• Tour Sydney’s Sustainable House Since 1996 Sydney’s Sustainable House has kept over 3 m litres of water and sewage on the inner city terrace site. No water pollution for the last 28 years from the terrace house near Central Railway Station beside the city’s central business district. Have a look this Saturday and see the water, recycled water, energy and food systems anyone can buy and use. No water or energy bills. Thank you, the sun, the rain and our lovely, generous Earth. Bookings of the one hour tour here. See you, Michael ..read more

• Bloke trying to count his fingers (gets it wrong) . . . Five . . . six . . er, how many ways to use a coolseat? Any of us, gardeners or not, queesie or not about food waste, don’t care about gardening or food waste . . . whatever - we can easily get so much out of a coolseat. Look at this video . . . We can get joy, fun, relaxation, conversations from a coolseat if its on a footpath, courtyard, concrete, grass, dirt, gravel . . . (A sixth thing we can get from a coolseat is free compost.) Try a coolseat as this school is shown doing in this video about one part of a trial of different compo ..read more

• A 3,000 litre rain tank that’s both not trivial and is trivial recently installed at a high school - why this curious contradiction? My 10,000 litre rain tank in my Chippendale house block’s back garden supplies water for my drinking, cooking, shower needs. But it’s trivial and not trivial at the same time? Why the contradiction? The answer is easy. • A typical Australian breakfast needs over 1100 litres of water; photo from Sustainable Food by Michael Mobbs Look at this photo above and you can see why. Look, too, at this 1 minute 41 seconds video below to see what a 3,000 litre rain tank ..read more

* New website for new Australian composting group, LOCCAL, set up this month, February 2024 Local community composters from Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Western Australia have joined up to form a new national body called, Loccal.   • Founding members of the new national group to promote local composting met in Melbourne in December 2023 Their young website, LOCCAL.org, was published last week and says LOCCAL will be: “Supporting and growing community composters, so the compost we generate stays local and enriches us as a community” Do fill in the survey on the website if you’re interes ..read more

• Here I am with another intern, Henry, on a coolseat with food waste we bring from our units to put in the coolseat compost - we lift the lid we’re sitting on and put the food waste in I’m Grace from New York, United States, composting now in Sydney, Australia Hello everyone! My name is Grace Canepari and I’m interning with Michael Mobbs’ Sustainable House until the middle of March. I’m from the United States, and I’m about halfway through my junior year at Union College in Schenectady, New York where I am studying economics and environmental science. Through my studies I’ve learned about u ..read more

Grace Canepari, intern with Sustainable House, explains how she and some others installed a new coolseat at the Haymarket Foundation, and how you can build your very own! Installing a New Coolseat at the Haymarket Foundation! Check out this video I made about the building process here at the Haymarket Foundation! Getting Started on Day 1 On Monday the 29th of February, other interns Henry, Will, and I began our morning lugging several heavy boxes from Sustainable House up the street to the Haymarket Foundation. We made 3 trips up and down the hill until we had finally collected all the mater ..read more

by Sophia Elmblad, intern • I bought this photo from a photographer on my trip to swim in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Throughout my time in Sydney Australia, I’ve observed many similarities and differences from life in my home country, the United States. During the last 3 months I’ve spent in Australia, one of the differences I noticed is much easier and widely available public transportation in Australia. In my experience, cars are often the primary source of transport in the US. The public transit that exists is either dirty, unreliable, or mediocre in most cases. In comparison, there i ..read more

TIME Magazine has just published an op-ed by Ani Dasgupta on the three myths propagated by the fossil fuel industry that are designed to scare governments from doing the right thing. Ani writes that at COP28 our leaders must call their bluff and strike a deal to rapidly shift away from fossil fuels, and offers a roadmap for rich countries to lead, starting with three critical actions.  Read the full op-ed below or by clicking on this link. • Ani Dasgupta By Ani Dasgupta   Fossil fuels contribute over 75% of global emissions. Every person at the COP28 climate cha ..read more

• Gemima Aquilina by Gemima Aquilina This year I had the pleasure of attending the Urban Agriculture Forum (UAF), and let me tell you, I was fan-girling hard. Who fan-girls at an Urban Agriculture Forum, you may wonder? • The two of us - basil and me A food-lover that's who! Hi, I’m Gemma, a food-lover who has dedicated the better half of my life to unraveling the complexities of our modern food system. I live in Sydney, Australia, and the forum was there at Pocket City Farms in Camperdown. • Pocket City Farms in Camperdown, about 40 minutes walk from the central business district of Sydney ..read more

- A view of the machine at the SXSW Sydney tech expo By Sophia Elmblad I attended the tech expo at SXSW in Sydney, Australia just a few weeks ago. There were many stalls showcasing the newest tech and innovations, such as a serverless barista station, enhanced robotics, and the newest PC set-ups. All this was very interesting, but I was most interested in, what looked to me, like a vending machine. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was an AI art generator, which would possibly grant ‘rare native Australian seeds’ depending on the interaction. My partner and I were immediately curious, bei ..read more