Hello! We two are Lauren and Oberon, head gardeners of Spiral Garden, and your hosts for the Zero Waste Families e-course. We live with our three daughters in southern Tasmania, Australia. In September 2015, we undertook a Sustainability Challenge with Sustainable Living Tasmania and managed to reduce our energy consumption by more than 60% and transition to living completely waste and also recycling free! We’ve been happily living a zero-waste life since then and have gained lots of insight into the trials and tribulations families face as they strive to reduce their waste consumption and output. We run our home-based business by night and work, garden, learn and play by day, spending as much time in nature as possible. We also founded the successful Zero Waste Tasmania Facebook group. Our children are home-educated, and we aim to make the most of the beauty and positive learning experiences that Tasmania has to offer. Here is a little more about us:
Lauren
I am a long-time blogger at Owlet and I have written broadly about home education, gardening, creativity, cooking, community, birth and natural living. As hands-on facilitator of our children’s learning journeys, I’ve learnt quite a bit about the natural learning process! I trained and worked for many years as a textile designer and have always been passionate about gardens, garden design and permaculture. After completing a Permaculture Design Certificate in 2013 with Milkwood Permaculture, I noticed strong links between permaculture principles and many of our life choices and wrote the successful Spiral Garden Seedlings Permaculture for Families e-course to make permaculture more accessible to other families. I’m hoping our Zero Waste Families e-course will do a similar job for families wanting to reduce the waste they create.
Oberon
Ever since I was a child, I carried a strong ethic of nature care. I studied ecology at university for 11 years and have worked in nature conservation for the last 20 years, mostly for state governments. Nowadays, I work on protecting Tasmania’s threatened species and places. I am passionate about living with a small ecological footprint; completing a Permaculture Design Certificate in 2014 and a Permaculture Teacher Training Course in 2015 helped me learn new ways to do just that. These courses helped me to better integrate my ecological knowledge with my daily life, with waste management being central to that. I have since become passionate about reducing waste in Tasmania, and have taught about this subject at a Permaculture Design Course and at a Live n’ Learn course with Sustainable Living Tasmania. I also speak regularly on ABC radio, talking about a range of waste issues. I want to encourage healthy and sustainable life-style choices for myself, my family and the broader community.
Here’s a little film made by the lovely folks at Sustainable Living Tasmania about our Zero Waste journey…
In July 2018 our first book, about waste-free living, will be published through Echo Publishing.
Some media you can read or listen to about our zero waste journey:
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without the permission of Lauren and Oberon Carter of Spiral Garden. This e-course may not be distributed to others via print, email or other means and is for the sole use of the original purchaser.
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