I will be taking some items to Seaford for the E-Waste drop off on Sunday 12 September.

If you would like me to take some items for you - drop them off to my place before 12 September.

Bridget O’D - 11 Hakea Walk - 8557 6123

The first cut-off date for vacant block mowing is 30 August - thus all Lot owners with vacant Lots need to ensure their blocks are being cared for.

This means you are regularly inspecting your block or have arranged for it to be done by the Works Maintenance team or other source. I have endeavoured to contact all owners of vacant  blocks. Many of you have advised me of your plan.

The Works Maintenance team will manage blocks as instructed, and advice vacant block owners if their blocks need the owners attention, but reserve the right to mow if contact cannot be reasonably be made, and will bill appropriately.

If you are unclear as to your arrangements, please contact me by email or mobile on 0413 407 150.

Tony Gerlach -  for Works Maintenance Team

Tess Sapia from the Onkaparinga Council spoke with our group, answered our many questions, facilitated a garbage game, and gave out some stickers and hand outs.
It was an excellent evening, and for those who were unable to attend, I wanted to pass on this information:

Recycling Facts that you might not know -

These can be recycled in our yellow bins -
All hard plastic is now recyclable regardless of the number on the base. Anything that you cannot crush in your hands is accepted including ice cream containers, and yoghurt tubs.

These get reused or go into the red rubbish bin -
Small snap off type yoghurt containers that usually come in packs of 4.
Strawberry & cherry tomato containers, and the inserts of biscuit and cake packets.
Polystyrene trays that often contain meat products.
Did you know that all lids must be removed? This allows the containers to be compressed into a cube for transport; workers at Solo otherwise have to manually remove the lids! These lids need to go in the waste bin, unfortunately they cannot be recycled, the small ring that is left on the neck of the bottle is OK.

These Cannot be put in yellow bins but can be recycled -
Mobile phones, compact fluoro globes, and all batteries can go to the Willunga Environment centre.
All plastic bags cannot go in the yellow bin, but Coles and Woolies will take them.
Aluminium that can be easily crushed such as foil, pie tins, yoghurt lids, takeaway containers and chocolate wrappers cannot be recycled by Solo, so please leave out of the yellow bin. However, Chas M will take them, so collect them and place them in the bin provided in Sue E’s carport or leave with Jacqui G.

It is important to get it right because if the driver notices contamination as s/he tips the load into the truck, a decision is made to take the truck straight to landfill. So we can have an impact on the entire truck load going to the right place! Some of the contamination received includes the following:  food, clothing, basket balls, bags, electrical cords, & hoses, the last two are very hazardous to the recycling plant as they can become caught up in the machinery!
Onkaparinga's contamination rate is 15-24% at present.

Food Waste
Onkaparinga Council sells worm farms and compost bins "at cost" passing on the savings to the consumer, (cheaper than Bunnings) to encourage backyard composting and recycling. The council is very keen to reduce food waste going to landfill; apparently 50% of household waste (in the red bins) is food. (Yes they do bin audits!) If you must throw out food, because it is not suitable for your compost/chooks/wormfarm, it is much better to put it in your green waste bin, as this goes straight to Peats Soils in Willunga to be composted.

Bridget - for WMG

Last Friday, one of the pumps at the Wastewater Treatment Plant failed - at four o’clock in the morning! - resulting in unwelcome nighttime emergency calls to several registered volunteers.

The pump was found to be jammed up with tampon strings - the unravelling of which was a dirty, smelly and tedious job that no volunteer should have had to tackle.

So - to all our Village women - please do not flush sanitary products down the toilet (including the toilet in the Sharing Shed), and please make sure you also pass this instruction on to any female guests in the Village.

John H - for WMG

This week we had 53 bins out front of the village, many of which were only 1/2 full. Some were two rows deep and too close together and the mechanical arms of the waste truck could not fit between them. In this situation, usually the driver will knock one bin over to make room for the arms. Please take this into account when placing your bins.



Waste & Recycling:
Please only put out your rubbish or recycling bins when they are full. Bins don't need to go out each week.

The bales on frames in the recycling bay are for refundable items only. Today I found in one bale: a biscuit tin, ghee tin, pasta packet, tea packet, cardboard, and other random items, including a huge box from a child's bike which had the reciept still attached ( I know who you are!)

As you can see, some of these items are not even recyclable, and definitely not refundable!
Please check if items are refundable before putting them in the bales - wine bottles are generally not refundable, so they can go in your household yellow-topped recycling bin.
This area is not a dump for your unwanted rubbish, volunteers do not want to clean up after you. Remember that your rubbish is your responsibility, not someone else's.

Hard Rubbish collection:
Last week Amy invited others to “ring the council and book in their own hard rubbish collection”, not to dump rubbish on Amy's pile.  Amy is now out of pocket $50 in dump fees and had to ring the council to come out again and collect what others had dumped. This is not fair and not co-operative, and does not please the council. Please think of others before you act in future, and ask before you dump (including in other people's skip bins!).

The council will be doing a community hard rubbish collection on the first Friday in December from the recycling bay. It is yet to be decided whether this will be in a skip provided by the council. Please do not dump anything until notice is given via the feed.

Please don't organise a hard rubbish collection of your own, the council will come to the village twice per year.

