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Living Lightly articles

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.

 


Articles

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Living Lightly in Gisborne, New Zealand

By Sue Slater, Treasurer, Birallee Park Neighbourhood House Inc.                         Di Mant and I spent a week on the North Island of New Zealand at the end of 2011 after being invited to give talks on the “Our Table to Yours”

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Christmas Can Be A Magical Time

By Ben Habib, WATCH (Wodonga Albury Towards Climate Health) I like the sense of expectation in the lead-up to Christmas as we wind down the year.  I enjoy the community spirit of this time as we let our hair down at work functions, embrace the joy of the season at carols

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Be Great and Create for Christmas

By Gill Baker and friends, NERSA (North East Region Sustainability Alliance) One of the problems with trying to live lightly is the fact that rampant consumerism is such a large part of 21st century lifestyle.  It’s in your face wherever you turn. The large stores are full of ‘stuff’ for Christmas,

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Fruit Fly

By Jacky Cronin, Seed Savers Albury-Wodonga Most productive gardeners will be shaking in their collective gumboots in anticipation of this year’s fruit fly season. With our nice wet winter and promises of bumper summer crops we are sure to attract huge amounts of fruit fly to our region. Queensland fruit fly

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The Value of Shade

THE VALUE OF SHADE By Jenny Indian, Member of NERSA, Landcare and Indigo Shire Environment Advisory Committee If you look about you can see it happening already – stock packed up tightly under the few remaining paddock trees, parked vehicles jammed in and around trees and people beginning to seek out

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Saving Energy in the Workplace

By Wolfgang Huber, Friends of Willow Park When I started work in Australia 25 years ago, an older engineer rebuked me.  I had expressed surprise that the company was using a motor twice as large as required on a belt that was part of a 24 hour operation.  “In Australia, we

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Killing Two Birds With One Stone

By James Sloan, Albury It is no coincidence that the countries with the greatest per capita emissions also have some of the highest levels of obesity. In simple terms, both have the same causes: greed and laziness. We are a bad global neighbour. We throw our rubbish onto the global

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Mould in Grout

By Lizette Salmon, WATCH – Wodonga Albury Towards Climate Health Several years ago a friend built a house in Wodonga and told me her aim was to build a place with no tiles. Why?  Because she so hated cleaning mould off grout.  Since then I’ve thought of Beth every time I

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Gardening Group Gains Momentum

By Fiona Hughes, Chairperson of the Albury Wodonga Regional Food Security Network Community and school gardens are popping up everywhere around Albury-Wodonga and the Hume Murray Community Gardening Collective is supporting this movement by providing a social setting for those interested in food gardens to learn from one another. Community gardening is

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Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants

By Matthew Charles-Jones, Yackandandah Sustainability In a departure from the usual approach of the Living Lightly column, I wish to review a book titled, “In Defense of Food,” (2009) by Michael Pollan. Pollan explores a pervasive theme in the modern western diet – that of ‘nutrition.’  His exploration reflects on the

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Bush Food: A Natural Shift

By Kirby Browne, Permaculture student, National Environment Centre, Thurgoona During the last 200 plus years the European attitude to native, Australian food sources has rambled. From the condescending indifference of the early colonists, to the Les Hiddens inspired fascination of the 1980s and most recently, perhaps inevitably, we arrived at industrial exploitation.

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Bees and the People’s Hive

By Jan Macilwain, organic smallholder, Sandy Creek Yesterday, after the latest fall of rain in a sodden winter, a large dead stringybark crashed to the ground outside our garden fence. For many years it has housed a possum family and a busy hive of bees. We have been entertained by the

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