The Zero Waste Leura Target

02 December 2020

I want to give a shout-out to the shopkeepers, cafes and restaurants of Leura who are signing up for the Zero Waste Leura target. This is a target on food waste—to have zero food waste. The Blue Mountains council is on board, and I'm thrilled to see that the initiative started by James Howarth, of the Leura Garage, a year ago is going further. I spoke about this initiative a year ago. James has this incredible composter that sits within his restaurant. It takes the food waste and it turns it into something that you can actually dig your hands into and smell, because it doesn't smell revolting. Over this year, they've worked out how to take that waste, convert into compost and use it on the community gardens in Blackheath—thanks to the Big Fix. That is working so well that the rest of Leura is looking at this and saying, 'Hey, we want to do this as well.'


The Leura Village Association is on board, supported by the New South Wales EPA and Sustainable Futures. This team of people is, over the next 12 months, going to be working through the process to see how this can happen for an entire village. The vision at the end of it is to have the waste reused back into the gardens that run through Leura Village. Leura is famous for its gardens festival. This is one of the fantastic ideas that's coming from the community—ground-up, you could say—and being supported by government agencies who know that we need to care about the environment and that local community groups can make a significant difference. I was also pleased to see proprietors f

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