Inner West is 2018 Sustainable Cities winner
Friday, 26 October 2018
The Inner West has taken out the 2018 Keep Australia Beautiful NSW Overall Sustainable Cities Award, with a combination of projects from the Inner West Council and the Addison Road Community Centre contributing to the win.
Inner West Council also took out the win in the Recycled Organics category, for its impressive range of organics programs, and was highly commended in the Waste Less Recycle More category for its “Clean Up Your Neighbourhood” program.
Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne said that the awards were a clear indication that Council’s commitment to environment and sustainability was paying dividends.
“Keep Australia Beautiful has been a champion of sustainability in Australia for over 45 years,” he said.
“To gain this recognition from them, shows that we are making real strides in our environmental journey.”
“We want every household in the inner west to be able to avoid, reuse, recycle or recover their food waste, and we want people to think about how they consume, from purchase to disposal.”
The Addison Road Community Centre in Marrickville was also awarded highly commended awards in the Renewable Energy category and in the Return and Earn Litter Prevention category.
“I would like to commend the Addison Road Community Centre, for their work in sustainability,” said Mayor Byrne.
“With the two organisations working together, we submitted enough high quality programs to compete in – and win – the overall Sustainable Cities award.
“What a great outcome for the inner west.”
“Congratulations also to this year’s other finalists for the ultimate Overall Sustainable Cities award, including Bayside, Canada Bay and Northern Beaches councils.”
Organics programs at Inner West Council start with the Food Fix waste avoidance program, which teaches participants how to make better use of the food they buy. A number of composting programs help urban inner west households to recycle their food waste, and food organics collection services help residents to avoid sending valuable food resources to landfill.
The Clean Our Neighbourhood program was born to reduce the number of reusable and repairable items being sent to landfill from the inner west. It includes garage sale events, repair cafes and education campaigns.
The Award, announced last week, recognises councils and volunteer projects that not only improve the environment but also the standard of living and well-being of urban communities.
For more detail on the programs, please see below. For a print quality image, contact the Communications team.
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Background
- Inner West Council’s win of the individual and overall awards acknowledged several of Council’s key environmental programs and initiatives, including:
- The Food Fix food waste avoidance program, which has engaged 260 households with 205 participants through 15 skills building workshops. Five hundred and forty five residents have participated in food waste avoidance activities or demonstrations.
- The Compost Collective, which has provided training and support for composting on common property across 96 sites and 399 households with an average diversion of 1.8kg of organic waste per household per week.
- The Compost Hut Trial, which involved 120 households taking 2.4 tonnes of food waste and scraps to a Council-managed ‘Compost Hut’ in two Council reserves. Ninety four per cent of survey respondents reported diverting all eligible waste from their red bin.
- The Compost Revolution program, which has engaged over 2,000 residents with a 50% discount on compost bins and worm farms, and online tutorials.
- The Food Organics collection service (FOO) to 220 unit blocks (5,200 apartments) in the Leichhardt area. The FOO service collected 106 tonnes of food waste in 2016 and 112 tonnes in 2017.
- A Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) collection service targeting 1,056 houses and apartments in the Marrickville area. The FOGO trial has collected 200 tonnes of food and garden waste in the first year of operation, and a little over 175 tonnes in the second year.
Clean our Neighbourhood It includes initiatives like Second Hand Saturday and the Garage Sale Trail, which both encourage residents to sell on their ‘trash’ and make it someone else’s ‘treasure’, and repair cafes which helped teach residents how to carry out simple repairs on household items. It also included local and regional campaigns to educate people about illegal dumping and using household bins correctly, and promotion of the Community Recycling Centre, which provides a drop off point for problem waste like paints and Ewaste.
For more information about available initiatives visit www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/less-waste/food
For further information, please contact Kate Walsh at kate.walsh@innerwest.nsw.gov.au.