WiserEarth Community Newsletter

This workshop is the third in the series, Eight Steps to a Blue Mountains Food Garden, presented by Susan Girard and Lizzie Connor. They can be attended as a full course, as stand-alone workshops or in any combination. You choose where you need help. The series as a whole is aimed at guiding novice gardeners at their own pace from their first box-garden of vegies to a year-round harvest of vegies and fruit.

This third workshop is called "Wider Household Sustainability - Rethinking power, energy, comfort and waste", and it is designed for people in the Upper Blue Mountains who want to share ideas and strategies for improving the sustainability of their households now that we are under threat from "peak oil" and "climate change".

As in the other workshops, we'll balance thinking, talking and practical activities in what we're sure will be a stimulating and entertaining way - with your help.

POWER

Political, economic, technological and personal power are all included under this heading, with the emphasis on rethinking ways in which we can use our personal power in the face of what may seem to be more powerful forces.

ENERGY

All sources of energy are included under this heading, but the emphasis will be on the individual and group energy of human beings, as we rethink ways in which to overcome our addiction to fossil-fuels and make better use of the wide range of energy sources available to us, all drawn ultimately from our Sun.

COMFORT

Our concept of comfort has changed greatly since we have had ready access to cheap fossil-fuels, so much so that many of us feel that we can't be comfortable without them. Meanwhile we fail to notice our growing discomfort in today's world. We'll be rethinking what comfort means and how we can be comfortable in a sustainable way.

WASTE

In previous workshops we have addressed some ways of rethinking waste, eg using vegie scraps to make compost for use on our vegie garden - "there's no waste in nature".

In this workshop we'll be rethinking our personal attitudes to waste in the context of our society's attitude to it, and sharing ways of limiting the amount of waste from our household, including what goes into our recycling bin.

For more information (including a brochure outlining the series as a whole), email lizzieconnor@bigpond.com.