Thank you for your co-operation in keeping our Ecovillage neat and tidy.

Bridget O'Donnell

A few numbers about water and sludge:

It was July 2003 when the first house in the Village was completed and the owner moved in.
On 30 June 2009, we had 56 houses completed and occupied. This means that approximately a third of the homes are now built.

In 2003, we were told that it would take approximately 10 years before we needed to get the 60kL sludge tank in the Waste Water Treatment Plant emptied. We have, however, managed to fill this tank in 6 years, and emptying it this week has cost us nearly $5,000.00

As the number of completed houses is increasing rapidly, including the 24 Cottages due for completion in Aug/Sept, it is likely to be a lot sooner than another 6 years before the sludge tank next needs emptying - probably around 2 – 2.5 years. Once all the houses are built, we could maybe be looking at sludge removal once yearly.

With the associated costs of this process in mind, should we be looking at encouraging something like composting toilets, which would take pressure off the WWTP and keep the waste on site for possible use. We will still need the WWTP but it would be cheaper to run with less sludge in the system.

Should we be asking the BDC to strongly encourage composting toilets in all newly submitted plans?

Would anyone like to put their thinking cap on and do some outside-the-square thinking about dealing with sludge and its costs?

And to finish with - a big statistic: In the six-year period July 2003 to 30 June 2009, we have collectively pushed 10,300,000 (ten million three hundred thousand) liters of water through the WWTP (10,300 kL).

John Heij - for the WWTP Team

Over the last 6 weeks, the average amount of water passing through the WWTP has been around 9 KL per day. Throughput is growing with the Village and represents an increasing resource in terms of water and nutrients.

John Heij

Onkaparinga Council is holding an e-waste (electrical and electronic equipment) and household chemicals drop-off service on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 June between 9am and 2pm at the Field Operation Centre, Railway Road, Seaford Meadows (entrance from Seaford Road only). Chemical drop-off is free but there will be small charges for e-waste to cover recycling costs.
 
For costs and more details of accepted equipment and materials, and drop-off location, please see the information brochure ATTACHED or contact Council on 8384 0666.
080605 Toxic & e-waste May08

Hi everyone,
 
Now that Village residents have recorded their mains water usage for the past year, there are some interesting results to display. See the ATTACHMENT to find out how your water consumption compares with that of others in the Village and with Adelaide average.
 
The good news is that, thanks to our rainwater tanks, average consumption in the Village is well below the Adelaide average.
 
The bad news is that there are still nine water accounts outstanding. Please try to get them paid this week so whoever is the Treasurer after the AGM does not have to start the business year by chasing up unpaid bills!
 
John Heij
070813 Mains water use 06-07

John Heij has been running the Village WWTP ("sewage plant") essentially single-handed since it was commissioned nearly 3 years ago. He would like some relief - and it is also not wise to have the management of such a critical piece of infrastructure invested in only one person on site. We are therefore looking for volunteers (living on site) to train into this job.

Volunteers will need to be hygiene-conscious, but also not afraid to get their hands dirty. Being technically minded about plant and machinery is also very helpful. They will need to be "on call" and willing to do regular formal checks on the chemistry of the tanks and the performance of the equipment once to twice a week, and to keep accurate records of these checks. They will also need to liaise with outside contractors - e.g., Eimco (formerly Aeroflo who supplied the plant) and the Australian Water Quality Centre (AWQC, a division of SA Water) who perform the required regular water quality compliance tests.

We really do need a volunteer doing this job if at all possible. If an outside maintenance contract is required, there is only one firm available that is even willing to quote on this unique small-scale plant. They have quoted $5,808 (GST incl) per annum for one visit per month, with each extra visit to be charged at $350. All parts would be charged at cost plus 10%. (Currently, John or Malcolm Dispain have been picking up necessary parts to keep these costs to a minimum.) Note that the annual service contract covered by this quote would still require a volunteer to do the compulsory weekly checks. If the external contractor is needed to perform ALL the checks and services currently covered in-house, the annual cost to the Community could well approach $20,000 - 25,000. We can't let this happen!

If you would be willing to volunteer, please contact John by Email or phone - 8556 6892 - to discuss.

During the past year (i.e., the period from 17/5/06 to 23/5/07) 5371 kilolitres of SA (town-supply) water was used within the AAEV site. Of this, 2557 kl was used for private purposes by the lot owners (plus all the rainwater collected in residents' tanks). The remaining 2814 kl's of town-supply water were used for watering trees and plants around the Village. This water has cost us a total of $2,787 plus $360 in supply charges - ie, a total of $3,147

During this same period the Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) pumped 1989 kl out on to the small wood-lot on the farm.
Since the previous email about wastewater, outflow of the WWTP has risen from 5.4 kl to 7 kl a day.

As we are enjoying such good rains at the moment and the woodlot certainly does not need additional water just now, I can't help but wonder if a previously mooted suggestion to store the WWTP winter output in the dams on the farm shouldn't be revisited. If this were done, the wastewater could potentially be shandied with collected storm water, allowing for improvement of the quality of WWTP output for irrigation purposes. In the early part of the dry period this same water could then be pumped onto the farm area. Might be worth thinking about as water becomes more of an issue for the future?