Making changes to your lifestyle to be more sustainable can often seem overwhelming and difficult.
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The Bendigo Sustainability Festival aims to provide as much information as possible to inspire anyone hoping to take simple actions to protect the environment.
On Sunday, March 26, the event will once again take place at the Bendigo Botanic Gardens' Garden for the Future.
Organiser Liz Martin said this year's festival was bigger than ever, with a theme of household waste and local food security and more than 50 stalls, special guests, food and live music.
Ms Martin said information on gardening, growing your own food and how to reduce waste always proved popular.
"There's lots of gardening stuff of course, and growing your own food is one huge way of being sustainable," Ms Martin said.
"There's also a lot of talk about how we can make our houses more sustainable, not only solar, but relatively speaking, it's not that much more to put insulation in houses."
Gardening Australia's Sophie Thomson will speak on the main stage about developing water-wise climate compatible gardens and appropriate plant selection.
"I believe gardening provides some of the solutions to life's challenges because it reduces stress, teaches us resilience, care of our environment and gives us great pleasure and rewards when we see what we can achieve through our endeavours," Ms Thomson said.
Also giving a keynote talk is Natalie Issacs, founder of 1 Million Women, which encouraged women and girls to act on climate change.
Birdlife Australia's Sean Dooley will also talk about endangered birds and how the climate is impacting bird populations.
Other interesting stalls include Ballarat Cemeteries, Bendigo-based Soilz Alive and Victorian-based company Wilderlands.
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Ms Martin said Ballarat Cemeteries have been working to make their work more sustainable, through solar, less gas in the crematorium and looking at more environmentally-friendly ways people can be buried.
Soilz Alive looks at using human hair to create a regenerative soil conditioner, while Wilderlands is a project that sells Biological Diversity Units which ensure permanent protection and 20 years of on-going management at some of Australia's most vulnerable forests including Budgerum near Kerang.
Bendigo musician Grim Fawkner will be playing music all day and there are a host of community groups sharing their work.
The Bendigo Sustainability Festival is non-ticketed. Click here for the full program.
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