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 Lauriston Muirhead Let’s deal with one of the more transparent fig leaves that our government uses to try to hide an appalling record on emissions reduction and effective climate action. I mean that tired old chestnut trotted out by politicians to excuse their pathetic efforts – “but we only
By Hannah Coates It’s getting almost impossible to find a car park out the front of my workplace. I think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Recently, I’ve had to park my car and walk the last kilometre to my office. It’s a mere sliver of time,
By Libby Rouse Back in the 80’s I was fortunate to have winter holidays at Mt Buffalo Chalet. Run by Vic Rail, it was a quirky and wonderful place. Porters were there year on year, carrying bags, stoking fires, providing supper. The entertainment crew, always the same, would double as
By Jonathon Howard I have begun to wonder if property developers have the future of our region at heart. The economic incentive to reduce property setbacks and encourage gutter-to-gutter medium density housing appears to compromise our understanding of a traditional streetscape. Large, healthy street trees are one of the main
By Alan Hewett Our native wildlife is under threat from land clearing, feral animals and of course climate change. But there is a further danger, the illegal wildlife trade. This trade is estimated to be worth $24 billion worldwide, making it a very profitable criminal enterprise. Australia’s native reptiles and
By Kirsten Coates Every morning, despite the season or the weather, groups of women come together at various locations around the world to go swimming. They swim in the oceans, the rivers, the lakes and the dams of the world in an act that many people consider crazy and is
By Geoff Williams A research paper by Australian Platypus Conservancy biologists (recently published by Australian Mammalogy) has confirmed that platypus suffer horrific injuries and potentially die after becoming entangled in rubbish. The study found that, on average, 4% of platypus encountered in live-trapping surveys in Greater Melbourne were found to
By Lauriston Muirhead If you could have your favourite drink in a byo glass for less than one cent or the identical drink in its own glass for $3.50, which would you choose? So why do we buy bottled water? Australia has some of the best tap water for drinking
By Jonathon Howard Doctor Doolittle was a hero in my younger years. His ability to talk to the animals was a gift I wish I had. Only when I got older did I realise that his song in the movie was actually right: we can all “grunt, squeak, and squawk
By Bruce Key, member of Wodonga Albury Toward Climate Health (WATCH) For some people, the phrase living lightly implies a spartan existence and additional costs. This need not be so. Take for instance the obvious example of solar panels. The payback period is only a few years and thereafter you
By Lauriston Muirhead On the planet Erath, there lived a dragon. Over hundreds of millions of years it sometimes slept and sometimes caused death and destruction. Many different things made the dragon angry or sleepy. When the dragon had been sleeping for a long time, people were able to
By Sue Brunskill, Wooragee Landcare On a perfect autumn afternoon recently, more than 40 people came together to share and learn about cultural burning on a property in Wooragee. This was the final scheduled burn on this current project but hopefully the practice will continue in this region. Cultural burning
