Have you heard about the Bulgandramine Cultural Festival being held on Saturday and Sunday, 4 and 5 June?

This fantastic weekend will be held as part of celebrations for National Reconciliation Week. There will be heaps of activities for the kids and traditional cooking, singing, dancing. Saturday will be packed with entertainment. If you are interested in heading out on Saturday, Sunday or camping out, contact myself or Karryn Keen on 0407 162 799.

Amazing news for schools, charity and community groups and other organisations. A recycling scheme for drink containers will commence in July 2017.

The plan was developed with the NSW Environment Protection Authority. The scheme is called the Container Deposit Scheme (CDS).

Reverse vending machines (yes, evidently they exist) will accept returns and there will also be depots that receive drink containers and you will receive 10 cents per item. The containers must display a NSW CDS label, and be between 150ml and 3 litres.

Unfortunately, wine, milk, and juice containers will not be eligible for the scheme, so pop them in your recycling bin. These CDS accepted bottles that are recycled by councils can receive 10c, but this goes back to councils and will go towards waste collection costs in our local area.

The NSW Government tells us that drink containers make up about 45% of the volume of litter in NSW, which is amazing. This CDS could help to reduce over litter issues by 40% by 2020.

Have a good think about how many bottles you use each week. Are you recycling them properly now through our recycling system? We are lucky to have Councils that are actively doing something about landfill issues.

Motley Crew is back! We will be meeting at PAC Park on Saturday, 21 May between 9am and 11am. Everyone is welcome! You can access the site via East Street (across from the Parkes High Ag Plot). If you could email cwllpo@hotmail.com, text me on 0418 611 053 or ring the office on 6862 4914 to let me know that you will be attending I will make sure we have enough morning tea to go around.

Remember, it is all about getting out and enjoying our local area, meeting people in our communities and encouraging each other. If you can’t swing a spade it doesn’t matter, bring your chair and join us.

I mentioned last week that the new Draft Biodiversity Legislation has been released for public comment. This legislation will replace the Native Vegetation Act (2003) (NVA), Threatened Species Conservation Act (1995) (TSC Act), Nature Conservation Trust Act (2001) (NCT Act) and parts of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 (NPWS Act).

The Landcare NSW workshop will be held on Tuesday, 31 May at the Parkes Services Club from 9am. We will have speakers from NSW Farmers, Central West Local Land Services, Nature Conservation Council and Office of Environment and Heritage. If you would like to put forward your expression of interest in attending, just give me a call on 6862 4914 and I will keep you in the loop.

If you require any further information regarding anything in this column please feel free to contact me on 02 6862 4914 or email cwllpo@hotmail.com

Until next week, happy Landcaring!