Green-Change.com » Illawarra Councils

Illawarra Climate Challenge Launch

Darren — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:37:23 +0000

The Nature Conservation Council of NSW is launching their successful Climate Challenge programme in the Illawarra region.

This free programme will give you access to free workshops, you’ll get to meet like-minded people, and you’ll have the chance to win some prizes.

How does it work?

You will receive a passbook, which guides you through all sorts of actions you can take to reduce your carbon footprint. Depending upon the actions you complete, you’ll earn stars (stickers you can put in your passbook). If you earn 35 stars by the final event of the programme, you’ll be named a Climate Champion and will enter the major prize draw.

Interested? You can register online (I just did!), or meet the organisers and register in person at the Wollongong Produce and Creative Traders markets in the Crown Street Mall on Friday 30 March 2012.

This sounds like a great way to get started if you’d like to live more sustainably, but don’t know where to start.

The Climate Challenge has previously been run in 6 different NSW Councils, and one in Victoria.

Go on, pop over and register! You’ve got nothing to lose!

Kiama Primary School Permaculture Garden Tour

Darren — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:58:11 +0000

This post follows on from Kiama Primary School Garden Opening.

This drawing shows the original design plan for the Kiama Primary School permaculture garden, put together by Aaron Sorenson. It’s not exactly how the garden worked out (they never are!), but the general placement of the elements is pretty close. It gives a good overview of the site, buildings, access paths and roads, etc that Aaron had to work with.

You can click on the photo to see a larger version, big enough to read the writing.

I really like looking at these kinds of permaculture designs. They’re full of ideas to borrow, and you can see how the designer has placed things relative to each other, using site properties (slope, aspect, views, winds, sun, access, etc) to their best advantage.

When looking at a plan, I like to imagine how the various jobs would get done in the garden (mulch delivery and application to beds, watering, composting, harvesting, cooking, relaxing, planting out seedlings from the nursery area, and so on). How far would you have to walk, and is it uphill or downhill? How long would hoses have to be to water every plant? Is it far from the regular-picking plants to the kitchen? Would you have to barrow compost very far, and could a wheelbarrow get through to every area? How far would you have to carry tools?

It’s also useful to think about rain on the site, where water will flow, and how it will interact with swales, paths, and other garden elements.

With all that in mind, lets get on with the tour!

First, the top entrance. This is where people enter from the school. Just to the left of where I took the photo is the car park and an access gate. That area serves as a mulch drop point – nice, since you only have to wheelbarrow it downhill! The entrance invites you to enter and follow the path down to the main seating circle.

The path down from the main entrance is gently sloping, built as a switch-back down the side of the hill. Besides being easier to walk up and down, it slows water flow during rain and prevents erosion. And how about that ocean view!

The paths/swales across the hill have been lined with lots of comfrey. This is a hardy, deep-rooted and fast-growing plant, so it stabilises the banks. Because it has such long roots, it “mines” nutrients and minerals from deep down and brings them to the surface, storing them in its leaves. The leaves are regularly harvested for compost and mulch, and it can also be used to make “comfrey tea” fertiliser or fed to livestock.

You can’t see it very well in this photo, but there are banana plants and other fruit trees in amongst the comfrey. These are mostly shallow-rooted plants, so the comfrey doesn’t compete with them for nutrients.

And that brings us to the seating circle, about half-way down the slope. This is a large level area, with enough seating for a whole class and plenty of room in the middle for demonstrations. Being central, you can also see most of the garden from this vantage point. What a great learning area!

The next three photos are from a display board at the school, to show a bit more detail about how the seating circle was constructed.

It started off with earthworks to level the site, and construction of retaining walls (which provide additional seating if needed).

Next, a base was put down and tyres were put in place as the structure of the seating circle. The tyres were filled for structural strength and stability.

Boards were fixed to the top of the tyres as a base for the decking timber of the finished seats.

Back to the tour…

This area between the schoolhouse and the seating circle is a north-facing slope, but is protected from southerly and easterly winds by the buildings. That makes an ideal environment for south-east Asian vegetables. Below this area is the Mediterranean area, also a north-facing hot area.

Don’t you love the signs the kids have made? They were dotted around the garden to identify various features, plants, microclimates, etc.

About half-way down the slope is the public entrance to the garden, leading in from the footpath. This also serves as a secondary receiving point for mulch, compost, etc.

In a little from the public entrance is the main composting area. Being a large flat area right near the entrance, it would make a good place for stacking bulk materials like hay bales and garden stakes, before distribution around the garden.

Near the composting area were some striking rainbow chard plants. You can see the huge curly kale plants in the background too. Doesn’t everything look super healthy?

