Bathurst Community Climate Action Network

Energy Matters

I have just spent most of my weekend in the garden.
One of the many wonderful experiences in the garden is recycling the weeds and old plants back into a valuable resource for new growth and soil enhancement.

The wonderful news of a kitchen garden grant of $36,600 has just been has just been received. This was a joint submission from the School of Teacher (SOTE) Education at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, BCCAN and Rahamin and was an outcome of the Sustainability Conference hosted by SOTE at the end of October last year.
I have just finished uploading the news to the BCCAN web site, so perhaps this double entry is a bit redundant but is a link to this weeks blog about my dream.

The release of another poll today, shows a dramatic shift in public opinion against the federal government's preferred option of an emissions trading scheme in favour of a tree growing scheme put forward by the federal opposition.

During the week just gone, the ABC 7.30 program ran an intriguing series on the topic of population which concluded with a panel of experts from Tim Flannery to people with expertise in business, cities and planning.

The 3 R's of Sustainable Living.
My take on these R's is not quite the conventional one.

1. 1. Refuse (normally the word Reduce is used here)
2. 2. Reuse
3. 3. Recycle

I take a slightly different view of number 1 in that when one is faced with a purchase I am more easily reminded of Refusing to make that purchase rather than reducing my purchases.
It all comes down to the same thing in the end, but it is just easier for me to rember that and try to act on it.

Too long between blogs for me - New Year's Resolution number 1. Make my blog regular every week.
I have to admire Tracy who gets her newspaper article written on time every week for publication in the Advocate. It is an incredibly valuable service for the community and for BCCAN. I know this blog is not in the same category in terms of readership but if I hope to attract readers and more particularly, regular visistors to the BCCAN website, then some sort of consistencey is essential.
There - I have given myself a good talking too so we shall see.

Last week I attended Tech Trade 09 at the Wagga Wagga campus of CSU and as the theme of this conference was sustainability, I thought it was worth reporting on here and passing on some of the lessons being learned by CSU which are worth noting in our community too.
Issues which were covered included building, energy efficiency, renewable energy sytems, community awareness  , carbon polution abatement, food production, biodiversity, transport systems and water conservation.

Pedalling along many thoughts come and go.
I would like to share some of these with you in respect to sustainable living and Bathurst.
Darwin's 200 year anniversary, a book by local authors, Bland and Dangerfield, solar heated pools, pigs and bicycles are a few of these which come to mind.