Page 21 - TNE WORKBOOK

• Bringing your own water bottle wherever you go saves you money and, if you have a good brand of water
bottle, usually keeps your water cooler for longer.
• Check out these options for good quality reusable water bottles.

Use green canvas bags or cloth bags

• You can get these from any supermarket for less than a dollar. You could also buy your own little shopping
trolley. This stops you from having to lug bags to your car or bike or bus – instead you can wheel them
from A to B – this is particularly useful at the fresh food markets where you walk from stall to stall rather
than use a Woolies/Coles shopping trolley.
• This hugely reduces the amount of plastic bags that you use and then ends up in landfill.

Switch to 100% recycled,
unbleached toilet paper

• You can buy your toilet paper in bulk and sign up for automatic deliveries to your house with Who
Gives A Crap, a ground-breaking Australian social enterprise that donates half of its profits to the charity
WaterAid to help provide clean water and sanitation to developing communities overseas. This way you’ll
never run out of toilet paper again, and don’t have to buy it anymore at the supermarket. Plus the toilet
paper is packaged in paper rather than plastic, which reduces your waste too.

• Alternatively, by toilet paper that is endorsed by Planet Ark (like iCare - bulk buy option only, biodegradable,
not re-bleached, 100% recycled) sold at Woolworths.

Buy household items, clothing and
furniture second-hand, or get them
completely free from these gift
economy sites

• Utilising the Gift Economy: The Buy Nothing Project is a fantastic collection of locally-based facebook

groups that operate as a local gift economy. You can sign up and immediately start posting free stuff
for Canberrans in your suburb to pick up. On your local Buy Nothing group, you can also find free stuff
that others are giving away in your local area! There are great finds like furniture, clothing and electrical
appliances, as well as people giving away smaller things like chopsticks sets and garden mulch. Using this
site will mean you stop a whole bunch of your stuff from going to landfill and can help it find a new home.
Check out all of the local Buy Nothing facebook groups in Canberra here. You can also use Canberra
Freecycle, where items that are no longer needed are offered to the rest of the group for free!

• Buying second-hand: The Green Shed is a free drop-off centre that diverts saleable goods from landfill
and makes them available on site for resale (clothes are available for free). Also check out Canberra’s local
Vinnies and the Salvation Army stores for clothing and crockery.

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