Dotted around the garden at the end of swales are these compost bins, dubbed the Daleks by the students. You’re never far from one of these, making it very convenient to get rid of prunings, dropped fruit and other waste while working in the garden. They are the Gedye compost bins that are available from Kiama Council.

Moving further down the slope, the kids have planted a wind break to provide some protection against the salty coastal breezes coming in from the east. There are a few windbreaks around the garden, mostly either bana grass or sugar cane. Both grow quickly to about two metres tall, and can be cut for mulch or composting.

The bottom of the garden (the northern edge) is bounded by the school’s service road. This would reflect a lot of heat on a sunny day, being light-coloured concrete, so the lower part of the garden needs to be planted with species able to handle it. The kids have designated this bottom swale the citrus mound.

Looking back up the slope at the schoolhouse. The main garden is to the right in this photo, and there’s native gardens continuing along the slope to the left. These swales have been planted with bananas and other fruit trees, and also provide a pathway back up to the schoolyard.

I hope you enjoyed this tour as much as I enjoyed visiting the garden!

Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Kiama Primary School Garden Opening

Darren — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:12:19 +0000

I had the day off work on Friday, and happily it coincided with the official opening of the Kiama Primary School Garden.

Remember I was awarded a Permaculture Design Certificate scholarship by my local council? One of the other recipients was Maria, a teacher from Kiama Primary School, and she’s been heavily involved in getting this garden up and running. I’m helping to get a similar garden (although perhaps not quite on the same scale!) going at Jamberoo Primary School as the community project aspect of my PDC scholarship, so it was a great opportunity to gather ideas.

Here’s Maria (in the checked shirt) speaking at the opening ceremony:

During the ceremony, all the school kids were lined up along the swales to watch:

Costa Georgiadis (from Costa’s Garden Odyssey on SBS TV) was the celebrity guest and keynote speaker. What a great guy! He was funny, informative, and has an incredible way of relating to kids with irreverent humour and infectious enthusiasm. Here’s Costa with our mayor, Sandra McCarthy, and Vanessa John (Environmental Strategy Officer at Wollongong Council, and coordinator of the PDC scholarship programme) presenting students with some fruit trees for the garden:

Costa was a hit with the kids, mucking around and having fun in the garden:

And of course, I couldn’t resist getting a photo with Costa!

This garden was designed by Aaron Sorensen, and built and maintained under the guidance of him and Dan Deighton (along with Maria, of course!). These two guys have done an awful lot of amazing work at schools around the Illawarra. You can read more about Aaron and Dan’s work with schools over at the Milkwood Permaculture site – Kiama Primary School Garden (showing what the site looked like back in April, when it was just getting started) and Cringila Primary School Garden. The Cringila site was also covered on ABC Open (with video!).

I’ll write a follow-up post in the next couple of days to give you a tour of the garden.

Update: Here’s the promised follow-up: Kiama Primary School Permaculture Garden Tour.

Permaculture Design Certificate Scholarship!

Darren — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 13:15:57 +0000

My three local Councils (Kiama, Shellharbour and Wollongong) often team up together on projects. One recent example was to offer 12 scholarships for people to do Permaculture Design Certificates (PDCs).

The idea was that they would provide funding for 4 people from each Council area to attend a PDC course of their choosing, and Council would pay the course fees (up to $1400 worth). The students have to pay accommodation, meals, travel, etc themselves. In return, the 12 students agree to share their new skills with others in the community, through whatever forms of community service interest them.

It sounded like a great opportunity, so I applied and was successful!

Because of work and family commitments, I couldn’t afford to be gone for 2 weeks on a typical PDC course. So I elected to do my course by correspondence, through local trainers Permaculture Visions. I met the owner, April, and toured their property a little while ago so I have full confidence that they offer a great course and have excellent knowledge of local climate, conditions, and resources.

A correspondence course lets me do the reading and much of the work at night, when I have free time. I like that I’m able to support a local business, and it may also be useful to be able to visit them in person once or twice during the course if need be.

I’ve wanted to do a PDC for a long time now, but could never really justify the cost. Most (all?) of the course content is available either free on the internet or in books from the library, and I’m the kind of person who enjoys learning from books. So I figured there wasn’t enough extra value in paying for a course.

But doing the PDC course brings all that disparate knowledge together into a structured curriculum. It also puts you in contact with other students and experienced instructors, so you can get information and advice on specific issues you have. And you get the certificate at the end, which demonstrates your qualification to others and gives you the right to use the term “permaculture” in a business name (likely not a big deal to me, but you never know what the future may hold!).

