Living Lightly is a collection of local stories about sustainable living.
The column commenced in 2012 and until 2023 was published in the Border Mail newspaper each week.
The content is community sourced – groups, organisations and individuals have written and contributed each of these informative and entertaining articles – all overseen by a local volunteer coordinator.
We are currently considering a monthly schedule for articles, stay tuned as we explore this option.
Here you can browse and search previous articles or subscribe to receive an email each time an article is published.
The Living Lightly coordinator is always keen to receive articles! Use the link below to find out how you can submit an article for the column.
With a big thank you to all the Living Lightly authors for contributing to this wonderful collection of articles.
By Gill Baker Back in the day of my youth the BBC ran some excellent children’s programs, and my favourite presenters of wild life shows was David Attenborough. So, unlike most of the world’s population, I was privileged to meet pangolins, armadillos and rainforests via this medium, thus gaining a
By Tess Middleton World Wetlands Day was first celebrated on February 2 1997 and was created to raise awareness about the value of our wetlands for both humanity and the planet. Celebrations by non-government organisations, not-for-profit organisations, government agencies and community groups are held to celebrate and recognise the importance and
By Julianna Toth The first time I travelled to Japan, I remember being shocked at how much plastic was used on a daily basis – individual fruits wrapped in plastic; pastries placed into plastic bags, then bagged up again in plastic; brand new shoes individually wrapped in plastic bags. Excessive
By Lauren Salathiel I have a confession to make. This week, I considered bribing my local librarian to allow me to sleep in the library overnight, so hot was my house. Living in an old un-air-conditioned house isn’t too bad for the first two days of a heatwave. But the
By Elvie Rooney A friend of mine and I recently returned from a backpacking trip from England to Croatia and all the while we couldn’t help but make comparisons. We compared things from the pigeon populations to the ancient city architecture, from the weather to the fashion, but one constant
By Tess Middleton Did you know that one garbage truck worth of plastic goes into the ocean every minute? In the last decade on Aussie beaches alone, more than 2.53 million plastic pieces, almost one million cigarette butts and 512,400 pieces of plastic bags were collected. Tragically more than 100,000
By Lauren Salathiel Australian households are waking up today with fridges brimming to the seals with Christmas leftovers – salads, cold meats, seafood and sweets. However, dealing with festive food fallout doesn’t mean eating ham sandwiches for every meal. Provided you’ve stored your leftovers properly and are a little bit
By Alan Hewett Everyone knows how dry it’s been in recent months and how desperate we are for rain. When it eventually does rain how do we go about harvesting the millions of litres of free water? Most of it will be channelled into our stormwater system, but what a
By Caroline Lavoie, Werribee River Association and Australian Conservation Foundation In the last year, our family of four has been very conscious of its environmental footprint, with a particular awareness about landfill waste and single-use items that are now part of everyday life. When came the time to discuss our children’s
By Renate Griese, Events Officer, AlburyCity We’re all at different stages of our living lightly journeys, so the annual Albury Wodonga Sustainable Living Festival does its best to cater for everyone on the sustainability spectrum – from the casual and committed to the just plain curious. More than 4500 people
By Lizette Salmon, StopAdani Albury-Wodonga Desperate times call for desperate measures. Tomorrow our kids are striking from school and on Saturday we’re hosting a funeral for our future. The Adani Carmichael coal mine situation has become much worse in the past few weeks. It looks like they’ve found a way
By Anne Stelling, Facilitator, Wodonga Urban Landcare Network The question common to people in Landcare is how to get people to care about our environment. How can we get our message heard, and more importantly, make the hearer care enough to make a change? How can we share our passion in a
