"Sustainability Street - It's A Village Out There", is the new community manual which outlines the innovative social and environmental educational elements of the SSA, including the Seven Quick Steps To Building Your Village.   

In 2009, the SSA and the Train The Mentor training program have been focussed on low cost or cost free, independently doable micro-local programs.  The DIY Sustainability Street Village.

The SSA is unique in the world.  Over 200 Sustainability Street Villages have emerged across around Australia, often fostered by local government.We all know why we must live in harmony with the Earth - the SSA is a recipe for how we can.

Three Price Point

1. Pay the Recommended Retail:

• The base price of the SSA Manual is $50.00 inc. GST --- for which you will also receive stacks of other resources such as newsletter templates, graphics to use, media release text suggestions, etc ... NB:  The SSA manual is in PDF form and will be sent, with all the other resources, on a CD.

2. Pay Postage and handling Only:

• If you are a student or otherwise find it difficult to pay, please request a copy free --- email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it --- explain your circumstances, if that's OK, and we will send you a copy on CD.  If you are able to send $10 to cover postage and handling that'd help, but if not, that's OK too.
• Or, if you are a licensed program partner*, you can ask for a copy free of charge.  We'd ask you to forward $10 for postage and handling

3. Donate More If You are able:

• To assist the broader, ongoing work of the Sustainability Street Institute Inc, we would gratefully accept your added contribution.
  

How to make Payments to the Sustainability Street Institute

Send electronic bank transfer to ...

Account Name: Sustainability Street Institute Incorporated

Bank: mecu Limited

BSB: 803-140

Account Number: 70586511

Then, send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with details for your receipt.

The Institute, on behalf of Planet Earth and its Communities, thanks you.

 Sustainability Street: it’s a village out there.

Caring for nature & for community – by inviting nature & community to care for us.

  ... provides a much craved entrée into our deepest sense of humanity and how that relates to the profoundly beautiful, yet troubled ecology of the Earth!  It does all this with an everyday, suburban accessibility and a good dose of humour.  You’d have to admit that’s different.

Since 2001, around 200 local Sustainability Street Villages have been fostered around Australia, using this manual as their first step to reacquainting with their neighbours then joining together to joyfully engage in the single greatest challenge in human history … living and working for ecological sustainability … and in the process finding a deeper sense of self and meaning, right at home in the ‘burbs!

The aim of the book is to foster and enable the reader to set up their own Sustainability Street Community or Village.  The book provides deep environmental and social insights, but also the practical tools necessary for people to create their own eco-sustainability led communities and to inspire each other along the journey.  It is totally not another 101 tips to save the world  The SSA book with thorough originality combines the urgency of  ‘Climate Code Red’, (Spratt & Sutton) with the inspiration and insight of ‘Blessed Unrest’ (Hawkens) with the joyous beauty of “Life On Earth” (Attenborough) … all glued together with a liberal doses of optimism and humour … fostering positive, “rewarding” lifestyle choices and action on a local level.   A sort of urban equivalent of that other great gift to the world, LandCare.

Sustainability Street has, for five years, been putting into practice what leading eco-speakers such as ex- Greenpeace CEO Paul Gilding, Paul Erlich and former CSIRO climate scientist Graeme Pearman are now saying, action must take place at a community, grass-roots level.   It needs to been informed by sociology, psychology and deep human values

The “Sustainability Street; it’s a village out there” book is “finished”, although it never can be.  The SSA is/has been constantly evolving due to its “action research” nature.  Sustainability Street communities, and hence this book, are constantly adopting new ideas and providing fresh insights.  An important premise of the Approach is the idea that we are all learners and that we are all teachers, which has, in turn, given rise to the now famous Sustainability Street CommUniversity. 

The SSA provides people with “trainer wheels” for social engagement and ecological sustainability understanding.   While the Sustainability Street Approach has a robust, well thought through structure, built around an eight session "course of study", to help people get underway, ultimately a Sustainability Street group is “defined by and thrives according” to the ideas and energy of its participants.  It’s a reflection, not an imposition … as so much mainstream sustainability campaign, education, environment group books and government literature stuff is. 

The SSA is proud to be the "guide beside, not the sage on stage" - the difference between being told or being  involved.

It has been noticed that, eventually, Sustainability Street can change from being something a community “does”, to being something a community “is”. 