I’m hoping that by the end of the course, I’ll have at least the bare bones of a permaculture design plan for our property here. I’ll be able to pick the brains of the students and instructors, and hopefully get feedback as I develop it. So that will be a huge tangible benefit.

I’ll be able to use the skills I learn from the PDC in my activities in various local groups – Jamberoo Community Growers, Jamberoo FutureCare, the Kiama Council Health & Sustainability Advisory Committee, etc. Jamberoo Primary school is just starting to get a school garden going, and I’ll be involved in that too. Plus I’ll be blogging about the course as I go. So, plenty of opportunities to share the PDC goodness with other people!

I’m just waiting on the paperwork from Council so I can enrol and get started. I’m super keen!

Kiama Sustainability Expo 2011

Darren — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:59:06 +0000

Kiama FutureCare partnered with Kiama Council to put on a fantastic Sustainability Expo at the Kiama Leisure Centre to mark World Environment Day on Sunday. The Council also held an open day in the nearby Kiama Community Garden to coincide with the event.

What can I say – it was an excellent event! Really well-planned and promoted in the runup, and very smoothly executed on the day. I helped out on the Jamberoo FutureCare booth until midday, then had a quick look around the Community Garden before heading home to prepare for the afternoon’s Jamberoo Community Growers meeting on backyard beekeeping.

Below are some photos I took on the day…

Kiama Deputy Mayor Ben van der Wijngaart’s electric motorbike was on display at the entrance to the expo. You can see a booth for the fledgeling Transition Towns Kiama initiative just behind it.

Here’s the Jamberoo FutureCare booth, where I helped out for a couple of hours in the morning. Mostly we had information on solar power and solar hot water, but also had people with a wide range of experience in all aspects of trying to live more sustainably. Do you like our new vertical banner?

Paul Kirkpatrick manning the stand for his Jamberoo business, Estate Gardening. Paul has helped out Jamberoo Community Growers a lot in the past, and will be our guest speaker on July 3 talking about espaliering fruit trees. He sells a wide range of very high-quality garden tools and garden art. I bought a fantastic pair of Ninja gardening gloves for just $10, which are close-fitted and waterproof for weeding comfort but nice and strong for use with shovels etc. Being a professional gardener, Paul knows what he’s talking about when recommending tools and equipment.

Green Box is a cooperative based in Gerringong, aiming to source produce for members from within a 100-mile (160 km) radius. They want to support local farmers and producers, and even source some stuff from local backyard growers who have a surplus. I’ve had a bit to do with them in various sustainability initiatives, and they’re all very committed and passionate local foodies. Interesting coincidence – Fiona from the Inner Pickle blog, who I finally met in-real-life the day before the Expo, is on their committee.

Chrissy (in the headband!) from Eco Manifesto, a Gerringong company supplying eco-friendly products for the home. It’s worth signing up for their newsletter at their web site to get notice of new products, specials, and eco-living tips.

Another Gerringong company, Fresh By Nature provides services and equipment for hydroponics, aquaculture and aquaponics. The owner John Burgess has also helped out Jamberoo Community Growers, delivering an excellent presentation on backyard aquaponics.

Evelyn from Nappiness, showing off her range of eco-friendly reusable cloth nappies, nappy covers, and baby products. She also has a great blog about choosing and using cloth nappies. Don’t you love the funky designs? These aren’t your mother’s cloth nappies!

Edwin, owner of Kiama company NetSense Computers, is a member of Kiama FutureCare and was one of the organisers of the Expo. They offer good quality computer services at very reasonable prices, as well as parts, upgrades, peripherals and new systems. They have a very interesting range of low-energy-consumption computers.

South Coast Organic Fertilisers are based at Tomerong (just past Nowra), and supply worms, worm castings, and worm liquid for your garden.

Deputy Mayor Ben van der Wijngaart was one of the presenters of a variety of talks on sustainable living issues. I wasn’t able to attend any talks, but did hear positive reports from others that attended. In case you’re wondering, Ben’s not headlining a 5-year-old’s birthday party – the talk was in the room normally used for a creche by the Leisure Centre.

Costa, of SBS’s Costa’s Garden Odyssey fame, lent a little celebrity flair to the Kiama Community Garden’s workshops and information sessions. He was extremely popular with the kids, and gave a ton of information to the adults as well.

This shot was taken from about halfway up the slope of the Kiama Community Garden, looking back down at all the Council activities taking place. I got a lot of great ideas from the garden (it was the first time I’d had a good look around it). It was good to see how they’d used the slope of the block, and I’ve now got a lot better idea about how I’m going to develop the growing areas on my sloping block.

