Wollondilly Shire Council

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• Eat Less Meat

  Replace at least one meat meal per week with a vegetarian option. Land used for beans and vegetables produces 10 times as much protein as land used for raising beef.
  
  Meat is the sleeping giant of a sustainable lifestyle. The Australian National Dietary Guidelines (published by the Federal Government's National Health and Medical Research Council) recommends one to one-and-a-half serves of meat, fish, poultry or meat alternatives each day. A serve constitutes 65-100g of cooked meat. Therefo…

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• Buy Local and Seasonal Food

  Locally produced food grown in sync with the seasons is fresher and requires less energy to produce and transport to you.
  
  Eating local and seasonal food supports local producers and the production of crops that are appropriate to our environment. It alleviates the reliance on long-distance transport and refrigeration of foods that are grown thousands of kilometres away. Foods grown in sync with the seasons are more in tune with our intuitive nutritional needs; after all, who wants a cucumber sa…

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• Avoid Genetically Modified (GM) Food

  Avoid eating Genetically Modified (GM) Food and demand more thorough testing and mandatory labelling of genetic crops and foods.
  
  Scientists are altering and augmenting the genetic make up of our food crops to increase crop yields by making the plants pest resistant, herbicide tolerant, disease resistant, cold, drought, salinity tolerant, etc and to improve the nutrition of the crop and/or to provide pharmaceutical properties via the crop to the end consumer. These crops are producing what is no…

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• Avoid Bottled Water

  The Story of Bottled Water
  
  
  
  Avoid bottled water and feel good knowing that you’re saving money, reducing your personal health risks and reducing resource waste in your community.
  
  Humans require plenty of of drinking water each day to keep our bodies hydrated and with our increasingly busy lifestyles, more and more people are purchasing bottled water. In 2009-10 approximately 582.9 million litres of bottled water was consumed (IBISWorld Bottled Water Manufacturing in Australia, January 201…

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• Reduce Dairy in Your Diet

  Bovine breast milk goes great with your cereal, but its production contributes 4 per cent to global greenhouse gas emissions. Halve your dairy consumption, explore the alternatives and help the environment.
  
  The main benefit in reducing the amount of dairy in your diet and shifting to non-dairy alternatives (for example soya) may not be to save money, but rather your wellbeing and impact on the environment.
  
  The environmental impact of shifting half your dairy consumption to non-dairy alternativ…

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• Avoid Eating Endangered Fish

  Avoid eating over-fished and threatened fish species.
  
  Increasing our awareness of which fish are being harvested to the brink of extinction, can help us modify our fish eating and buying habits and cease plundering an invisible ecosystem that is in a state of stress and serious decline. Becoming aware of the impact of caged fisheries on our estuaries, bays, oceans, pond systems and wetlands will help us make informed choices next time we are at the fishmongers.
  
  How to do it now!
  Eat sustainabl…

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• Adopt a Vegetarian Diet

  Join the mung bean nation! Prevent the sizzling death of a thousand innocent animals, improve your health, and hit the jackpot in terms of reducing your ecological impact.
  
  On a per capita basis, Australia is one of the largest meat consumers in the world; we consume approximately 118kg of meat per annum per capita (1998 ABS). Meat products contribute almost half of our entire ecological footprint (or impact on the environment).
  
  There are three compelling reasons to stop eating meat:
  
  1. To he…

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• Products

  Decisions about the things we buy can move us toward being sustainable. Thinking about things like the resources used in the products we buy, how efficient they are and their lifecycle can help us make more environmentally friendly purchases.
  How can we reconfigure our retail filters to include our environmental responsibilities?
  
  Products Actions
  
  Purchase recycled products
  From toilet paper to chairs, jackets to dog leads, there are many recycled products that are excellent quality, so conside…

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• Purchase Recycled Products

  From toilet paper to chairs, jackets to dog leads, there are many recycled products that are excellent quality, so consider buying recycled when you buy.
  
  While putting out the recycling rubbish gives us a modest glow of goodness, the often neglected part of the recycling loop is the purchase of products made of recycled material. By actively supporting the reuse of recycled plastics, paper and other materials through purchasing these products we are truly recycling. This way we encourage the gr…

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• Buy Paper and Wood Responsibly

  Help make the harvesting of the world's forests environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. Buy Forest Stewardship Council certified timber and wood products.
  
  The clear-felling of the forests of the Amazon or Borneo is done to supply wood and wood products for markets such as Australia. We stop buying it; they stop cutting it. The Forest Stewardship Council is a global certification organisation that allows its label to be used on wood and wood products that have come from fore…

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• Buy Fair-trade Food and Products

  To stop the degradation of the global environment we have to deal with the failings of global trade, namely its tendency to increase poverty and its exploitation of the weak. Buying products labelled 'Fairtrade' is a good start.
  
  The Fairtrade collection of organisations has developed a Fairtrade Certification Mark. When you find a product that bears this mark, you know that it has been procured through a process that has helped deliver better trading conditions to marginalised produce…

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• Use Non-toxic Cleaners

  Common cleaning products, disinfectants and air fresheners are creating a toxic environment at home. Try natural alternatives for a healthier home and family.
  
  Toxic chemicals in the home impact our health, causing ailments that range from respiratory ailments to cancer. A US EPA study on indoor air quality found that the use of common cleaning products result in levels of several Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) that are on average two to five times higher indoors than outdoors. During (and fo…

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• Buy Secondhand Goods

  By purchasing second-hand goods from an opportunity shop, you are supporting a charity, getting a bargain and reducing the resources required to satisfy your consumption needs.
  
  From eBay to the trading post, garage sales to the local op shop, there are a host of ways to grab a second-hand bargain. The common adage that a new car loses 20 per cent of its value when you drive it off the lot applies even more so to most other goods. By getting into second-hand gear you'll save thousands of do…

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• Environmentally Friendly Mindset

  Become aware of the environmental implications of your consumption and purchase those goods that have the least impact on our future.
  
  Understanding the resources embedded in the products we buy and using this knowledge to guide our purchasing decisions is difficult. Advertising is a powerful influence on our purchasing decisions and there is often little information available about the energy, water and other environmental inputs required to produce the things we buy. If we are able to overcome…

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• Avoid Excessive Packaging

  Give priority to purchasing unpackaged products and save the earth's precious resources.
  
  The average Australian consumes 90 kilograms of resources in packaging each year. This is almost double the amount of many European nations. Along with this consumption comes the generation of huge amounts of waste - so it's not surprising that Australia is one of the worst waste generators in the developed world. Reducing the amount of packaging we purchase can help to significantly reduce our us…

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