First published in The Age

Too hard for the politicians? In one  town unlikely allies are fighting climate change and winning.

SO FAR, the carbon trading debate has been cast as a battle between greedy businesses on one side and rabid greenies on the other. That’s not how it works in Castlemaine.

There, under the Maine’s Power scheme, the four major employers in the region have quietly teamed up with the local sustainability group and CSIRO to slash their ecological footprints. The employers are committed to cutting their greenhouse emissions by 30 per cent by 2010 (from 2006 levels) and working towards zero net emissions by 2020.

Together, the big four – Don KRC, Flowserve, Victoria Carpets and Mount Alexander Hospital – consume about half the shire’s electricity and natural gas. “They also employ about 2000 people and without them, our economy would collapse,” says Dean Bridgfoot, co-ordinator at Mount Alexander Sustainability Group.

MASG founded the project 18 months ago, launching it in February 2008. “We went to (the employers) and said, ‘You’re crucial to the town and we want you to stay here. We’re also concerned about climate change and we want to take action,’ ” Bridgfoot says.

He stressed their common goals and the businesses were receptive. “It was important that they could see that we were going to listen, be respectful and take their position seriously.”

The project is part of CSIRO’s Sustainable Communities Initiative, which promotes regional action through partnerships between business, government and local groups.

But Maine’s Power isn’t just about greening the town. With higher electricity prices on the way, the project also aims to secure the region’s electricity supply and the future of local industry.

The Mount Alexander shire relies on manufacturing for much of its employment, but it’s a long way from the power generators. Nearly one-fifth of its power is lost in transmission from the Latrobe Valley. The project began with a study of energy use and needs at each site. Then, CSIRO’s experts analysed technology options for the facilities, from solar panels and wind turbines to onsite gas-powered cogeneration (which makes both heat and electricity).

Soon, the scientists will hand over the final report and it will be time for action. The four employers must decide what investment they’ll make.

“What’s good for the environment is usually good for business,” says Bill Youl, manager at Don KRC. “We’ve approached it that way.” The smallgoods manufacturer is the biggest employer in the shire, making up to 1000 tonnes of hams, salamis, sausages and bacon every week.

“It’s an industry that has environmental impacts,” Youl admits, “but it also does a lot for the local community, in terms of employment. We’re keen to make sure we have a sustainable business.”

Don KRC is planning to expand its Castlemaine operations after closing factories in Altona and Spearwood in Western Australia. The company will double production but anticipates that its water use will barely increase. Power-wise, CSIRO’s research suggests that gas-fired cogeneration could satisfy the firm’s electricity and heat needs, while slicing its CO2 emissions.

CSIRO’s expertise has been crucial to the scheme’s success so far. “We’ve had some really eminent people looking through our factory,” Youl says. “It helps you be confident about decisions when you know you’ve got the best in the world giving you advice.”

For Victoria Carpets, the research has shown that cogeneration would be the cheapest strategy for cutting emissions. The regional spinning mill produces wool and wool-blend yarns to supply its Dandenong factory. Mill manager Tony Breslin enthuses about the co-operative process but admits the company has recently become hesitant about its next step.

New carpet is a deferrable expense and since the financial downturn, sales have fallen. That will make any eco investment harder to make. “These last four to five months have created a fair degree of uncertainty,” Breslin says.

The Mount Alexander Shire council will be hoping they decide to go ahead with it. The Maine’s Power project is a key plank of the council’s ambitious green goal – in 2006 it committed to cutting the region’s carbon footprint by 30 per cent by 2010 (from 2000 levels) and to plan for carbon neutrality by 2020.

“It’s a big ship to turn around,” says new Mayor Philip Schier. They’re challenging targets, but there is strong local support. The sustainability group boasts more than 800 members. “It’s an exciting community to be involved with, particularly because the major industries are willing to take it on,” Schier says.

Partly, the council’s policy is about self-preservation – by pursuing early climate change action, the community will adapt ahead of the pack. But it also offers a model for other regions and levels of government. “It’s got to be a local, regional, national and global approach,” Schier says. “Unless you get in there and start tackling it, you are only forever going to be saying it’s somebody else’s problem.”

At Don KRC, cutting emissions isn’t just a sacrifice for the greater good. “It sends the right messages and it makes monetary sense as well,” says Youl. “In the future, companies will see sustainability as one of their key business planks and not something you bolt on the side to keep the community happy. It’s really about what’s good for your business.”

Mount Alexander Sustainability Group, CSIRO

First published in The Age

An Australian community group is putting the backyard at the forefront of environmental change.

The yard is swarming with straw hats. It is a sunny day and people are working hard. A handsome, muscular man in khaki is wielding a pickaxe. As soon as I see him I think of Jamie Durie, but there’s no TV crew here.