All up, the Expo was a really good experience. I saw a lot of people there I knew (including Ally from HappyEarth), and met a few new friends as well. Everyone was really friendly and seemed to be having a good time, the weather was great, and the turnout was excellent.

Did you go? What did you think of the day?

Shellharbour Solar Expo A Huge Success

Darren — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:53:14 +0000

I spent most of Sunday helping to staff the Jamberoo FutureCare table at the Shellharbour Solar Expo, at Shellharbour Workers’ Club (who actually have 22 kW of solar panels installed themselves – see photo).

The expo was organised by Jamberoo FutureCare, in conjunction with Shellharbour and Kiama Councils. There were a number of solar power and solar hot water suppliers there, displaying their products and giving people quotes. There was also a wind power company and a few other energy-related displays. FutureWorld had the table next to us, which was great as I finally got to meet Meryl who I’ve exchanged plenty of emails with in the past.

We put on talks on solar hot water, solar power, and residential wind power. The talks were so popular that the lecture room was filled to capacity several times, and we had to schedule repeats of the presentations.

We estimate that around 500 people attended on the day, which was way higher than anything we had hoped for! We had to run out and photocopy more of our information sheets a couple of times.

I met and talked with lots of interesting people, and hopefully helped explain some of the mechanics of having solar power and hot water installed, how the government rebates and incentives work, and what it’s like to live in a house with those systems. We also chatted a fair bit about sustainable living in general.

One great couple I met had just been on a four-year tour of Australia by caravan, relying on solar power and bottled gas for all their energy needs. Upon returning they realised it really doesn’t take much energy to meet their requirements, and so they’re working towards taking their house in Wollongong totally off the grid. They’ve already disconnected from the town gas main, and would like to disconnect from the electricity, water and sewerage services as well and handle it all themselves on-site. It’ll be really interesting to see how they go!

Russell Hawkins, my partner in crime for the Jamberoo FutureCare “Home Journeys” documentary, was also there to shoot some footage. It’s great to have that project under way!

A highlight of the day was the raffle – the top prize was a 1.5 kW grid-connected solar power system, fully installed! It was generously donated by GreenSmart Electrical. Other prizes included $1000 towards purchase of a solar power system from Solar Shop Australia, $500 towards purchase of a hot water system from SolaHart Wollongong, a HP mini notebook computer from Bass Electrical Engineering, a $250 energy pack from Pyramid Power, and two solar sun jars from C2C Solar. A huge thanks to all the donors.

Given the success of the day, I’m sure there will be another similar expo held again in the future. So if you missed out, keep an eye on the media for details!

For those who missed out on copies of the Jamberoo FutureCare handouts, here they are:

JFC Solar Hot Water Consumer Guide (578 Kb PDF)
JFC Solar Power Consumer Guide (266 Kb PDF)

Kiamasphere Web Site Launch

Darren — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:53:38 +0000

I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at the launch of Kiama Council’s new Kiamasphere web site on Thursday.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll probably know that our sustainability journey really got going when my family joined the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge. It gave us the impetus to stop thinking and start acting on the changes we wanted to make.

The Sustainable Illawarra web site contains a lot of valuable information and resources to help people learn more about living sustainably in the Illawarra region. With that project coming to an end later this year, the web site’s future was up in the air. A proposal was put to the three Councils involved (Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama) to keep it online for a relatively small sum of money. Unfortunately, Kiama was the only council willing to pay, so the proposal didn’t go ahead.

Since the content developed belonged to the three councils, Kiama decided to take all the general information and the Kiama-specific content, and repurpose it as the Kiamasphere site. I think it’s great that all that hard work has been saved from the bit-bucket. Kiamasphere has also been enhanced with a FreeCycle-style service (named “Up4Grabs“) for residents to give away stuff they no longer want or ask for things that others might be throwing away, and more additions are in the works.

Council also took the opportunity of the event to present this year’s health and sustainability grants. Two local schools, Kiama Public School and Ss Peter and Paul Primary School, were awarded funding to develop no-dig vegetable gardens and composting systems. The Kiama Netball Club was awarded funding for training and development of coaches. The Green Box cooperative was awarded funding to develop their brand and help get the coop off the ground. This one is a particularly exciting initiative, and I’m really keen to see them succeed. They have the potential to really develop local food production.

I got my web site up on the big screen for all to see!

Kiama Mayor Sandra McCarthy presented me with a copy of the book “Beyond The Blowhole” as a thankyou gift. I’d wanted that book for a while!

Thanks to my mate Darcy Moore for the photos! You can read his write-up on the event here.

My talk at the launch was basically about how the Sustainable Illawarra project has helped my family’s efforts to live more sustainably.

