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 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
By Helena Foster, School Community Gardener, Wodonga Middle Years College Felltimber Campus Back in the 70’s I read a memorable article in Grass Roots magazine by the late Neil Douglas, Australian artist, environmentalist and advocate for sustainable living, where he stressed the need for schools to run gardening as part
By Karen Brawn, Halve Waste How much do you know about where your waste goes? What happens to your mattresses, tyres, e-waste and polystyrene? Want to know how the landfill powers 1500 Albury homes or what a dirty MRF is? If you’re curious, Albury Waste Management Centre will be opening
By Sharon Potocnik, Coordinator, Sustainable Activity Centre, Gateway Island As waste awareness grows, seeing the ground littered with plastic bottles and food wrappers when the crowds go home is becoming less acceptable to festival and event goers. As an example, a local event provided red and yellow lidded bins which attendees
By Bruce Key, Wodonga Albury Towards Climate Health (WATCH) A modern economy needs a reliable supply of low-cost electricity. In Australia at present our electricity is expensive when compared to other countries. This raises the question of whether renewable energy is more or less expensive than electricity produced by fossil fuels,
By Gill Baker, Wangaratta Sustainability Network If you are as lucky as I am, you can sit in your garden and hear twenty or more different native bird calls. Luckier still, and you may catch sight of them. Several species of Honeyeaters and an Eastern Spinebill are enjoying the camellias and
By Bruce Key, Wodonga Albury Towards Climate Health (WATCH) Many people think that trying to tread lightly on the earth is too much trouble. But it’s mostly easy and sometimes it returns immediate positive benefits. Consider the following examples. Each morning I go for a walk on Federation hill where I