This isn’t Backyard Blitz, it’s a permablitz. This is how it works: an enthusiastic group of volunteers come to your house and donate equipment, plants and seeds. They work with you to transform your garden into an organic food-producing Eden. You don’t even have to supply lunch – they’ll bring that, too.

Permablitz is a catchy contraction of permaculture and backyard blitz. Basically, it’s a good old-fashioned working bee with a twist.

Today we are attacking Fiona and Anthony’s place in Heidelberg West, outer suburban Melbourne. The house is square, smallish and rendered in cream, with a corrugated-iron roof. There is a soccer field bordering it on one side, from where a few large gums overlook the fence. There are vegie patches in the front yard. The backyard is open, grassy and strewn with debris.

Fiona looks at her lawn and says, “It’s just a mess.” She’s right. There are mounds of gravel and dirt and plastic. Newspapers are soaking in a green frog pond and a shed is in pieces against the wall. The washing is still on the Hills Hoist.

The first blitz was held more than 18 months ago for Vilma, a 70-year-old El Salvadorian woman. “It was a beautiful day,” says Permablitz founder Dan Palmer. “When we arrived there was a small plot of lawn and when we left it was garden. A year later, it’s still pumping and it’s brought a lot of joy.”

It all came about when Palmer crossed paths with a South American community group in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs.

Young environmental skill met with co-operative spirit and, since then, permablitzes have been held all over the city. For now, Palmer does much of the organisation, but there’s a website where people can find information and organise their own blitzes.

“It would be nice if it became kind of viral,” he says. And his wish could be coming true – the blitzing bug recently spread to backyards in Sydney and New Zealand.

According to the website, a blitz aims to create or add to edible gardens; share skills about permaculture and sustainable living; build community networks; and have fun.

“Permaculture is a way of designing the places we live to be sustainable, diverse and abundant by working with nature rather than fighting against it,” Palmer says. “It covers every aspect of a healthy sustainable life: food, water, waste, shelter, local community and economy – you name it.”

A well-designed, efficient garden can provide lots of food using fewer resources than typically go into supermarket produce. So growing your own vegies is a practical response to environmental problems such as climate change.

A few weeks prior to each blitz there is a planning day, where the owners and volunteers come up with a design for the garden.

Today, there’s a wish list of tasks posted next to an old bath tub. We are going to build more garden beds and put a pond in the front yard. One shed is to be moved to the backyard and another erected for a fox-proof chook pen.

“The plans change every hour on the hour,” Anthony tells me as debate rages over where to put the shed. I wander to the front yard and bump into a lengthy discussion over whether to buy a pond liner or to use a decaying green wading pool.

All is resolved by the time we tuck into pesto, tabouli and salad, brought by the volunteers. While we eat, Fiona tells us about her grey-water system and her long-term plans for the garden. Palmer checks the wish list: things are looking good. We are well-fed, inspired and enthusiastic to continue work.

Volunteers come and go as the afternoon progresses. But exactly who are they? Fiona confides that she knows only “about 10 per cent” of the people filling her yard. “I couldn’t have got this many people if I’d paid them,” Anthony tells me.

Initially, Palmer says, there were more people from the South American community, but the demographic has changed as blitzes move around different suburbs. People in their 20s are the majority, but there are people of all ages. Many of the regulars have completed a permaculture design course and are keen to put their new-found skills into practice.

But not only people who’ve studied permaculture come along. Others just think it’s a great idea and are interested in learning about gardening. Tanya, a budding documentary filmmaker and permablitz veteran, is one of those. She tells me that she loves the sense of community, skill-sharing and cross-generational support.

At the end of the day, the wish list hasn’t quite been fulfilled. The pond and garden beds are finished. The chook shed is up but roofless and the other shed remains unmoved. Despite this, Fiona is thrilled with the progress. “It’s just the beginning…but we’ve done so much. It would have taken ages to do all this by ourselves.”

Fiona and Anthony aren’t the only ones who are excited. With environmental issues entrenched as front-page news, Palmer says that interest in permaculture is growing exponentially. “Right now, there are a lot of really fired-up people getting involved.”

So, keep your green thumbs at the ready: a blitz could be coming to a backyard near you.

What is permaculture?

Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren coined the term “permaculture” (short for both permanent agriculture and permanent culture) in 1978, in their book Permaculture One. They spelt out a revolutionary food production theory, in which growers create their own integrated ecosystem, each aspect helping the others to flourish and reducing overall resource use. Since then, permaculture principles have blossomed all over the world.

Five permaculture gardening tips

Crop rotation: boost soil nutrients and avoid pest and disease problems by changing plant groups in order: first legumes, then cabbages, tomatoes, onions and root vegetables, and so on.

Grey water: if you use mild vegetable soaps for washing, recycle the water onto your garden.

Weed management: cover garden beds with mulch to control weeds.

Companion plants: grow herbs and flowers throughout your garden. Mixed plantings will confuse potential pests.

Indigenous plants: native species provide habitat and food for indigenous wildlife.