It’s easy to feel helpless about all the problems going on around the world, from fisheries collapse and climate change to peak oil and rising sea levels, to name but a few. Sites like Sustainable Illawarra and Kiamasphere bring those larger issues into a local perspective, providing practical information and ideas for things we can all do, and highlighting the resources that are available in our area to help us. They reduce the feeling of hopelessness, and replace it with community response and personal action. Networking with like-minded people in the local area is a source of inspiration and motivation, and restores a sense of optimism about where we might be heading.

With the Sustainable Illawarra project’s funding coming to an end, the constant stream of workshops we’ve been enjoying in this region over the past few years will also be ending. With local councils facing rate rise restrictions, tight budgets and ever-increasing burdens imposed by state and federal governments, there simply isn’t the money to continue them in the same manner.

We’re now at a time where community groups need to step in and take over some of that community education role. For example garden clubs can hold composting workshops, CWA groups can hold preserving workshops, Slow Food groups can hold cooking workshops, climate action groups can hold electricity efficiency workshops, and so on.

Councils have the profile and contacts to help publicise community events, and hopefully can help to provide affordable venues as well. But volunteers are needed to organise them – you can imagine how much it would cost Councils to stage regular workshops if they have to put everything out to tender and pay commercial rates for everyone involved.

Councils and community groups can work together, drawing on the strengths they each bring to the table, to get things done. We can’t just sit around waiting for someone else to do everything.

If you live in the Illawarra region, I encourage you to check out Kiamasphere and register to be involved in the forums and the Up4Grabs service. Let me know what you think!

Kiama Council Focus Group Workshop – Food

Darren — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:15:19 +0000

Kiama Council has been putting on a series of focus group workshops this week, on topics such as health, community, waste, and environment. Last night I participated in the Food workshop.

What an awesome experience!

The room at the Harbourside Brighton was packed with people passionate about all aspects of food – there was a chef, someone from CWA, backyard gardeners, “greenies”, community group members, someone from the Hospital auxilliary, Kiama Councillors, the Mayor, business owners, a home economics teacher, people involved with Seedsavers and the Slow Food Movement, and more. It was great to meet the lovely ladies from the new Green Box cooperative, too.

Some of the big issues that came up included preservation of rural land (and removing the effects of development speculation on farmland prices), the need for education and resources on growing/cooking/eating healthy food, the lack of supermarket competition, the encouragement of local food production, and proposed new food labelling laws (particularly the lack of GM content labelling). There was more, but I can’t recall it all right now!

There were a lot of great ideas in the room, and the facilitator did a good job of recording everybody’s thoughts and giving everybody an opportunity to speak. I think Council will have a large body of information to work with for some time to come.

We also got to take home some beautiful local produce from Michael, whose family has been farming in the Kiama LGA since the 19th century, and some parsnip seeds from Janet.

Could Kiama Ban Plastic Bags?

Darren — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:29:56 +0000

We had another meeting of the Kiama Council Sustainability Advisory Committee tonight, and as always it was a fascinating and stimulating discussion.

One of the topics that came up was the question of whether Kiama could ditch plastic bags. There was a newspaper article in October last year where the Council announced its intention to do so, and there is a Land And Sea – Plastic Free page on the Council website, but not much seems to have happened in this area.

Huskisson, just an hour or so down the coast (and the town where I grew up!), has done it. They have a fairly similar tourist-driven local economy, so most of the issues they overcame should be similar to ours.

What do you think? Could Kiama get rid of plastic bags? How might we do it?

I’m A Living Book!

Darren — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:33:51 +0000

Tomorrow morning, Kiama Library will be holding a Living Books session with World Environment Day as the theme, and I’m going to be one of the “books”! You may have heard me on ABC radio this morning promoting the event .

This is an exciting new project which provides the opportunity for you to meet someone with an unusual occupation or lifestyle, or from a different social, religious or ethnic background, in the congenial atmosphere of the library building.

Readers sign up for a half-hour session with a living book (no need to pre-register, just come along on the day). They then sit down with that person and ask questions, chat, and learn more about their story and what they have to share.

Books that will be available on the day include:

A Lifetime of Lantana
Bale Tales (straw bale building)
Envirovolunteering!
Environmentalist/Vegetable Grower
Green Girl
One Family’s Green Change (that’s me!)
Slow Down (Slow Food Movement)
Streamwater (Streamwatch volunteer)
Sustainable Dairy Farming in Kiama Region
Valuing Land (all about Voluntary Conservation Agreements)
WIRES (Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service)
Your Planet Needs You (a travelling dancer’s omnibus)

The idea of a Living Library came from a concept developed by the Danish youth Non Government Organisation “Stop the Violence” in 2000 to counter racism and discrimination in their community. The original inspiration was: “Meet your own prejudice” literally. Their Living Library operated at large music festivals and invited people who were suffering discrimination and prejudice to be ‘living books’ and sit down with a ‘reader’ who could ask questions about all aspects of their life.

