Among Byron Shire Council’s Australia Day Awards, the Library of Stuff was awarded ‘Community Initiative of the Year’. (Pictured above: Sasha Mainsbridge at left, with Library of Stuff co-founder, Celine Massa, with their Community Initiative Award.)

As Council describes it: “The Library of Stuff is a community operation that shares infrequently needed items with its members who are mainly households and local not-for-profit groups. Its aim is to reduce consumption and waste and help create a sharing culture in the community. It does this by encouraging people to ‘borrow’ not ‘buy’ and advocates for good maintenance and repair of items rather than throwing them out. This is a keystone of lower carbon living.

“The one thing I highly recommend locals completely avoid is buying new bikes online that you haven’t been recommended by a friend or seen a version of in real life.  There are bikes for sale on line that look amazing in the pictures but they don’t all end up meeting peoples expectations” Dave said.  He told me that there’s been a recent increase in customers asking to pay his team to assemble bikes that have been purchased online.

Dave went on to say that on some occasions, due to the poor quality of the bikes and their fixings, he didn’t feel comfortable charging for the assembly because he didn’t want to be responsible if the bike failed.

My boys recently needed to upgrade from the bikes they’d had since we first arrived in time for Christmas 2014.  They were only 5 & 7 then so it was time for bigger bikes!  With a little effort and some spit and polish we’ll be proud to pass their old bikes on to another pair of young boys:)

About International Repair Day

This year the spotlight is clearly on its beneficial impact on emissions.

Two things are definitely true :  if you look after what you already have better you will extend the life of your goods and reduce emissions generated to meet your demands.   Secondly, as a society our efforts to find and engage repairers has dwindled over the last couple of decades as replacement prices have plummeted making repair effectively a radical act of kindness for the planet in many cases.

Mullum Cares founder - and ZEB Community Engagement Officer, Sasha Mainsbridge.

Sasha is pictured below at Shedding Community Workshop which is now the home of Mullumbimby's Repair Cafe.   Mullum Cares Library of Stuff reduces consumption (and the associated emissions) by sharing goods amongst its members.  The whipper snipper in the photo had been borrowed 65 times by 32 members on August 20 - so very likely more since then!   If those 32 members had purchased this item for $699 they would collectively have spent over $20 000 but their membership only costs them $50 per year (or $1600 collectively).  Unfortunately it's currently not possible to calculate anything close to accurately the emissions avoided by this type of operation but in 2022 Mullum Cares is partnering with the University of Queensland to see what can be done about this.

The whipper snipper was repaired by Repair Cafe  volunteer, Steve - pictured with Sasha.  Luckily if it hadn't been able to be repaired by this community team, this particular brand can be repaired by Mullum Power Tools (who have relocated to Murwillumbah!)  Mullum Cares is keen to hear about your recent repair experiences - even if that is to say you haven't had anything repaired in the last 12 months!  If you have repairers you  recommend they will be added to Zero Emissions Byron's Low Carbon Living resource page so please take the 10 minutes required to share your thoughts and recent repair experience before Oct 25.

Sewing day at a friends place today : mending and re-purposing our clothes, bedding and cushions - good for our planet and fun for us !
We fixed up two cushions, including one made by my son when he was 5 ( a long time ago!) - mended three dresses and a shirt, made a mattress cover out of an old bedspread, fixed up a dressing gown, re-purposed a tablecloth into a sheet, turned a queen size sheet into a double size sheet... shared our news, shared our food and had a lot of fun!

Megan

For the last three years, we have been transforming our food and toilet waste into cooking gas and liquid fertiliser concentrate (see Living tiny and green) The whole setup is carbon-neutral because biomaterial which was created through photosynthesis pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, and once burned as energy will go back as CO2. The biowaste will turn to methane and CO2 naturally but by adding it to the biogas digester, we are using it to generate energy and prevent methane release.

Essentially, microorganisms inside the bio-digester break down organic matter in the absence of oxygen (anaerobic digestion). The result is biogas and a liquid fertiliser concentrate which can be used on the garden. Double win! We feed the digester between 1 and 2 litres daily and always have enough gas to cook a meal or two per day plus coffees and boil water for tea.

The digester works best in temperatures over 20 degrees celsius so our subtropical climate is perfect and the biogas digester works all year round. The only times we are low on gas or run out are when temperatures drop below 20 degrees celsius for a number of consecutive days (or when we intentionally use it up). In this case, we use our induction cooktop which is solar-powered.
We think that HomeBiogas is an amazing product and one of the most sustainable ways of dealing with food and toilet waste.

Annett