Full speed ahead

By Artemis Pattichi  Now that we can meet again, there are so many activities our group has been waiting to bring to Southbank, so we are coming back full speed ahead! Watch this space for upcoming educational workshops on sustainable solutions, Southbank’s first ever community composting hub and workshops on composting, along with many other smaller activities our group always puts together for our meetups. We were all so very excited to have our first meetup again on Saturday, November 7! One of the things many of us missed while in lockdown is meeting with neighbours and gardening side by side (1.5 metres apart, of course). Even though we had to restrict numbers to 10 participants max to adhere to state restrictions, we all enjoyed seeing friends and neighbours again. We’ll be able to have more people join us as restrictions ease and we’ll continue using Eventbrite for participants to register for a while. Join our group or keep an eye on our Facebook page for upcoming meetups and registration links. As a reminder, we meet fortnightly on Saturdays, 10am at Boyd. Our next meetup will be on Saturday, November 21 and, apart from gardening, we’ll be painting more stones green, yellow, and red for the garden’s harvesting signage. We’ll be breaking into two teams, one to garden and one to get creative painting stones. It seems some of you liked the stones we’ve already painted a little too much, seeing how many of them have disappeared from the vegie garden over time. While we appreciate people loving the end result so much, we encourage taking photos of the stones you like instead of taking them home, as a lot of work and effort goes into upkeeping the garden and our community harvesting system doesn’t work without the stones. You are also welcome to come along the next meetup and paint your own stone to take home with you. There are also many ways to get involved with the group outside of gardening. While you will see more and more creative sustainability activities to get involved in. We’re immediately starting up educational workshops for the wider community and the work on putting together educational material for the upcoming community composting hub. If you are interested in composting or want to learn more about it while helping deliver an important community project, you are welcome to send us an email and volunteer. We’ll soon be putting an action team together for the composting hub so this is the perfect time to get involved. Composting in our high-rise dominated neighbourhood is a big challenge, so the sooner we can create a composting option for Southbankers, the sooner we can start reducing the very harmful methane gasses emitted by food scraps sent to landfill. Speaking of composting, we’ve been finding more and more food waste dumped on the two test concrete tubs we have for composting, which are meant to be used by group members only. These tubs are already full as you will see from the “no more composting” signs and the pea straw covering them. We found whole lettuce heads and other food waste unsuitable for composting on top of the pea straws recently, and it all ended up in a plastic bag and the waste bin, sadly. While we genuinely appreciate the intention to reduce your environmental footprint, ignoring our instructions is causing more harm than good so please refrain from bringing down any more food scraps until the composting hub is up and running. Finally, remember to tune in to Keep Victoria Beautiful’s YouTube page (search: “KVB Sustainable Cities Awards”) on Thursday, November 12 at 8pm, to watch the virtual 2020 Sustainable Cities Awards Ceremony, where we might be named a winner for the environment award, bringing another victory to Southbank! About the group: A solutions-focused group of Southbank residents working to bring positive change in sustainability practices and education to our neighborhood, while building a wonderful community of like-minded people. 2019 Environment Melbourne Award winner • Reach us at: [email protected] or facebook.com/SouthbankSustainabilityGroup