While we’re on the topic of self-promotion, I’m also going to be speaking at the launch of the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge Round 2 on Sunday.

Free Energy Monitoring Trial For Kiama Residents

Darren — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:31:49 +0000

If you want to reduce your energy bills, you need to know what it is in your house that’s using all the electricity. An Efergy energy meter is a great way to do that.

The Efergy meter is installed inside your electricity meter box, and transmits real-time energy usage information to a display panel inside your house. You can then go around the house turning lights and appliances on and off, and see the effect they have on your electricity usage. It can also add up your electricity usage over time, so you can get a picture of your daily or weekly usage patterns.

These electricity monitoring devices normally cost around $100, but Kiama Council is planning to install a whole bunch of them free of charge in residents’ homes. All the participants have to do is record their electricity usage over the 12 months of the trial, and compare it to the previous year’s electricity bills.

The idea is to install these meters in a variety of households around the municipality, from small one-bedroom units to large six-bedroom houses. Council is planning to gather both hard data and anecdotal stories from participants, and will use this information to assist the wider community to reduce energy consumption, help the environment, and save money.

If you’d like to participate, contact Byron Robinson on 4232 0465. It’s open to all residents of the Kiama Municipality – Foxground, Gerroa, Gerringong, Kiama, Jamberoo, Minamurra and surrounds. The closing date for applications is 30 April 2009.

This program is funded through the NSW Government’s Environmental Trust.

This is one of the first initiatives that has come through the Kiama Sustainability Advisory Committee that I’m a member of, and I’m really keen to see it get started. I’ve had an Efergy meter installed in my house for the past couple of months, and it’s an extremely useful tool in helping you (and your slightly-less-motivated family members!) monitor and reduce electricity wastage.

Kiama Sustainability Advisory Committee – First Meeting

Darren — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:15:04 +0000

Tonight we had the first meeting of the Kiama Sustainability Advisory Committee at the Council Chambers in Kiama.

This first meeting was basically for all the committee members to meet each other, to review our Terms Of Reference, to get a brief overview of current sustainability projects in our municipality, and to figure out what we’ll be doing going forward.

There are 9 committee members – three Councillors (Ben van der Wijngaart, Monique Dare-Ward and Neil Reilly), two Council employees, and 4 community representatives (one each from Gerringong-Gerroa-Werri Beach, Kiama-Kiama Heights (me!), Kiama Downs-Minnamurra-Bombo, and Jamberoo).

I was really impressed at the variety of experience amongst the other members of the committee. Most of them have been employed in the areas of environment and sustainability for many years, with post-graduate qualifications and all sorts of project experience. I’ve been reading about sustainability for years and understand most of the issues, but to date I haven’t got much actual experience. Like Steve Pavlina says, one of the best things you can do is to join a group where you just barely qualify for membership. They’ll pull you up to a whole new level.

That said, the purpose of the committee isn’t really to come up with project ideas nor to execute them. Our role will be to:

provide access to individuals and groups to have input into and participate in the delivery of the Sustainable Kiama Communities (SKC), Sustainable Illawarra (SI), Food and Biodiversity (F&B) projects and other Council approved sustainability initiatives
provide advice on specific issues and problems related to the projects
assist in the strategic direction of the projects
review surveys, resources and information being incorporated into the projects
provide advice and support to the project staff on project implementation
review reports related to the projects
ensure effective community input, collaboration and networking in relation to the projects
to raise the profile of the SKC, SI and F&B projects in the wider Kiama community

OK, so some of the advising bits might be left more to the experts on the committee, but I think I have something to contribute in many of the other areas. I’ve got an engineering and technology background, and certainly the “raising the profile” bit is something I’ve been trying to do with this web site!

I think we have a really good mix of people with a wide range of skills, and we all share a similar motivation and interest in building a resilient, supportive and sustainable local community.

I’m looking forward to learning more about the projects currently underway and planned for the future. It’s nice to be able to share good news from a local council – especially in this region!

Interview And Photos

Darren — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:13:43 +0000

We did an interview and some photos with Paul from Wollongong Council for Sustainable Illawarra today.

Paul is going around and gathering stories from about 25 different households, putting together some case studies and other materials for the Sustainable Illawarra project. Maybe we’ll end up on their web site, or possibly in a booklet or something to help promote this kind of project to other Councils.

