Open Day at our residential home in Sunshine

On Sunday 10th of October 2010, Global Day of Action on Climate Change, we held a Sustainability Open Day at our residential home in Sunshine. Our aim was to show the community that the people we support are also taking actions towards sustainable living and making a difference to the environment.

10/10 is a global campaign to cut carbon emissions by 10% a year, starting 2010. For this, we introduced the concept of carbon footprint to our residents at Sunshine and asked them to make small changes to their daily habits to reduce their footprint further. The carbon calculator we used focused on five key major areas – electricity, gas, water, waste and transport.

These are the actions that the residents are most proud of:

We have been growing our own vegetables for some time. Very little produce is purchased from the shops as we can enjoy organically and freshly grown vegetables from our own garden.

"We have changed as many lights as possible to energy efficient light bulbs and we turn off the lights when we are not in the room."

"We separate off food scraps from general waste rubbish by having a separate box on the kitchen bench. We then take the scraps out to the compost bin to make compost for the veggie garden."

"We have been separating our recyclable materials in a plastic box which then get taken out to the wheelie bin."

"We try not to bring any plastic shopping bags home by using green bags whenever we can."

"We switch appliances off at the power point when they are not in use to save energy."

"We keep the thermostat between 18-22 degrees in winter and no less than 26 degrees in summer."

"Some of us do walk regularly and take transport, which lowers our environmental impact."

"We do full loads of washing and use the clothes line instead of the dryer whenever we can."

"We have reduced our water use by using shower timers and changing to low flow showerheads."

Click here to read the article about our SustainAbility House open Day in the Brimbank Weekly.

Click here to view some of the photos from the day.