''I never thought about food waste. I just did not care. I bought things on impulse. I never went to a second-hand store. It never occurred to me that I could or even should live in a much more sustainable way.''

Like many busy women, she thought living sustainably was all too hard. And what difference could she make on an individual level, anyway? Then one day in 2006, the light bulb - no doubt a low-emission one - switched on.

''I finally got it,'' she recalls. ''I realised the way I was living was not just expensive but completely unsustainable.''

She started taking small steps at home. The 4WD was sold and replaced with a bus ticket, although she concedes that public transport on the northern beaches is ''not fantastic''. Appliances were routinely switched off at the outlet. Reusable shopping bags replaced plastic ones. Shopping lists were planned precisely to reduce wastage and worm farms were brought in for the scraps.

Before too long, the mother of four started to see results. ''I got my electricity bill down by 20 per cent, I got my food waste down by 50 per cent,'' she said. ''Once I started to take action in my own life and see a tangible result, I took ownership of it.''