It was great chatting to Paul as I showed him around. He’s got solar power at his house in Port Kembla, plus chooks, vegies, etc so we had a lot to talk about.

Meeting like-minded people is one of the best things about being involved in the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge!

I’m On The Kiama Sustainability Advisory Committee!

Darren — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 11:54:53 +0000

I got a letter in the mail yesterday from Kiama Council – my application to be on the Kiama Sustainability Advisory Committee was accepted! I’ll be representing the Kiama-Kiama Heights area on the Committee.

I was pretty surprised: although I’m interested in sustainability, I’m not a member of any sustainability groups or anything, except for my involvement in the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge. There must be others around who are involved in the Greens party, Greenpeace, WWF, LandCare, etc.

Still, since applying I’ve become involved in Seedsavers Illawarra and the Jamberoo Future Care group, so I should be able to draw from a reasonably wide range of sources.

I’ll post an update when I have more information on what’s involved.

First Post!

Chicken Quest

Darren — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:59:54 +0000

We have three silkies at the moment, just about to come into lay. They’re named Seraphina, Luciana and Ro (yep, we’re big Barbie movie fans around here!).

We had a rooster named Molly as well (I know, my defense is that you can’t tell their gender as day-old chicks!), but we had to get rid of him. Kiama council (like many others) doesn’t allow roosters in residential areas, and he was starting to crow at 5:00 am. Fortunately, the good people at Matilda’s Farmyard Nursery took him off our hands. He’ll be doing the rounds of childrens’ birthday parties now – if you see a black silky, say hi from us!

It was a good outcome for the kids to see that he was going somewhere beautiful, with lots of other farmyard animals to keep him company. The owners were really nice, and were happy to take the time to show our girls around the farm and let them pat the animals. I highly recommend them as an ethical business that looks after their animals in the best way possible.

With the departure of Molly, we now have a vacancy in the Chicken Ark. Silkies aren’t the best layers – they lay smallish eggs, lay less per year than purpose-bred laying breeds, and tend to go broody fairly frequently – so we’re going to get a layer to replace him.

After reading around a bit, I think the breed we’d like to get is the Australorp. They’re an Australian-bred heritage variety, and I think that’s worth preserving. Only problem is, I can’t find anyone that has them in the local area.

If you know of anyone selling point-of-lay Australorps in the Illawarra or Shoalhaven areas, please let me know via the comments below. Thanks!

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Swap Lightbulbs For CFLs For Free

Darren — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:07:21 +0000

If you live in the Kiama area, you have an opportunity tomorrow to swap up to 6 old lightbulbs or fluorescent tubes for brand new energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) for free. Just take your old bulbs to the Minnamurra Waste and Recycling Centre (the old Minnamurra tip) between 10am and 2pm tomorrow (Thursday 13 November).

CFLs and fluorescent tubes contain small amounts of mercury, which is toxic to the environment and should not go into landfill sites. Other types of lightglobes also contain various hazardous materials as well.

Kiama Council is running a four-month trial Lamp Recycling Program – the first regional council in NSW to do so. It’s great to see our local council leading the way like this. Hopefully they’ll be putting collection boxes in convenient places throughout the area – not many people are going to trek out to Minnamurra just to drop off a lightbulb.

The free CFLs are only available tomorrow, and are being provided by Cosmo Lighting (Unit 3, 9-11 Princes Hwy, Albion Park Rail, ph 4257 9111). Cosmo are one of the sponsors of Sustainable Illawarra, and are very proactive in promoting energy-efficient lighting options.

Update: I went out and swapped my lightbulbs for CFLs this morning. Josephine St John (Kiama Council’s Waste Minimisation Officer) was there. She said they’d had a pretty good response, and had already collected two boxes full of bulbs for recycling. The only way council can gauge community interest in these types of environmental projects is from the number of people taking up the offers, so it’s great that lots of people are sending the message that we care.

Kiama Council Composting Workshop

Darren — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 11:41:17 +0000

This afternoon I attended Kiama Council’s Composting Workshop, held at the Girl Guides’ Hall down in Hindmarsh Park. It was run by Josephine St John, council’s Waste Minimisation Officer.

What a great event!

I had really thought I wouldn’t learn much from this workshop, but I thought it was a good opportunity to meet some interesting people and maybe pick up a few little tips. It turned out to be full of useful information, and well worthwhile.

Kiama Council is currently doing random audits of household rubbish put out for roadside collection. They’re doing 260 samples across the municipality to get a handle on what kinds of waste people are generating and whether they’re recycling properly.

