Money savers recycling, freebies and cheapies links

Look up ‘Recycling Services’ and ‘Landscape Supplies’ (as many landscape suppliers include recycled products in their product ranges) in both the printed book and in your online search.

Free mulch?

If you type the words ‘free mulch’ into your web browser, and limit the results to hits from Australian sites, be prepared for a lot of hits! Where all the ‘free mulch’ comes from is tree-lopping services, either commercial or those run by local government. However, there are a couple of catches with these offers of free mulch. One is that you have to pick it up yourself in a trailer, or otherwise pay a delivery fee (making it no longer ‘free’). Another is that the mulch is usually not composted, so it could contain weed seeds that you don’t want to spread on your garden. So our advice is to compost this free mulch before using it on your garden. The ideal way to compost it is to get a minimum of 1 cubic metre, preferably more, and leave it to compost down. As it composts down the pile lets off steam, but turn it over once a week for thorough composting. After a month or two it will stop steaming, the weed seeds should be killed off, and it’s OK to spread on your garden.

Cheap paving

If you’re thinking of paving or building paths, a wide range of recycled concrete products can save money via products such as recycled roadbase through to aggregates of various sizes. Visit www.concreterecyclers.com.au in Sydney – (02) 9684 6811, and in other states see the recycling listings above, state by state, for concrete recyclers offering a similar range of products.

The other place to look for cheap pavers is your local Waste Transfer Station and second-hand building supplies centres. Don Burke warns, however, that recycled pavers can vary in thickness, and unless you have a lot of skill in laying pavers the results can feel and look uneven unless you take great care in laying them.