madame mulch survey

teachers, staff and parents who participated in this term's madame mulch waste minimisation sessions with the magic composting show and the recycling olympics are invited to spend a few minutes giving us feedback via the online survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/H5RVHF6

september BOSS meeting

the next BOSS meeting is 3pm this sunday september 19 at 6 macquarie street boonah. visitors and new members welcome. please bring a plate to share, and any spare produce that you'd like to share with the group.

agenda includes project updates on the waste education program, fassifern reserve revegetation project, aquaponics; report backs from the brigalow field day and arrow energy coal seam exploration info session, as well as funding news.

home sustainability assessments

Nancy Kent HO50147 and Andrew Kent HO50148, are certified home sustainability assessors who will be at the springleigh markets in boonah on saturday september 25, with an information stall about the free home sustainability assessment scheme which is a federal government initiative of the department of climate change and energy efficiency.

bookings can be made at the markets or there's an opportunity to get in early and arrange a free home energy audit with vacancies on friday 24th September at 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

assessments take about one and a half hours to complete, and a tailored report is then sent to your home by post.

Nancy and Andrew are also able to take bookings for follow up visits which are planned to be monthly. To book, please phone 3899 1575 or 0407 059 509 or email with your name, address, phone number and your preferred time.

biodegradable decomposition vs degradation composition

Congratulations to Jo Davies (Madame Mulch) on her winning paddock sculpture, depicting the contrast between the relatively rapid breakdown of a ‘biodegradable decomposition’ of a compost heap - versus - the extremely slow breakdown of a ‘degradation composition’: a ‘rubbish’ heap made from mixed materials including recyclable resources collected over a two week period of household waste.

As a fitting tribute to Jo's passion for reducing landfill through community waste education, the esteemed judge, internationally acclaimed recycled sculpture artist, Christopher Trotter, has awarded her sculpure as the winning entry.

The sculpture is on display near the corner of the Boonah Rathdowney and Milford Roads in Boonah, and includes some beautiful items like roadkill and lots of plastic.

rubbish free lunch competition

Students who have participated in the Madame Mulch waste education sessions are invited to contribute their best ideas about reducing waste by describing the choices and actions you can make to achieve a ‘rubbish free lunch’.

In 100 words or less, write the story of how you actually came to have a healthy, delicious lunch that you took to school. Decide what food you could have in your lunchbox – things that have a minimum of packaging, so that the end result after eating your lunch is rubbish free. Describe the plan of what you wanted to eat, then discuss your choices with your parents about buying no packaging foods or food with packaging that can be composted or recycled rather than being thrown into the rubbish bin to go to land fill. Here is a chance for a student to win and take home the desktop mini recycling wheelie bin that has been held at your school since Madame Mulch presented information sessions on composting and recycling.

The competition is running across the eleven local schools around the Boonah region. There'll also be an overall winner who will be awarded a great prize of a cap made from five recycled plastic bottles and a book called One Planet Living, A Guide to Enjoying Life on Our One Planet.

Email entries to mailto:boonahboss@hotmail.com by this Friday September 10.