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 Lizette Salmon, Albury-Wodonga Sustainable Living Festival event officer No one likes polluted land or water, but how many of us do as much as we can to prevent it as well-loved local Luisa Pelizzari? Radio presenter Luisa is mindful of ‘invisible’ contaminants and avoids harmful chemicals in garden, cleaning
By Lizette Salmon, Sustainable Living Festival event officer So much of what we do is automatic – jump in the car, switch on the air-con, pop clothes in the drier, but such habits hit the hip-pocket and harm the environment. What if we hopped on a bike, flicked on a fan
By Lizette Salmon, Sustainable Living Festival event officer How much would you reduce your household’s carbon pollution if your electricity was from renewable sources and you never used motorised transport? Many people assume around 80 per cent, but the answer is only 30 per cent. How so? Because on average,
By Lizette Salmon, Sustainable Living Festival event officer November marks the start of Albury-Wodonga’s popular Sustainable Living Festival, a month long calendar of events, including a free entry fair featuring a tiny house experience at Junction Square on Saturday, November 18. To celebrate this year’s festival, eight well-loved locals have
By Natasha Kronenberg, StopAdani Albury-Wodonga member Do you care about our planet? Have you noticed all the cyclones and floods overseas, and the eighty bushfires in NSW in September? Then you must do all you can to stop one of the world’s biggest new coal mines from getting built. Saturday
By Natasha Stafford, permaculturalist, Albury Permaculture is a concept often relegated to the ‘alternative’ area of agriculture. It is thought of as a concept used to apply to some third world country, irrelevant to modern systems. Nothing could be further from the truth. The term ‘permaculture’ or ‘permanent agriculture’ was originally
By Jasen Smith, Wangaratta Library Recently in March Wangaratta Library held the program ‘March into Sustainability’, a series of workshops focused on sustainability and gardening. This program ran in conjunction with the Wangaratta Sustainability Network. Workshops covered various topics from worm farms, beekeeping, wicking beds and sustainability for busy people. Each of the
By Maureen Cooper, Wooragee Landcare For 65 years of my life I lived in tropical North Queensland and, while I loved living there, I was always sick with infected sinuses. I have been living in Woolshed Valley, N.E. Victoria, now for 5 years and my health has improved immensely. In that
By Jenni Huber, StopAdani Albury-Wodonga I’ve had my finger on the environmental pulse for many decades and have never come across an issue that’s angered people as much as the proposed Adani Carmichael coal mine. Hackles were raised by the Franklin Dam proposal, but Queensland’s Adani mega-mine is in another league.
By Glenn Wilson, Tallangatta Valley Environmental protection laws have been enacted into legislation to protect ‘the environment’. I say ‘the environment’ as opposed to ‘our environment’ even though it is our environment, but it is also the environment of all living things on this our Earth. It is with all life,
By Kim McConchie, Totally Renewable Yackandandah (TRY) Committee member Chris Horton & Karen Dods were awarded a Golden Yak by TRY (Totally Renewable Yackandandah) during the Earth Hour festival event, for their commitment to sustainability and renewable energy. You’d think a tornado taking out 300 trees might be a bit of
By Karen Stacey, President of Friends of Willow Park Living lightly is making the most of what we have and enjoying the beauty around us. One of the low cost, high benefit options available is to spend time in your local park. These urban green spaces are important for the health
