Background
What is Sustainability Street?
Sustainability Street is an exciting program that brings people together to create healthier, safer and more environmentally friendly neighbourhoods.
Developed in Melbourne by environmental educators Vox Bandicoot, Sustainability Street now includes more than 50 communities in New South Wales and Victoria.
Blacktown City Council has joined forces with Vox Bandicoot to bring the program to Blacktown.
How Does it Work?
Council works with communities to provide the skills and knowledge to make your street the most sustainable environment and community you can. The program is based on a simple, efficient training program and each group receives a Sustainability Street manual.
The idea stems from the reality that everyone wants to create a safer and healthier living environment for themselves and their children. The best way to do that is by bringing people together to pool knowledge and resources.
Sustainability Street puts the idea of Thinking Global, Acting Local into practice.
What Does it Involve?
Being a Sustainability Street involves getting together with neighbours, attending workshops in your street and bringing enthusiasm to the process of making your lives and your neighbourhood more sustainable.
Three key workshops are planned for the first phase of the program. The first introductory session where everyone gets together in the street, we explain the process to you all, learn about each other's interests and skills and install your Sustainability Street sign.
The second two workshops will look at household energy and water use and how you can save on your bills and reduce greenhouse emissions. As time goes by, we can run workshops on other sustainable living topics that you and your neighbours choose. They might include:
Composting and worm farming
- Attracting wildlife to your garden
- Non-toxic cleaning
- Growing natives, vegetables, herbs
- Improving a local park or open space
As the program develops, the street may decide to hold extra get togethers, street parties or working bees. At a minimum, the program is a basic training course to help people to live more sustainably at home and in the neighbourhood. Anything above and beyond is limited only by the imagination and energy of the participants.
Outcomes to Date
Indicative results demonstrate three key things:
- Firstly, individual and household sustainable living behaviour has "improved" in terms of resource use by as much as 30%. (ie: reductions in water, waste and energy).
- Secondly, communal sustainability projects, which could not have been imagined or hoped for by agencies, have been successfully developed by small groups of local people. Previous projects include community gardens, demonstration water tanks in schools and neighbourhood houses, food co-ops, local sustainability festivals to engage the neighbourhood.
- Thirdly, on the human scale level, people have reported significant satisfaction in making connections with others in their "village".
