Green Connect Illawarra

Green Connect is excited to bring the community together with a range of events focusing on fair food and sustainable practices. While we have temporarily suspended face-to-face workshops in response to COVID-19, we are offering online resources via School of Green Living. Check back regularly to be a part of the fun!

Green Connect is a not-for-profit social enterprise which focuses on creating jobs for former refugees and young people in industries that reduce waste and grow fair food – by which they mean food that’s good for those who eat it, those who grow it, and the planet.

Green Connect has many parts, including an urban permaculture farm in Wollongong and an op shop opening soon at Unanderra. They also offer zero waste and labour hire services. Click here to read more about what they do, who they are and their staff in the Illawarra!

Ways you can support us:
Subscribe to our fresh, local, seasonal fruit and vegetable boxes. As a social enterprise, we want to operate a business that allows us to fund all of the support we give our staff. So purchasing fair food fruit and veg boxes (including our eggs and seasonal honey) directly helps to create more jobs, reduce waste and value fair food practises. Boxes are available weekly or fortnightly, for pick-up or home delivered – click here to subscribe.

Purchase a ticket for our live webinars, “School of Green Living” – read more below.

Purchase our free range meat:
For those who choose to eat meat, we currently offer free range pork. Our pigs are rotated so they always have fresh pasture. They live in the sunshine, roll in mud, and act like pigs! Their presence on the farm gives us the capacity to convert food waste into meat and helps us control weeds and vegetable stubble in our cropping areas, without the use of synthetic chemicals. The pigs are among some of our hardest working members of staff, along with the 60,000 honey bees that pollinate our flowering crops. Read more here

Shop at our Unanderra op-shop – opening soon!
We resell 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. We give your used goods a second life for the good of the community. Our op shop sells high quality clothes, toys, books and other goods at affordable prices so that everyone can benefit – click here for more info.

School of Green Living:
Green Connect is excited to bring the community together with a range of events focusing on fair food and sustainable practices. We love to offer fun and practical skills that build the Illawarra community into a tribe of eco warriors. Try your hand at a range of sustainability basics like permaculture gardening, in-depth beekeeping or how to run a zero waste household. Check the website regularly to be a part of the fun – click here

Engage us to make your school, workplace or event more sustainable:
Our Zero Waste team are experts in reducing the waste you generate. We 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.

Hire our staff
We offer a labour hire service to connect the young people and former refugees who have been trained up and who have gained the skills, experience and confidence needed for mainstream work. Organisations and households book us for a range of jobs including:

• Cleaning
• Gardening
• Litterpicking
• Waste management
• General labour

Our staff are paid Award wages as well as superannuation, are covered by our Workers Compensation insurance, and are inducted and supported properly so that you and they have a good experience and get the work done.

Green Connect Office: 5/82 Wentworth St, Port Kembla NSW 2505. Our office is next to Meals on Wheels on the main street of Port Kembla.

Green Connect Farm: 11-13 Werringa Ave, Warrawong NSW 2502. We run an 11-acre urban permaculture farm in partnership with, and on land behind, Warrawong High School.