 The book is about 150 pages in length, has a plethora of photographs, graphic images, diagrams, case studies and comprises four sections …

a.     Philosophy, pedagogy, theory …

                                               i.     the state of the environment

                                             ii.     human aspiration & the trompe l’oeil which is consumerism,

                                            iii.     culture, responsibility, reward.

                                            iv.     imagination vis knowledge

                                             v.     little things are important – but are they enough?

b.     Don’t Agonise … Organise!

                                               i.     Creating community connections

                                             ii.     7 quick steps to setting up a Sustainability Street Village

                                            iii.     The Southern Cross of Optimism: Five huge reasons for hope!

                                            iv.     The top 137 ways to build community

c.     The SSA Eco•Social Course!

                                               i.     The sustainable living base course – over 8 sessions.

                                             ii.     Mulch, Grow, Harvest, Sow … or  … Learn, Do, Celebrate, Reach-Out

                                            iii.     More than tips! Cut through, personalised and prioritised understanding of Waste, Water Energy.   The SSA learning shortcuts

                                            iv.     The true purpose  … the “Sow” phase.  Reach out, inspire, engage, teach … change culture.

                                             v.     A selection of the local, human scale, amazingly imaginative projects which SSA Villagers around Australia have devised and delivered to make a real difference environmentally and, even more importantly, in terms of educating and inspiring others.

d.     Literally Way More than 101 Tips

                                               i.     Essays and debates of interest eg;

1.     Radioactivity still fades your genes! Nuclear no answer to climate change,

2.     Join the Climate Change Sceptics Flat Earth Club!  Not!

3.     Forget Carbon! It’s about species silly.

                                             ii.     Carbonopoly – insights into the carbon economy

                                            iii.     Sustainopoly:  Play like you own the planet.  An interactive board game for round the kitchen table.  EduTainment! and top fun for the whole fam.

e.     Plus case studies of Sustainability Street groups around Australia, connections to the groups which make up the huge, non-ideological, leaderless grassroots movement which Paul Hawkens calls “the Earth’s immune response” kicking in and the largest human movement ever – that no-one saw coming.

The basic DNA of the SSA is proven to be, environmentally effective, community enhancing and importantly, fun.

The book and the SSA  was described by Dr. Colin Hocking of Victoria University, as a premier “transformative” community environmental education and action pedagogy.  He conducted a three-year study of 19 Sustainability Street Villages throughout the north of Melbourne and reported that people achieved best in the world, social and environmental outcomes including one particular (Beacon) community which accomplished an astounding 49% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, among many environmental success.  (Summary of the study report attached)

So much environmental sustainability material published and available is ”transmissive” rather than “transformative”.  Top down.  From the “experts” and delivered as the deigned advice to the punters.  Even Al Gore’s film/book ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is information based and then concludes with “change your light bulbs”.  People who are ready are capable of so much more and have the capacity to be an amazing inspiration to others.  It appeals to people who are really very ready to do something, to do more than 101 tips and to ready to explore the values and relationships in their lives and how connecting creatively with others can be so deeply rewarding and also to environmentally effective and above all, it can virally influence other people to make similar critical moment and visceral life change.

Sustainability Street  starts from the premise that everybody actually has a deep, deep understanding about the urgency of this time in human history and our faltering relationship to the planet’s natural systems.  People are not stupid. 

It purports that the best reaction for ‘ordinary” people is a social response whereby together with neighbours, family, play group, workmates, whomever we learn what we can, mine our imagination and build a local practical response.  As well as the results noted above, local groups of Sustainability Street people around Australia have developed community gardens, helped each other plant backyard vegies, set up food-cooperatives and in one celebrated Sustainability Street village in Wollongong, the folks knocked down their back fences to create a big communal space for vegies, chooks children, BBQs, fruit trees … and pride of place.

Apart from benefit to community and nature, the greatest gift is to participants … because action and involvement is a salve.  The imminent portents of the ecological imbalance we have created are chilling.  Joining with others to do the best possible is soothing.  It’s good for our souls, good for our children.  And arguably, it’s the best possible per capita healing for the Earth, which governments, economy, systems, media, the law and the wider society are just not bringing about quickly enough, … although, with enough Beacon communities, might just reach a healing tipping point in time.

