*No way its going to feed me unless I become a fruit bat.*

Ok Belly, you grow some extra fruit and veggies and I'll swop
you for some lamb chops and roasts, fresh yabbies, wheat flour,
oats for your porridge and some canola oil. We'll then be
back to normal country barter and both do ok :)

Col, the carbon footprint of house construction can be dramatically reduced by using more traditional methods of building. Rammed earth is one that springs to mind. If done entirely the old-fashioned way there is no carbon impact at all. Mind you there are now a few new techniques using machinery, which make it a lot quicker and easier, so that would need to be evaluated. I grew up in a rammed earth house built in 1898 - the house and shearing shed constructed the same way are still in excellent repair and being used to this day. It also provides fantastic insulation.

Pelican

“The problems lie in increasing populations and economic rationalism and the effects this has on water, sewerage and other infrastructure and can lead to accidents like untreated sewage being deposited into the oceans.”

The costs of extending the infrastructure are initially funded by the property developer and included in the land price to the occupant. The constructed asset is then “gifted” to the water authority for free.

The problem, the government is not doing what they are supposed to do with the rates they then charge the occupant.

As you wrote

“Even if we cannot be fully self-sufficent some level of individual self-sufficiency would reduce the pressure on our already stretched infrastructure.”

Since 1996, more than one billion dollars, which the payers of water rates were charged in Metropolitan Melbourne, has been expropriated by the State government as “special dividend” and used to subsidise something else, instead of being used to fund the infrastructure you speak of.

The problem is not the electorate / home occupiers using more than their fair 3% of the total water catchment, it is the corruption, fraud and incompetence of the government, supposedly elected to act in the best interests of the electorate.

So as far as “Even if we cannot be fully self-sufficent some level of individual self-sufficiency would reduce the pressure on our already stretched infrastructure.”

You are probably being double charged already and we now face being raped some more.

Transport costs would kill us yabby.
And so would the people who get free plumbs oranges mandarins, apples, pears ,nectarines, and pommy granits lemons too I do not eat them but grow plenty.
oh yes and pumpkins in season.
I manage to eat the rest myself.
us bushys even use the well as a fridge, I have no well, crimson council thinks they are dangerous.
Best we can do is cut some food costs and it truly takes more time to pick the fruit than to look after the trees if you learn to do it right.

COL ROUGE
Have you read "Buddha to Bono" while it has its obvious weakness' it does make some interesting points. It’s a text in some environmental economics courses on sustainability at some Universities.

JASON60 AND EVERYONE
There has been some comment from Qld infrastructure guru on sewerage.....be nice....recently pointed out that if a significant amount of city grey water was diverted it would cause problems in keeping the sewerage pipes flushed. Simply toilet flushing isn't enough.

Apparently if it gets too bad they could be compelled to flush pipes with other water! Our city systems are designed for mass usage and therefore individual instant fixes may not be that helpfull in the long run.

You might be right Col, I am not aware of how the utilities infrastructure works.

But, if revenue received from the provision of a particular service was utilised to maintain, manage, provide best practice in terms of modern technology, R&D etc of that service, we might go some way to getting what we paid for.