2. Tony and Sally:
Sustainability Street residents
Installed photovoltaic cells and a
solar hot water heater
Built a no-dig vegetable garden
Switched to 100% GreenPower
Reduced carbon footprint by 11
tonnes C02 per year
Developed a proposal to Council
for a Sustainable Building Display
House.
3. Improvements in resident’s sustainability
behaviours
Changes in behaviour due to the Sustainability Street program:
50% of households more energy efficient
Not just preaching to the converted!!!!
Sustainability measures Before participating
in program
After participating
in program
Household with good-very good
energy efficiency rating
31% 69%
Home powered by 100%
GreenPower
12% 35%
4. Think global, act local:
Tonnes of CO2 saved
Sustainability Street residents saved 187 tonnes of carbon
dioxide per year.
This is equal to taking 41 cars off the road each year!
7. Enhancing the sense of “community”
Community streetscape
projects = focal point for
community pride
Planting native species on
nature strips
Willoughby’s Water-wise
garden
Sustainable no-dig garden
and mural
Sustainability St Garden: This picture was
taken in the Artarmon Sustainability Street
garden on a sunny morning, Sunday April 13.
Mother and daughter, Fran and Clare, who live
in a flat in Elizabeth Street, were spied having
breakfast there. “We often come here for
breakfast. It’s a beautiful place to sit and enjoy
the herbs, the plants, how they grow and
change, and even to watch the lizards scurry
about”.
BeforeBefore
AfterAfter
8. Benefits for Council
Staff professional development
Cross-divisional capacity building
Community partnerships enhance Council
programs
Improved community relations
9. Lessons learned about community
engagement
The importance of a committed group initiator
Size doesn’t matter
Every community is different
10. Q: Need to engage with your
community on sustainability?
A: Sustainability Street
www.aaeensw.org.au
www.sustainabilitystreet.org.au
Hinweis der Redaktion
The Sustainability Street environmental education program has been run in Willoughby in Sydney since 2005, with six groups with an average of six active residents per group.
It’s a community program for residents, who form groups with neighbours to learn about sustainable living and to create community projects.
The program was developed by environmental educators Vox Bandicoot in 2001 and has been run in over 200 communities across Australia and NSW, including Wollongong, Randwick, Waverly, Woollahra, Parramatta, Holroyd, Blacktown, Penrith and Wyong.
So let’s cut to the chase and look at the inspirational outcomes of the program.
In this way I will show you why Sustainability Street is a powerful tool for Council’s undertaking sustainability education within their community.
My case study on the program is on the AAEE NSW website under the Write It Up Case studies.
So lets meet a couple of Sustainability Street residents- Tony and Sally.
Tony and Sally formed the Willoughby Sustainability Street group in 2006 with 12 of their neighbours.
Since participating in the program, Tony and Sally have installed photovoltaic cells and a solar hot water heater, built a no-dig vegetable garden and by switching to 100% GreenPower and becoming more energy efficient at home, have reduced their carbon footprint by at least 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
Their commitment to sustainability extends beyond their own lives and the group.
Last year, using Tony’s skills as an architect, they developed a proposal to Council for a Sustainable Building Display House, which is now being developed in the centre of Chatswood.
Lets look a little closer at how the program improves resident’s sustainability behaviours.
Assessments of energy and water use of Sustainability Street households were carried out at the start of the program and again in 2008, to evaluate changes in resident’s behaviour.
These assessments found that:
50% of households became more energy efficient after joining a group;
The number of households with a good-very good energy efficiency rating more than doubled and;
The number of homes powered by 100% GreenPower nearly tripled.
Another significant finding is that the majority of households were not energy efficient and did not purchase GreenPower before participating in the program.
This finding challenges the misconception that environmental education programs like Sustainability Street just preach to the converted.
These individual behaviour changes add up to some real climate change action.
Using the data from the energy assessments, we calculated that the 40 Sustainability Street households save at least 187 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.
This significant reduction is the equivalent of taking 41 cars off the road each year.
Lets look at some of the other big picture outcomes of the program.
The following Sustainability Street community projects demonstrate that the program has increased the community’s capacity to educate others about sustainability.
Community-run workshops
Sustainability Street residents have run their own workshops in their own homes or backyards, on topics such as keeping chooks, solar power and hot water, rainwater tanks and no-dig gardening.
Regular columns in community newsletters
The Artarmon group came up with the great idea of having a regular column in their suburb’s progress association newsletter, which is distributed to over 2,000 households and businesses.