Source: Rosemary Morrow, Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture, Kangaroo Press, NSW, 1993, page 8

First published in The Age

In a new take on reducing emissions, it seems carbon trading, like charity, begins at home.

Neesh Wray and Shaun Murray have just one low-energy light switched on in their Yarraville weatherboard home. It’s illuminating the cosy living room, where a small band of locals are drinking tea and talking about catastrophic climate change.

A meeting of the Westside Carbon Rationing Action Group has just begun. “We see it as an emergency,” says Murray, discussing new evidence of melting Arctic sea ice. But that’s enough talk of gloom and doom for the 32-year-old music teacher. “That’s the climate rave done,” he says. “Now, moving on, we’re here to do something about it.”

In Canberra, the Federal Government is absorbing Professor Ross Garnaut’s final advice on an emissions trading scheme for big business polluters. In Melbourne, neighbours are taking carbon cutting into their own hands and homes.

Carbon rationing action groups, or CRAGs, were first formed in Britain. There, after one year, a survey of seven groups showed that members had reduced their footprints by almost a third.

Here’s how it works: friends or neighbours gather and calculate their carbon emissions – usually covering electricity and gas, as well as car use and flights. CRAG members then set individual reduction targets and meet monthly, sharing tips, stories and progress reports. Some groups even fix fines for exceeding cap, to be paid to an eco charity.

The Westside CRAG has not been so strict. It has met half a dozen times, chatting about how to cut gas and power use, and about the embodied energy in red meat and dairy products.

Murray and Wray have slashed their own carbon pollution and plan to keep improving their habits and their house. “A huge amount of our emissions are the actions of individuals in the way we consume,” Murray says. “I think in order not to be a hypocrite it’s important that your own life reflects the change that you want to see in society.”

Tonight, Steve, a Footscray postman and new member of the group, has brought along a stack of bills. He hands them to Murray, who keys the numbers into an online emissions calculator. As he taps away, conversation simmers over the best brands of green power, the high electricity use of kettles and the efficiency of laptops compared to desktop computers.

Wray explains how she and Murray have cut their electricity consumption to less than a 10th of the national average. A gizmo called a “power mate” helped them work out which appliances use the most power. Another CRAG member, Terry, has done the same in his home and was shocked at the guzzling by electrical goods set to standby. “Fourteen per cent of my power usage was standby power. I was amazed,” he says.

Westside isn’t the only group of its kind in Melbourne. Across town, the Manningham Council has its own CRAG. Once a month, about 50 residents occupy the council chambers and learn how to make their homes more efficient. Conservation officer Bill Pemberton organises meetings on issues from insulation and double-glazing to green power and carbon offsetting. The council has already facilitated a bulk discount purchase of solar power systems for CRAG members and is doing the same for solar hot water.

The attendees’ carbon footprints vary, from well above average to very low. Pemberton says he has seen people “switch on” to the issues, and is sure their next results will be lower. “One of the major benefits of CRAGs is sharing of knowledge,” he says, and the sharing spreads beyond the group. “There are people who have gone to their church and now they are setting up audits of their church facilities.”

In central Victoria, the Mount Alexander Sustainability Group – boasting about 700 eco-minded residents – is also about to start a CRAG. Committee member Felicity Faris believes CRAGs are the perfect approach for local climate change action. “It’s really a good model for community participation because it’s supportive and it’s self-regulating, and people are working towards something within a group that makes them feel valued.”

She is planning cash penalties for CRAG members who do not meet their pledge. The money will go to retrofitting efficient technologies at low-income households in the shire. “We’re aiming for a 20% (emission) reduction for each person or household,” she says. “We hope there won’t be any defaults so, hopefully, at the end we’ll be scratching around for some money for the retrofitting anyway.”

Back in Yarraville, Steve’s calculation is almost in. He sounds a little nervous. “How good am I? Or should that be how bad am I?” he asks. Taking green power into account, which cuts electricity off his scorecard, he registers 4.6 tonnes of carbon emissions in the past year. That’s about half the Australian average under this model of calculation, which excludes food and other purchases of goods and services.

Still, Steve is sure he can do better. The group offer suggestions, from adding extra insulation and sealing draughts, to buying a thermometer so he knows how hot his living room is. “I’ve been overusing my gas heater,” Steve says. “I’ll have to cut back on that.”

A key to the CRAG model is the calculation stage, which is often the first time people understand the link between their habits and their emissions. It can be otherwise hard to connect a decision to leave extra lights switched on with the electricity bill that comes months later.

Yet for the CRAG members the benefit of their new knowledge goes not only to the atmosphere, but also to the back pocket. Wray and Murray now spend more on their electricity connection fee than on consumption.

“For a lot of people it’s possible to make massive reductions in emissions,” Murray says. “If our household can reduce our emissions by 95% in two years, then why can’t government do something about it?”