about recycling and reusing. Being a huge supporter of the R’s, I’m always on the look out for imaginative ways to give life to old or unusable items.

Cool Hunting Green is a book dedicated to designers who are doing just that but in a much funkier and trendier way than I ever could

The book focuses on designers who are creating, reusing or recycling items to produce greener products for fashion, gadgets, stationery, the house, transport, outside and even the afterlife.

Each item featured is accompanied by a website where you can get more information and buy the product.

Some of my favorite sites are:

http://www.rebeccawardjewellery.com/

http://www.souls-australia.com.au/shop.html

http://www.greenknickers.org/index.html

http://www.ecoist.com/

Recycling is good, but reuse is even better. This is the mantra of Scoodi, a site I’ve been meaning to blog for a while.

Scoodi is a cross between Freecycle and E-bay where users can search for items to buy, or even better…get for free. It’s free to list and trade, and allows people to link up with each other locally to trade and swap stuff. Not only is it a great way to get stuff, but a great way to get rid of unwanted items.

And of course a great way to keep unnecessary items out of landfill.