The City of Gosnells was announced the state winner of the inaugural WA Sustainable Cities Program for 2008 at the awards ceremony held at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Center on 25 June.
Description
The City of Gosnells is the outstanding winner in the WA Sustainable Cities Program. The City also won the categories of Water and Energy Conservation and Youth Environment and entered the categories of Sustainable Community Partnership and Environmental Education. The projects submitted covered a wide range of sustainability issues including social, environmental and economic contributing to the City of Gosnells becoming this WA’s State Winner.
During the judging process the judges emphasized the significance of social sustainability and praised City of Gosnells for their achievements in this area.
The City has shown exceptional commitment in projects supporting the implementation of a skate park by providing a mentor who skates with the youth and facilitates the users' group and coordinates programs through the local youth center ‘The Cave’. The Cave provides free programs to offer the youth the opportunity to gain skills in areas such as multimedia, art, music, photography and also acts as a safe place for the youth to come and spend time. Mutimedia projects developed at The Cave have been entered into competitions with two winning major national awards.
The green house project was developed as part of the ‘switch your thinking campaign’ and included the renovation of a 1970s home in Maddington. The renovation showed what a normal home in the area could achieve in terms of water and energy conservation by making small changes.
It included simple ideas such as the installation of windows in areas to enhance or deflect the heat, rain water tanks for toilet water, vegetable gardens, native plants and many more easy ideas that can be adopted into homes.
City of Gosnells now goes on to represent WA at the National Awards in October.
L-R Mrs Olwen Searle JP (Mayor City of Gosnells) and the Hon. David Templeman (Minister for the Environment; Climate Change)
Winners! The City of Gosnells project staff celebrate their win.
Other category winners were:
Sustainable Community Partnership: Midland Brick
Midland Brick has developed sustainable community partnerships with businesses within the industry, community organisations and the general public to implement the Return Recycle Rebuild project.
Return Recycle Rebuild is a reciprocal program which involves making it easy for the building industry and public to recycle unused or demolished brick and tiles by having the waste collected by the Midland Magpie trucks and areas where bricks and tiles can be dumped to be recycled or reused.
L-R: Keiran McNamara (Director General
Department of Environment and Conservation), Tom Guthrie General Manager of Midland Brick
Environmental Education: Kalgoorlie Boulder Urban Landcare Group
The Kalgoorlie Boulder Urban Landcare Group impressed the judges with the ‘Wallop a Weed competition by educating through action.
The “Wallop a Weed” is popular annual competition which is run to get rid of the invasive weed known as Caltrop. A bounty is offered at 50 cents per kilogram and other prizes are also offered, with over 3.2 tonnes of Caltrop being collected so far.
The communities become involved in the competition and at the same time are being educated on the destructive weed and how to get rid of it.
L-R: KABC Deputy Chair Virginia Scott presents Environmental Education award to David Gleeson
Baldivis showed tremendous commitment by conserving 19.79 hectares of forest to be used as an education tool for school children and the community alike while much of the surrounding area was being urbanised.
The project includes possum trapping, the insertion of cockatoo nesting areas near the treetops, tree planting, rehabilitation of the wetlands, feral bee control, weed management and many other exciting and evolving projects.
L-R: Keiran McNamara (Director General Department of Environment and Conservation) Imogen Calverley, Josh Lambert and Judith Hill
Waste Management: Midland Brick
Midland Brick’s ‘Return Recycle Rebuild’ project has revolutionized the way contractors manage their brick and tile waste, ultimately reducing the amount of waste to land fill by 7,600 tonnes so far.
The project involves two pick up trucks called the Midland Magpies, designated staff members and a small digger collecting left over or broken bricks from building sites and other areas to use them for re-sale as seconds or recycle them into new bricks.
The community can also drop off unused or broken bricks to the plant for recycling or resale at no charge.
L-R: Paul Everingham (Packaging Stewardship Forum), Tom Guthrie General Manager of Midland Brick
Heritage and Culture: Baldivis Childrens Forest
Baldivis Childrens Forest incorporates indigenous culture and heritage into all aspects of the forest.
Strong partnerships have been formed with the local Nyoongar and they have been involved in the establishment of the indigenous cultural programs at Baldivis Childrens Forest.
The programs allow community members to learn about a variety of Aboriginal cultural areas including bush land management methods, particularly focusing on bush tucker and bush medicine within an interactive and natural environment.
L-R / back – front: Jo Tregonning, Judith Hill, Mel Hay (Chair KABC), Mary Rayner, John Worthy, Imogen Calverley and Josh Lambert