This positive relationship between the group and the progress association lead to this fantastic front page story on a car sharing scheme.
This type of community buy-in is priceless, because even if Council’s transport officer had written this very same story and sent it to the editor, it would never have been put on the front page, let alone given a full page!
Sustainable Street parties
In 2008 The Tulloh St group held a ‘Spring Gathering’ in their street, where neighbours gathered over a BBQ and swapped sustainable garden produce, including plants, compost, herbs and chicken eggs, and received free mulch from Council.
The most fantastic community partnership that developed from the program was the Sustainable Living Collection at Artarmon Library.
This is a community project of two of the Sustainability Street groups, who successfully applied for a grant for $ $9,000 from the NSW Government Environmental Trust.
The sustainable living library collection was the first of it’s kind in Sydney and includes over 200 books, magazines and DVDs to inspire residents towards a more sustainable lifestyle.
As you can see from the photo, the launch of the collection was very well attended by 70 local residents, Councillors and even the local Member of Parliament.
Prior to this community project, Council had plans to rebuild the library.
Lobbying by the Sustainability Street groups led to Council’s commitment to this rebuilding of the library being done using sustainable design principles.
Council is also now considering a similar sustainable living collection being added to it’s six other libraries.
Sustainability Street groups and their community projects helped to enhance the sense of community in the Willoughby LGA.
When residents were asked “What does it mean to you to be part of Sustainability Street?”, this enhanced sense of community was most frequently mentioned.
As Hannele from the Tulloh St group said, “I just loved Sustainability Street, as for the first time since 1981 when I moved into this home, I have started to know more of my neighbours”.
A number of projects that physically improved streetscapes became a focal point for pride within the community. These included:
Planting native species on traffic calming devices and nature strips.
Willoughby’s Water-wise Garden
A water-wise native garden with interpretive signage was created by the Willoughby group on a degraded nature strip next to the Post Office and local shops.
As you can see, the smaller photo is the before, and the larger photo is the after shot.
Sustainable no-dig garden and sustainability mural
A small no-dig garden of fruit trees, vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants was created by the Artarmon group in front of the library that houses the Sustainable Living Collection.
The large mural you can see on the wall behind the garden educates residents about permaculture and food miles and was created by a local artist and painted by local children.
As you can see from this news article, the garden is maintained, admired and enjoyed by the group and the local community.
Okay, so it’s pretty clear how beneficial Sustainability Street is for the community, but what about for Council?
Staff professional development
Involvement in the program greatly improved staff community facilitation and engagement skills.
Cross-divisional capacity building
It also lead to cross-divisional capacity building.
Community partnerships enhance Council programs
The Sustainability Street community projects are fantastic resources for Council staff undertaking sustainability education.
The community are more receptive and trusting of the ideas promoted by these projects, as they have come from residents like themselves rather than a governing body such as Council.
Improved community relations
And of course, by helping residents to form Sustainability Street groups and supporting their community projects, Council has improved its relationship with residents.
I learnt SO much about community engagement by coordinating this program.
The importance of a committed group initiator
Out of the first six groups that formed, two groups didn’t make it past the first year.
The one thing that these two groups had in common was that the residents who initiated the group became unable to continue attending meetings due to other comitments.
Size doesn’t matter
In the first year of the program, the attendance numbers of each Sustainability Street meeting were closely monitored and were either a cause for celebration or angst for Council staff and residents alike.
A key learning since then is that size doesn’t matter, and that the size of a group bears no relation to its future achievements nor its long-term success.
Every community is different - the need for participatory action research
Feedback showed that while some groups enjoyed working bees, others preferred sit-down meetings with speakers.
This demonstrates the philosophy of Ian McBurney from Vox Bandicoot,who said “Every community is different, what works for one community might not work for another.”
I strongly recommend the Sustainability Street program for those of you wanting to engage your community to bring about real, on-the-ground environmental change, not only in people’s homes but also on the community scale.
Residents love this program because it comes with a proven track record and they are part of a network of groups across Australia.
For us environmental educators, it is fantastic because you don’t have to spend precious time reinventing the wheel.
When you engage Vox Bandicoot to train your Council to run the program, the money is well spent, as you receive ongoing support and all the resources you need, like the Sustainability Street manual for residents.
Well I really hope that you got something out of my presentation, thanks for listening.
Any questions?
