Ecoliving Podcast

Habitat restoration is vital to the survival of many at-risk species, including the critically-endangered Swift Parrot. Here at Narara Ecovillage we’ve been doing habitat restoration and bush regeneration work for years, and we’ve just started a grant-funded program to rehabilitate part of our flood plain to provide better support for Swift Parrots in their winter habitat. Teresa Farrell is a …

What if you could print a house from local materials instead of building one? That’s the goal of Alexander Tohidi, a University of New South Wales researcher who blends his skills as an electrical engineer, a computer scientist, and an architect to print buildings out of clay. Listen Here:

This episode is about giving an older home a sustainable makeover — and it’s not just any home. We’ll be talking about: it’s Bellbird House, a Heritage-listed home and B&B here at Narara Ecovillage that’s over 100 years old. Owner Mark O’Brien talked about what it takes to bring a classic Australian home into the 21st century without risking its …

With Sustainable House Day happening here at the ecovillage and across Australia in March, we wanted to focus this episode on one type of sustainable house that we have several of here at the ecovillage: a strawbale-insulated home. Straw has been used for insulation for all of human history, but that doesn’t mean that a straw-insulated house has to look …

Want to move beyond fruit and vegetables in your garden? How about mushrooms? This episode features Lincoln DeKalb, a Narara Ecovillage resident who runs Shed 30 Mushrooms, a small mushroom-growing business based at the ecovillage. Lincoln started cultivating mushrooms at home (and in the forest that surrounds the village), then relatively recently started growing and selling gourmet mushrooms at a …

We just celebrated the official launch of our Narara Ecovillage community battery and microgrid, and Toby Roxburgh came up from Canberra to launch the system, which he helped design. Toby is the founder and executive director of Carbon Neutral Delivery Partners, and he joined Adam to talk about the differences between smartgrids and microgrids, and the benefits of batteries for …

After a bit of a hiatus, our second podcast episode is ready – we’ll be more consistent in the future. This episode features Andy Marlow from Envirotecture, a Sydney sustainable design firm. Andy is also involved in Passivhaus Design & Construct, and joins Adam for a conversation about the Passive House (also known as Passivhaus) concept, how it works, and …

We’ve launched a podcast! Ecoliving will look at ways to reduce your impact on the earth, from cutting your greenhouse gas emissions to minimizing land and water use. Our first episode features Narara Ecovillage resident Chris Wenban, who lives full time in her tiny house on wheels. Listen Here: