Welcome to the index to our projects: click on the text for more details about a past or current Sustainability Group project

CURRENT PROJECTS

Comfy Homes

Working with the community’s tradespeople, businesses, workplaces, groups and householders to make improvements to homes so that they are more comfortable and with lower power bills.

Wind Energy

A MASG working group is  proposing that a small Community Owned Wind Park be established in the Mount Alexander Shire. The Wind Park would feed clean renewable electricity back into the grid and reduce our dependence on polluting energy made by burning non-renewable brown coal.

Local Food Production

Mount Alexander Sustainability Group is involved in the 2010 Garden Festival and is helping transform the extensive rear garden of the Hub at 233 Barker Street into a food forest.

Goldfields Solar Hub

MASG in partnership with the Bendigo Sustainability Group is making solar PV more accessible for households, businesses and community groups.

Advocacy

With world is changing as Industry and Government is starting to take climate change seriously. But we know that this change is not fast enough given what the scientific evidence is telling us. Our advocacy project is working to have the our decision makers understand that   better policies and programs are needed and that the community wants them now.

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PAST PROJECTS 2006 t0 2009

• Carbon Reduction Action Groups

The project helped local households to calculate their carbon emissions from electricity, gas, travel and waste and then pledge to cut those emissions and  work together to find ways to reduce them.

• Maine’s Power: Industry, MASG & CSIRO partnership

The Maines Power project saw MASG work with the CSIRO and our Shire’s four main employers to investigate ways to reduce their greenhouse footprints by 30% by 2010 whilst increasing energy security for the area

• Finding our Power Community Forum

This event held in 2008 enabled the community to come together to share ideas and discuss opportunities for the renewable energy future of the Mount Alexander Shire. Participants were invited from within the MASG membership as well as representatives from prominent community organizations, business and local government.

• Challenge to Change

Challenge to Change unfolded in the Shire during the month of May 2008. Engaging over 70 businesses, 8 churches, 14 schools, the Mt. Alexander Shire Council and dozens of households, C2C was a month long program of energy monitoring and reduction that aimed to demonstrate that communities can rapidly reduce greenhouse emissions.

• LoCO2

A MASG initiative funded by the Australian Greenhouse Office. The Low CO2 Project supported local businesses to generate energy savings, and a reduction in their carbon footprint using information gained from an energy assessment.

• Solar Display Home

This project created a local example for home builders and renovators and for the people in the housing industry that homes and gardens built on sustainability principles can be comfortable, attractive and cost less to run over time. It was open to the public for 6 months.

• Festival of the Wheel

Culminated in the Don KRC Free Family Day in the Botanical Gardens. Around 600 people attended, the weather was near perfect after a shaky start to the day and the variety of bikes needed to be seen to be believed.

• MASG and  Worm Farms

MASG took orders for worm bins that were delivered during the Festival of the Wheel in 2008.

• Carbon Neutral State Festival 2007

The Carbon Neutral Castlemaine State Festival 2007 was a unique launching pad for the promotion of carbon neutrality and the engagement with the Castlemaine businesses, State Festival patrons and the wider Mount Alexander community in sustainability issues.