One action at a time

One action at a time By Artemis Pattichi We know that a big part of combating climate change and apathy, is helping connect people with solutions they can start implementing themselves straight away. We also know that knowledge sharing, encouraging community building, and taking many small actions that improve our environmental impact, play a big part in reducing our collective carbon footprint. We try to make sure this is reflected in all our educational activities, that we always help connect people with solutions and help them think differently on how to cover their needs, as we believe we did with two big educational events we held in April – a “DIY Green Cleaning” workshop and Melbourne Knowledge Week (MKW) tours. Beyond these two much-anticipated activities, our leadership team and other volunteers have been hard at work behind the scenes, leading and delivering various projects. This includes openly-available educational material with local solutions you’ll soon be able to access online, reaching out and collaborating with other organisations for knowledge sharing, and making the garden look impeccable in the lead up to MKW, including visually upgrading our notice board. DIY Green Cleaning workshop We had a lot of interest and anticipation for our recent DIY Green Cleaning workshop with expert Doris Pozzi on April 17. This workshop was made possible through a “Connected Communities” grant from the City of Melbourne. During this sold-out event, participants got a short masterclass on natural ingredients for cleaning by Doris, before proceeding with making their own dishwasher tablets, laundry detergent and liquid general cleaner using nothing but natural ingredients found in bulk stores or supermarkets. We all got to play scientist for a few minutes and had lots of fun making these 100 per cent environmentally safe cleaning supplies; pretty easily too under the expert guidance of Doris, our educational activities champion Sarah Horner and one of Southbank Sustainability Group’s (SSG’s) superstars Sara Riva. During the workshop we were lucky to have local plastic pollution fighter, Filomena, give out a number of high-quality reusable produce bags she made out of unused sheets and op-shop donated fabrics. It was all part of Filomena’s mission of sewing and giving away 1000 of these bags, in her effort to combat single-use plastic waste. If you didn’t get a chance to secure a seat for the DIY Green Cleaning workshop but would like to receive recipes for green cleaning solutions, just email us. Melbourne Knowledge Week 2021 participation During the week of April 26 to May 2, we hosted two weekend guided tours and put together a self-guided tour people could take in their own time and pace, accessing content through QR codes. Both types of tours focused on sharing our journey and recipe for success, encouraging people across our city to start a community or projects like ours anywhere, making climate action feel manageable and even fun in the process. We decided to extend the self-guided tour by a few extra weeks after receiving a few requests by people who didn’t have the chance to do the tour during this week. Look for the wooden labels with red strings tied around them in Boyd’s front garden, or scan the tour QR code in the notice board to get you started and have the garden share its secrets. Upcoming During May, we will focus our work on delivering the community Composting Hub and we are opening this project up to new volunteers. If you’re interested in joining the team that will deliver Southbank’s first composting hub, and one of Melbourne’s only ungated community composting facilities, please email us using the subject “Composting Hub volunteer”. We welcome all skill sets and experience, as this project has a number of activities with which to help. This month’s activities will also focus on the garden’s upkeep and organising the next educational workshop. As always, none of these actions, which we know have many ripple effects, would have been made possible without the resourceful and inspiring work of our group’s members and volunteers. Every day special Southbankers are putting in their free time to make this a better place for everyone and ensure a home for the next generation one action at a time. Next meetups Our next group meetups will be Saturdays May 8 and 22, 10am to 12pm at Boyd. Email us to join or look for the registration link on our Facebook page. As always, we welcome everyone to our meetups. About the group: A solutions-focused group of Southbankers working to bring positive change in sustainability practices and education to our neighbourhood, while building a wonderful community of like-minded people. Free to join. 2019 Environment Melbourne Award & KVB 2020 Sustainable Cities Environment Award winner •