Self sustainabilty @ home

What is being self sufficient

Self sufficency includes

Your own veggie garden

Composting

Waste disposal

Where and what you buy

My motto: If we can recycle the majority of our waste back to the earth (with composting, worm farms, mulching etc) and reduce the amount of rubbish, sent to landfill; well thats a good thing. Its a great feeling to be living more in tune with nature & it gives a feeling of connection to the earth!

Veggie gardens. Having a veggie patch is a great way to grow your own; a bonus is you know where the veggies are grown. It's great to watch food grow, espically food you planted.

It can be a great way for families to make positive changes in their lives.

It's a great way to encourage neighbourhood veggie garden food swapping

Simple measures to reduce your waste output

Worm farms. A great way to recycle vegetable scraps, egg shells, paper, dust etc, is to have a worm farm. A worm farm works by hungry little worms eating all your organic waste and producing a beautiful rich fertlizer called castings. These casting rich in organic matter can be used to feed your veggie garden and your plants.

What can go in your worm farms. Worms like moistened cardboard or newspaper, food scraps, and they love egg shells, but crunch them up a little. It gives them variety in their diet. Coffee grindings and tea leaves are absolutely fantastic and throw in all the kitchen scraps. But don’t add too much citrus and onions.

Composting. Composting is basically a bigger version of a worm farm. You can include everthing that go's into a worm farm and include grass clipping, leaves and garden clippings. Because composting bins are bigger you can throw more stuff in them, however there is a nack to getting them working well. When its all broken down you have great compost for your gardens

Waste Disposal. As listed above, by having a worm farm or compost, we can simple removea big slices of waste going to landfill.

Look at what you buy and the packaging it comes in.

Use the recycling already in place, Put recyclables into your yellow recycle bins for council pickup.

REUSE, we buy lots of goods, as in perfect stroage container, why throw it out and then go buy seperate storage containers. eg: instead of throwing out a perfect plastic take-away food container, wash it and use it for storage fom left overs, biscuits, or in the garage, etc.

Remember its can be a chore or it can be a game, until it becomes just another habit, like turning off lights or having a shower in the morning!

Shopping sustainable.

Supermarkets love packaging, suprise yourself and shop at a local veggie shop, co-operative and butcher, You can use paper bags instead of plastic bags for your veggies. Shopping at a butcher removes black styrofoam packing for meat, that goes straight in the bin.

Shopping at co-ops is great, it removes unneeded packaging around simple things like veggies, nuts, herbs, rice, etc... Give it a go... its nicer than the dreery looking queues at the supermarket!

Shopping local is also a great way to support local business in your community. I don't like to see the friendly local butcher or veggie shop close because they cannot compete with the big multinationals