When striving for a sustainable life, it is important to consider not only the changes you can make to lessen your individual or household's ecological footprint, but also the positive contributions you can make towards your community. I believe the concept of sustainable communities is a lovely objective.

The perfect opportunity to contribute towards your community is just around the corner - Clean Up Australia Day, 1st March 2009. 

The Little Eco family will be helping out at the same site we worked at last year. It’s a suburban bushland remnant that supports the endangered ecological community Kurri Sand Swamp Woodland. Unfortunately, this beautiful and diverse patch of bushland is frequented by rubbish dumpers. The pictures below show last years team and just some of the rubbish we removed. The dumped sign is not actually from that day, but it's just a great example of some of the weird things you can stumble across out in the bush and I couldn't resist including it.

For those of you who think it may be too hard because you have small children...I see it as the perfect opportunity to show Little Eco how to be a valuable and contributing member of the community. Little Eco was only one when we went along last year. I carried her around in a sling and probably only managed to pick up one small bag of rubbish. I think thats OK, as it's one bag that would not have otherwise been picked up. It is also the perfect opportunity to visit with nature.

Why not help out yourself? "If you don't clean up Australia, who will?". Apparently around 2,000 sites have been registered across Australia, so there should be a site near you. If not, why not think about registering one? Visit the Clean Up Australia Day website for more information.

Making a positive contribution to the community is something I have been thinking about recently. I am particularly interested in ways I can contribute to my community to help it be more sustainable. For example, I have in the past volunteered for our local organic food co-op. Unfortunately, the co-op is on one of the days I now work, so I am no longer able to help out with that. I got plenty of ideas for other ways I can contribute to the community from a recent post by Bel over at the Simple-Green-Frugal co-op about creating connected communities. Bel's article has motivated me to join my local LETS group. I am also starting to investigate Transition Towns. I found a great introduction here. I wonder how active it is in Australia? I would love to hear of other suggestions. How do you contribute to your community?

Happy rubbish collecting (& community building)!