Sustainability Committee News

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue20 1–30 September 2021

I hope everyone is doing ok now that we're back in lockdown. Although there's no activity on site at the moment, things were going full-throttle last month! Only a few days before having to work from home, RSAA's new 100kW of solar panels were brought on-site and installation began. These will provide a good chunk of our power requirements as well as reducing our electricity bill!

Work on the community garden was also well under way, with the site cleared and raised beds constructed, ready to be filled (thanks to everyone who came along to help with that on a Saturday!). Under the soil, the beds will be half filled with wood and other waste material from Stromlo, kindly provided by Howard. This is in part to sequester some carbon, part to act as hugelkultur, and part to save money on soil! Hopefully we'll be able to get back to work on the garden soon, before the weeds reclaim it!

In the food waste league tables, Possum Hall remains well out in the lead (coffee grounds are so heavy!), and is just shy of 100kg on its own! Collectively, the food & organic waste bins at Stromlo have caused well over 250kg of useful waste to be diverted from landfill, and a lot of people were bringing in food waste from home for composting. Now that we can't get up to the mountain, do we have to revert to sending our food scraps to landfill? Hopefully not! Here's a few ideas... If you can, start a compost pile at home - it can be as low-tech and passive, or sophisticated and active as you like. There's hundreds of videos online, and I'm happy to give pointers too. Only have a balcony? Try a bokashi bin or worm farm, or if that's not your thing, check out Share Waste: they match people who don't want to throw food & organic material away, with people who want more for their garden/chickens.

Thanks to everyone who attended my Feast of Facts talk on the first day of lockdown, I know it was a stressful time for a lot of us! If you missed it but would like to catch up, 'Sustainability Myths and Misconceptions' can be found here: https://youtu.be/n5bndqhH9OE.

As ever, questions and comments about anything and everything sustainability related are welcome, get in touch at sustainability@mso.anu.edu.au.

Phil Taylor 

Markus Dirnberger

Gaston Gausachs

Isabella Gerrard

Nic Killerby-Smith

Stephanie Monty

Tony Travouillon