Baling, baling, baling!

Straw-baling on a Sunday is a wonderful diversion from the tax-time data entry. On this gorgeous winter day, it was soul-food to get out and heft bales into the wall with my family. Dave was on the chainsaw, shaping bales around posts, while our oldest son, Josh and his devoted Tessa (med-student and part-time Grassroots wonder-shopgirl) learned the process of building. I am sure they were not just helping us for no reason - I suspect they have eco-building intentions.

The straw is wheat straw - sharp and coarse, much harder than the rice straw we used in "stage one" of our home. Small bales are getting harder to come by in this area. Most farmers are baling into the big 8'x4'x4' bales lifted only by a machine. The walls go up fast, with a 3m section taking 30-45 minutes to reach ceiling height.

The "mudding" will start soon, that is my earth-mother time. Being connected to my place by the earth is important to me. I feel very grounded by holding each and every handful of earth render as it passes from ground to mixer to bucket to wall. Each surface is sculpted with 3 coats of earth-lime render, taking half a day to cover that 3m section in one coat, on one side. Stay in touch for the mud.

The Last Straw

We are on the tools again! Our strawbale home has been a labour of love for some time now and we are pushing to finish it by Christmas. With Dave on school holidays, we are hoping to get the roof on and bales in for the last stage of the home - our space (office, sitting room and bedroom ... currently sleeping in living room ... lacks privacy, don't you think.)

Dave: What's it like, living in straw? Wonderful - particularly in a cold climate like Armidale. When it's -8C outside, it's still cosy and easy to heat. BEst of all, the house breathes, meaning that the walls absorb moisture during periods of high humidity, like a week of rain, and release it when things dry out. The house never feels damp or stuffy. I'll be making a series of video entires for the building process, so please follow us on the journey of completing our home. It's raining again, so i'll hopefully get our the camera tomorrow.

Welcome to the grassroots-eco-store blog post

Glad you could join me here at the Grassroots Eco-Store Blog! I’m often asked about the products carried in my store—why they’re important, how they improve healthy living, and what environmental characteristics they embody. In a world filled with mixed messages about the current environmental problems faced by our country, I find that many people are confused and looking for real, honest answers.

Through this blog, I hope to help clear the air to make it easier for those in my community and beyond to make truly green lifestyle choices that will improve their health and family lives. I’ll scan the most recent news, watch for developments in environmental health, feature new and exciting eco-friendly products, and keep you up to date on what our government is doing in the area of environmental protection.

Feel free to join the conversation! Since I’m a lifelong learner, I welcome input, comments, questions, and recommendations.

It’s all good.

Liz

Support packaging deposit legislation

Environment ministers in our country will be meeting on May 22 to discuss the possibility of introducing a 10 cent container deposit plan. Consumers would pay the 10c per container fee at the till, but then be able to collect the same amount for returning the packaging to a recycling depot once they’re done with it.

This seems like a great idea and something that we should be supporting. After all, we Aussies consume and discard 3.4 million tones of packaging every year, with only 56 percent being recycled! According to Clean Up Australia, eight out of 10 waste items in the average household are from packaging, making it a significant portion of our household waste.

It’s high time that producers take some responsibility for the packaging waste they create and encourage with the products we buy from them. If they don’t begin to pay for the waste, we as consumers will continue to have to do so instead. Since much of the packaging waste is useless unless recycled, we pay about $50 every year (per household) to cover the costs of dealing with it. Estimates at the savings we could reap by diverting this waste from the landfill indicate that there’s huge potential: Hornsby shire could save $450 thousand annually, for instance.

While there are those who argue that the Container Deposit Legislation (CDL) will reduce participating rates in the kerbside recycling program, experts in the field contend that these two programs can work well together and that side-by-side, they can increase our rates of recycling to between 70 percent and 85 percent.

So if you haven’t already, tell your Local Government representatives, environmental community organizations, and the Environment Movement that you want to see the CDL move forward. It’s about time!

Of course, one of the best ways to beat the challenge of packaging waste is to consume less of it. At Grass Roots Eco-Store, we’ve got lots of reusable kitchen and homeware items that will help you reduce the amount of packaging waste you generate each week.