Sustainability Streets…The Village Is Growing

Local people, local communities, local action…the Sustainability Street program was designed and developed by Vox Bandicoot, who for some 20 years now have been developing sustainability programs for local communities, schools and workplaces.

The central idea is that ‘It’s a Village out there!’ People get together as local communities, learn a bit about ecological sustainability and then do what they can to encourage, assist or ‘teach’ other individuals or other communities to join the groundswell for ecological sustainability.

Over 100 communities in NSW and Victoria have supported the program and new projects are developing in Brisbane, South Australia and Perth, PLUS negotiations are underway with the Tianjin and Nankai Environmental Protection Bureaus in China who are considering Sustainability Streets and other Vox Bandicoot programs.

A Definition:

The word ‘street’ is just a concept that refers to any geographically or socially connected group of people…’about as far as you’d care to walk to sit and have a cuppa and discuss your worms with others’!!!

So what is the ‘Sustainability Street Approach’?

The program works on 2 levels:

Communities are informed about the program at information sessions and are invited to participate.

Participating communities are then guided through a process where they learn about Sustainability and learn how to organise themselves as a group.

This 6 month training period is loosely organised around 4 stages:

• Mulch (learn),
• Sow (plan),
• Grow (do),
• Harvest (teach).

How Sustainability Streets Grew

The program was developed in 2000/2001, by Vox Bandicoot in collaboration with the City of Moreland. In 2002 the City of Wollongong entered into the piloting phase.

In 2003, City West Water became a significant partner along with Western Regional Waste Management Group (WRWMG), EcoRecycle and seven western suburbs municipalities in Melbourne, the result being 15 new Sustainability Street communities.

Results to date demonstrate three key things:

• That individual and household sustainable living behaviour has ‘improved’ in terms of resource use by as much as 20%. (ie: reductions in water, waste and energy).
• Secondly, that communal sustainability projects which could not have been imagined or hoped for by agencies have been successfully developed by small groups of local people, including community garden projects, demonstration water tanks in schools and neighbourhood houses, a food co-op and groups who have even organised local sustainability festivals to engage with others in their neighbourhood.
• Thirdly, on the human scale level, people have reported significant satisfaction in making connections with others in their ‘village’.