BEING SUSTAINABLE

The Kensington CommUNITY Festival is proud to be a sustainable event. Being environmentally conscious, we have at heart to minimise the impact of our event on the environment and follow the principle to Refuse, Reduce, Reuse/Repurpose, Repair, Recycle.

We have a whole range of initiatives to help minimise waste at the Festival and to get thinking about how we can live more sustainably and reduce our footprint living in the “burbs”.

WASTE MANAGEMENT

Waste is a big part of any event and typically comes from construction activity, promotional materials, and food and drinks. That’s why we put in place a range of recycle, re-use solutions to combat waste at the Festival.

We actively work with our event partners, stallholders and contractors to minimise waste before, during and after the Festival. All stallholders are required to minimise their waste on the day, to be creative with what materials they use and to avoid the use of plastic as much as possible. They are also asked to not use or sell any single use plastic items including plastic water bottles.

A community crockery and cutlery station is set up for event attendees, along with a dish wash up station, to eliminate the need for single use plastic cups and paper plates. We also strongly encouraged people coming to the event to bring their own cups and water bottles.

Water refilling and drinking stations are available throughout the day, to refill drink bottles.

For any waste that is created, supervised Waste Stations are dotted across the Festival, each with composting, recyclable and landfill bins and a volunteer to guide which bin to put rubbish in.

TRAVEL

The event is located within a short walk of the South Kensington train station, making it the perfect event to commute to with public transport.

We encourage visitors to walk, scoot, catch a bus or a train, or ride to the event.

Extra bike racks will be set up for people to park their bicycles.

Not only are these options great for your health, they also reduce greenhouse gas pollution and congestion, making it a breeze to get to the Festival.

So, to get to the event:

·         Catch the train to either South Kensington or Kensington stations. JJ Holland Park is a short walk from either

·         Catch the Bus #402 to Macaulay Road/Kensington Station, then stroll to JJ Holland Park

·         Ride your bike. There will be bike racks at the Festival where you can lock up your bike 

·         Or if you are super lucky and live close by – walk on down

WATER

In an effort to reduce water usage at the event, composting toilets are available for attendees.

They provide a sustainable, safe, and hygienic system to treat human waste, save water, and produce a usable compost end product.

Compost toilets not only dramatically reduce water consumption, but also cut the energy required to pump sewerage (currently powered by heavy-polluting brown coal) and return valuable nutrients to the soil.

SUSTAINABLE LIVING EXPO

The Sustainable Living Expo is one of the main attractions of the Festival. Past Expo stalls and activities have included

• Pop up repair hubs for bikes, jewellery, textiles, clothing, small wooden items and computers for simple repairs
• A Neighbourhood Climate Action Plan
• Environmentally-friendly packaging-free products, including shampoo and conditioner, hand and body wash, laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, and castile soap from Roving Refills
• Kensington Seed Savers and Swap stall
• Kensington Community Bike Workshop
• Permaculture and local community gardens info
• Food garden display and worm farms
• Kensington Community Food Forest info and activities
• Local projects that care for and are regenerating the Moonee Ponds Creek
• Transition Town Kensington Stall
• Sustainable messages on how to care for our planet

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We acknowledge the volunteer writing of this plan by Living Learning Australia.