Green Connect Illawarra

Green Connect is a not-for-profit social enterprise that employs young people and former refugees in jobs that help the planet and the community – mainly reducing waste and growing fair food.

Green Connect runs a farm and an op shop, provides zero waste services at events, provides gardening and landscaping services and offers staffing solutions to businesses and Councils. Green Connect also provides training and support so their team can use employment experience as a springboard to sustainable and fulfilling jobs and careers.

Click here to read more about what they do, who they are and their staff in the Illawarra.

Ways you can support Green Connect
There are many ways you can support Green Connect including:

Subscribe to a weekly fruit and vegetable box
Green Connect sells weekly fruit and vegetable boxes to the local community, with pick-up points throughout the Illawarra and home delivery available to most of Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama. Green Connect’s produce is locally grown and chemical-free. Fruit and veg boxes are available weekly or fortnightly, starting from $34 per week. Click here to subscribe.

Order free-range meat
For those who choose to eat meat, you can buy free-range pork and lamb from our farm in Warrawong. Green Connect’s animals are rotated so they always have fresh pasture. They live in the sunshine and eat chemical-free produce. Their presence on the farm gives Green Connect the capacity to convert food waste into meat and they help control weeds without the use of synthetic chemicals. Green Connect’s animals are among some of the hardest working members of staff, along with the 60,000 honeybees that pollinate their flowering crops. Read more here.

Purchase a ticket to a gardening workshop
Do you want to connect with nature and introduce sustainability practices in your life? Green Connect holds regular workshops at the farm ranging from seed saving and permaculture to small space gardening and beekeeping. Discounts apply for workshops booked up to two weeks before the event. For a list of upcoming workshops click here.

Purchase a ticket for a farm tour
Enjoy a tour of the Green Connect Farm in Warrawong. Your 90-minute experience will include an interactive and informative tour around the 11-acre farm, as well as time to explore the children’s and demonstration gardens. You’ll visit thriving market gardens, food forests and native rainforest, and seek out our free-range pigs, goats, sheep, alpacas, chickens and ducks to offer them a feed. Book your tickets here.

Shop at Green Connect’s Unanderra op-shop
Green Connect resells donated goods to keep them out of landfill. All proceeds are invested back in the Wollongong community by creating jobs for young people and former refugees in industries that help the planet and the community. Green Connect’s op shop sells high quality clothes, toys, books and other goods at affordable prices so that everyone can benefit. Click here for more info.

Engage Green Connect for gardening or landscaping work
Green Connect provides a valuable training ground for young people and former refugees in gardening and landscaping. From preparing soil to planting, mulching, pruning and shaping gardens, our work is done in a way that respects and benefits both people and planet. Green Connect offers commercial garden maintenance, large scale landscaping, garden blitzes and property services. Book the Green Connect gardening and landscaping team here.

Engage Green Connect to make your school, workplace or event more sustainable
The Green Connect Zero Waste team are experts in reducing the waste you generate. They conduct waste audits, do waste education, waste management plans, and physically manage waste at events such as music festivals to ensure that as much as possible is composted and recycled. Find out more.

Hire Green Connect staff
Green Connect has reliable, skilled and hard-working staff, and offers affordable work placement and labour hire that creates a social impact. For businesses that need hardworking, reliable labourers temporarily or at short notice, Green Connect recruits, trains, supports and manages a team of superstars who can pitch in at a day’s notice.

Green Connect’s staff have worked in:

• Waste management, litterpicking and composting
• Horticulture, gardening and landscaping
• Brushcutting and mowing
• Agriculture and farming
• Residential and commercial cleaning
• Food preparation and manufacture
• Tourism
• Administration

Green Connect Office: 37 Princes Highway Unanderra NSW 2526

Green Connect Farm: 6 Anna Avenue Lake Heights NSW 2502