They’ve found that around 63% of household waste in Kiama is organic, and therefore potentially compostable. That seems really high to me, but they’ve sampled and measured it and that’s the figure.

Anyway, on with the composting tips…

All the compost info you read talks about ‘greens’ and ‘browns’. Greens supply nitrogen, and browns supply carbon. You generally want 1 part green to 2 parts brown to get complete breakdown. Too much green and your compost will go slimy, acidic and smelly. Too much brown and it won’t break down very quickly.

It’s good to compost your weeds, since they’re plant matter and will break down nicely. However, if your compost heap doesn’t get hot enough to kill the seeds, you’ll have weeds sprouting everywhere you spread the compost. To get around this, put all your weeds in a bucket. Pour boiling water over them until they’re just covered, then leave for two weeks or so. Pour off the water and use it as a liquid fertiliser, and tip the remains of the weeds into your compost. The seeds won’t survive this treatment! And if you want extra ‘green’ points, rather than boiling up all that water using electricity, use one of those outdoor solar shower thingies to heat the water.

Collecting seaweed from beaches in Kiama is legal, as long as you keep it to less than 5 kg at a time. I had heard elsewhere that it was illegal in NSW, but Josephine assured us she’d done the research and it was OK. You just rinse the seaweed off and dry it on the clothesline for a few days, then add it to your compost as a ‘brown’. Seaweed is great for adding trace elements that are often missing from other sources of compostable material.

Tumbling bins are OK, although they generally don’t let in as many beneficial microorganisms and other critters because they’re not in contact with the ground. One way to improve this is to make a compost tea from your traditional compost (just put a few handfuls of compost into a hessian sack and sit it in a bucket of water for a few days), then water the tumbling compost bin with that. It’ll introduce lots of beneficial Effective Microorganisms (EMs) and help break the compost down quicker.

Some people mentioned problems with kikuyu grass growing into their compost bins. One way to prevent that is to grow comfrey all around the base of the bin. Comfrey is a great barrier to grasses, is great for adding to the compost as an activator, and it will slurp up any nutrients leaching out of the bottom of your compost bin.

Josephine recommended you not compost rhubarb leaves because they’re poisonous. This alarmed me, because I’ve always put them in. A bit of research (e.g. here) showed that it’s actually OK, as long as they are composted completely. The poison in rhubarb leaves is oxalic acid. This breaks down in the composting process pretty quickly, and won’t cause problems for either the compost heap or the garden when the compost is spread out.

The worm farming part of the talk was interesting, although not much new information. It is interesting to note that the worms don’t actually eat the scraps you’re putting in, they feed on the microorganisms that eat the scraps. Also, blending the scraps before putting them in can greatly speed up their consumption.

I was amazed to learn that underneath Shellharbour Workers’ Club is a massive worm farm! All of their organic waste from kitchens etc is dropped down into the worms, and a guy comes 2 or 3 times a week to check up on everything and keep it all chugging along. Presumably he sells the worm castings or something.

The final part of the Composting Workshop was on Bokashi, and this seemed to be what nearly everyone was there for. I had read about it before, but was interested to learn more and to see it in action.

Councils all over the place provide subsidised compost bins and worm farms to their constituents, but Kiama Council is the only council in Australia that also provides Bokashi supplies.

Bokashi is basically a way of fermenting kitchen waste in an airtight bucket. You put in your scraps, push it down to exclude as much air as possible, then sprinkle the Bokashi grains (a special grain mix innoculated with EMs to to start the fermentation and breakdown process), then seal up the Bokashi bucket. Every couple of days, you add more scraps and grains and seal it up again.

Over time, Bokashi juice collects in the bottom of the bucket. This can be drained off via the tap on the bucket, and is an excellent plant fertiliser (diluted well, 1:100). The juice is also apparently good as a drain cleaner or a septic system activator.

Once the bucket is full of kitchen waste, it is left to ferment for another couple of weeks and then buried in the garden. When it hits the soil, earthworms and other creatures will come from miles around to feast on it, and it is broken down within a few weeks. Many people bury it in a trench in their vegie patch, and then plant over the top of it to give the plants a good boost.

Council sells the Bokashi buckets for $70 each to Kiama residents (they’re normally $99), and the grain refills for $7 per kilo. Hmm, perhaps they’d make good Christmas presents…

Oh, and we also got some swag for attending. We got a voucher for a free compost bin, a KiamaSphere coffee cup, and a reusable fabric shopping bag containing packets of flower and vegetable seeds, a pen and pad, a nice folder for keeping handouts in, and a bunch of handouts and brochures on composting and other environmental initiatives. Cool!

Opportunities