Selection of Items from the Sustainability Street Glossary,

• Beacon Communities.  A Sustainability Street Village, who by the very fact of getting together and living differently, out there in the ‘burbs, have the potential to viscerally influence both local and wider culture.  Think model behaviour, fashion and the deep, core human imperative of social emulation for survival upon which we have relied on for millennia of millennia.
• Definition of Sustainability Street … at one end of the spectrum, a basic training program in sustainable living around the home and the neighbour hood, through to, at the other end of the spectrum, whatever the imagination of a local group of people dreams up …. And some extraordinary dreams have been realised all around Australia by Sustainability Street Villages.
• Transformation … and fostering in the community a re-evaluation of aspirations, culture and behaviour, drives from two aspects
• Deep Sustainability:  The SSA goes way beyond 101 tips, guilt, fear, and the soapbox.  It thoroughly fosters optimism and imagination.  Deep sustainability is wound up in the so called 1, 2, 4, 8, 5, 2, 3; the framework or core of the SSA, as enunciated below.

and

• Dynamic Capacity Building:  Self identification and a sense of belonging are powerful sociological and psychological human drivers.  A growing contingent of people are concerned and want a visceral, authentic, practical, effective and enjoyable path to travel to reach ecological sustainability.  Noted US sociologist, Robert Putnam, an influence in the development of the SSA has said that in the USA more people watch friends than have friends.  The Australian corollary might be that more people watch neighbours than talk to the neighbours.  Yet social epidemiologists tell us that local social connections can add ten healthy years to lifespan.  The relationships that local people build and cherish provide the foundation for hope, imagination, comradeship and above all – amazing environmental accomplishments …  and a fantastic model for others – the so called SSA Beacon Community!

The 1, 2, 4, 8, 5, 2, 3 of Sustainability Street;.

• One purpose … Coming Home
• Peter Dombrovskis, photographer to the Franklin River said “people think that going to the wilderness is getting away from it all.  It’s not.  It is coming back to it all, back to what is meaningful …
• The SSA weaves the protection of and wonderment at the miracle of Biological Diversity through its entire corpus being, that and promoting reconnecting physically with nature …
• Two  Greatest Imperatives In All of Human History
• To get along better with each other, locally and globally … and to get along much better with all other life forms, again, both locally and globally …
• Four Iterative, self informing, locally owned and nourishing stages of personal and group growth and accomplishment
• Mulch, Grow, Harvest, Sow … or … learn, do, celebrate teach.
• Eight Principles
• Such notions as … spurning the doom and gloom, seeking out the good news, avoiding the holier than thou soapbox and taking time to contemplate a clean, green, sustainable future … because we have to believe it to see it.
• Five Beacons/blockers
• The SSA has synthesised the whole, complex environmental “debate” to five broad domains … which are beacons if we choose to act, blockers if we ignore.
• Two Conduits … think local and believe deeply in our capacity to influence others
• Three Areas Of Daily Focussed Effort … waste, water and energy … we all make dozens, scores, hundreds of Earth Decisions every day, week, month … waste, water and energy are at the root of every decision and connected to the giant natural systems.

Other empowering, optimistic and inspiring aspects of the SSA;iavot book …

• The Learning Shortcuts; conserving waste, water and energy smarter, not harder!
• The Southern Cross of Optimism:  five huge, axiomatic and uplifting reasons for hope.
• The ecological•fingerprint (appraised and endorsed by Dr. David Suzuki)
• The coming home stories, insights into nature that would even bring a tear of joy to David Attenborough’s eye.
• The wikiSSA, the accompanying website (underway) which will be based on web 2 social network and virtual community technology, allowing people to educate, inspire and broadly engage on line

For Further Insight

• Visit … www.sustainabilitystreet.org.au
• Google Sustainability Street and find references to local communities across Australia and the world.
• Visit Ian McBurney's www.liveecological -  .  A former colleague and an SSA practitioner who fostered the establishment of dozens of local SSA Villages over five years.

• ·      Watch “Blessed Unrest”, by Paul Hawken.  It is an exploration of why the “biggest movement” in human history got underway and why no-one saw it coming. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1fiubmOqH4

• Google UK Sustainability Commissioner, Paul Davies, who recently came to Australia in part to research the SSA and the eco•fingerprint for applicability in the United Kingdom.