Low Impact

I’ve been playing around with making paper bricks as a substitute for firewood. One small issue is that I don’t actually have a fireplace at my current house, but I’m not going to let a trivial thing like that hold me back!

So what’s the concept? Its pretty simple. You soak some newspaper in water, put it in brick mold, squish out the water and leave it to dry. The brick maker I’m using and a sample brick are pictured. You end up with a compressed brick of newspaper that you can throw in your slow-combustion fireplace.

Getting the brick maker can be a little… Continue reading

I’ve finally found a uniquely Aussie way to save the environment…brewing your own beer!

(Bear with me on this one - I do have a point….somehow!)

After being pleasantly surprised by a friend’s homebrew beer, I started to think about giving it a go myself. And as I thought about it, it occurred to me that brewing your own beer can be beneficial to the environment. No, seriously!

As with so many things, a lot of it comes down to transportation. If I were to go down to the shops and buy a case of beer, its easy to forget that those bottles of beer started life around 700km away in Victoria. A case of beer (24 bottles, holding 9… Continue reading