Living Green in Hobsons Bay Ambassador Program
STATUS: COMPLETED
The Newport Organic Food Collective, a project that commenced as part of the Hobsons Bay Ambassador program, has won a "Business Excellence" award - Community Groups NFP category – from the City of Hobsons Bay. Participants attending the Ambassador program at Seabrook Community Centre have completed their course and unit of study, “Develop and Implement a program to support Behaviour Change and Sustainable Practices”.
Eight community members and five Hobsons Bay City Council staff made up the total of 13 people who successfully completed the program.
The program was a partnership with the National Centre for Sustainability at Swinburne University and Hobsons Bay City Council.
Participants worked in groups, planning and implementing the following behaviour change projects as the major part of their unit assessment:
1. Bokashi buckets in schools: Lyne Ciesielki and Dianne Wilson
This project introduced the concept of recycling of lunch scraps for Year 5 to Year 7 students (114 students in total) of Laverton College. The group met with staff and students to discuss the concepts of sustainability.
Students were asked to design a poster to promote the use of the Bokashi bins. As a result of the competition, students produced some fantastic posters. which are now on display at Laverton College. It is hoped that the students will continue with this project and be able to use the decomposed product from the bins in their school gardens and incorporation into plots within the Laverton Community Garden.
The group was astounded by the knowledge that the students had in regard to sustainability and thank them for their participation in this project.
Thank you to Maze distributors generously donated two Bokashi bins to the project.
2. Organic Food Collective:
This project established an organic food collective in Newport, providing a local buying group which met the local need for low cost bulk purchasing of organic food. They advertised and held public meetings, formed a viable group, and covered how an organic collective works, what goes in a weekly organic produce box and provided the opportunity to meet other local community members who also had an interest in organics, sustainability, health and the planet.
3. Light Globe Recycling:
This group planned and promoted to council the opportunity to pilot a recycling service for low energy globes, which are hazardous when broken or disposed of improperly due to their mercury content. They linked the project to councils draft strategic objectives in the areas of community wellbeing, environmental sustainability and civic leadership. They presented a budget submission for funds from the carbon reduction budget, to pilot the program in Hobsons Bay with recycling centres based at six locations around the municipality.
4. Green Purchasing at HBCC
This group developed and implemented education and promotion activities to staff at council regarding the council’s green purchasing policy. Staff purchasing habits were surveyed, staff prompters developed and distributed, and a full display of viable green office products were promoted on World Environment Day. The aim is for staff to think twice about their purchasing and have green products as their first choice.
Some participants are already completing the full diploma of sustainability at Swinburne university and others are considering continuing their studies this year.
