Sustainability Street
Institute Inc.
228 Kerr Street
Fitzroy VIC 3065
+61 3 9416 4293
+61 3 9417 2859
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about Sustainability Street
local people, local communities, local action
The central idea of the Sustainability Street is a Village out there! People get together as local communities, learn a bit about ecological sustainability and then do what they can to encourage, assist or 'teach' other individuals or other communities to join the groundswell for ecological sustainability.
Sustainability Street program was designed and developed by us, and basically represents a little bit of all the communities we've had the great joy and honour of working with for the last 20 years. Sustainability Street is helping people transform their homes and neighbourhoods into sustainable green environments.
Over 100 communities in NSW and Victoria have since embraced the Sustainability Street Approach. IProjects are imminenet in Brisbane, South Australia and Perth. We are negotiating with the Tianjin and Nankai Environmental Protection Bureaus in China who are also considering this and other Vox Bandicoot programs.
The Sustainability Street Approach The Sustainability Street Approach describes a human scale, four-stage process which engenders critical environmental action experience and learning as a foundation for local people developing new and meaningful local relationships … and a new sense of meaning and purpose based on shaping the future. The simplicity of access combined with the profundity of its objectives has excited interest and imagination around Australia and internationally.
The engine room of the Approach is a bite size pedagogy, described on page 15 of the manual, and is known as Mulch, Grow, Harvest, Sow ... or ... Learning, Doing&Measuring, Celebrating and Teaching, influencing or reaching out to others. Sow, in a nutshell, encourages experienced participants “to teach” (share, discuss, report, assist, mentor) other individuals or communities about ecological sustainability and the concomitant sustainable living practices.
The program works on 2 levels:
Sustainability in the home
Sustainability in the community
The word 'street' is just a concept, a metaphor and refers to any geographically or socially connected group of people. A Sustainability Street community could be made up indeed of people from down the street and across the road, or it could be made up of people from an existing group. It has been basically defined as about how far hyhou'd care to walk to sit and have a cuppa and discuss your worms with others.
Communities are informed about the program at information sessions and are invited to participate.
Participating communities are then guided through a process where they learn about Sustainability and learn how to organise themselves as a group.
This 6 month training period is loosely organised around 4 stages called mulch (learn), sow (plan), grow (do) and harvest (teach). Outcomes to Date Indicative results demonstrate three key things:
That individual and household sustainable living behaviour has “improved” in terms of resource use by as much as 30%. (ie: reductions in water, waste and energy).
Secondly, that communal sustainability projects which could not have been imagined or hoped for by agencies have been successfully developed by small groups of local people, including community garden projects, demonstration water tanks in schools and neighbourhood houses, a food co-op and groups who have even organised local sustainability festivals to engage with others in their neighbourhood.
Thirdly, on the human scale level, people have reported significant satisfaction in making connections with others in their “village”.
Click on the links below to download Sustainability Street publications:
The New Earth Invite- Download to find how you can connect your sustainability street globally and gain resources from businesses to help the work of your group.
The Sustainability St project has been building better relationships with each other and building a much better relationship with the natural world are the greatest challenges of human history - Sustainability Street ... a new reason to be neighbours.
Sustainability Street Approach 
Street Report Volume One: Edition One
