Key points:

What do people think about key issues beyond sustainable houses?
With three Sustainable House Day tours, Michael and I were able to implement a “What do you think?” board inspired by a UK group called Common Grounds, and want to continue improving it to be as effective as possible.
Try it yourself or work with your community to obtain anonymous feedback that provides a mirror of you and your neighbours and what you seek. Fill it out with the QR code above! Change the wording to describe your local issues.
Conversations
Participants of the tours engaged in conversations about solar panels and battery rebates, which led us to the Inner West Community Energy group as a valuable resource. We also discussed the impact of standing your ground when getting approval or building to live more sustainably - and how to do that.

Growing community conversations

Want to start your own conversations in your communities to discover what is important to you and your neighbours?

Start here with looking at Common Grounds for tips and suggestions: https://commongroundorg.co.uk/about-us/

***• The A1 size flip chart we put up and provided coloured dots for those who wished to to put the dots in the columns of their choice***

Greeted by a nice sunny day for everyone, I assisted Michael Mobbs in three house tours for the national Australia Sustainable House Day.

***• Me and my Three Sisters - rocks, really - in the Blue Mountains, about 2 hours west of Sydney, Australia***

Starting bright and early - well, 845 am, Michael and I drew up a “What do you think?” board, inspired by the UK Common Grounds volunteer team. Our aim was to learn what the people visiting from all over Sydney and beyond thought of issues beyond sustainable houses. Michael had learnt about this new tool for simply and cheaply obtaining anonymous opinions from communities from a recent column by the UK journalist, George Monbiot.

We put this board up with three “yes”/”?”/”no” options to answer questions, and two multiple choice opinion based questions.

These questions, answered by placing sticker dots in corresponding boxes, were put out to gauge the public's opinions regarding sustainable house day, and other more politically based questions surrounding sustainable living.

This social experiment allows contributors to remain anonymous, and in the UK has been put into place to understand what people want to see in the sustainability of their neighbourhoods with or without help from governments, regardless of their political party, wealth, poverty, personal circumstances.

The tours

The demographic of tour participants ranged from building design students to homeowners who are already running electric households, to people wanting to live more sustainably to 5 month old babies, and even a sustainable dog!

The crowd was mostly dominated according to how many sustainable events are, mostly caucasians over the age of 50. The crowd was sprinkled in with people of some other ethnic backgrounds, mostly south and east asian, and a handful of inspired young people.

Doubts were brought up about the first question on the “what do you think” board with feedback suggesting segregation of community was suggested in the question, yet even with an older crowd, the majority of the responses were yes, “Young people have better projects than their parents”.

I found these answers to be surprising, as most of the crowd was older, superficially indicating that they are the demographic of people showing up and being intentional about sustainable education.

I noticed that people were hesitant to put dots on the board, whether it be because of a smaller crowd with less animosity, or lack of understanding. I feel as though we could have more appropriately guided participants to organize the different colours of stickers according to importance, but we did not, and that was the most asked question.

After placing the dots, each tour began.

***• Visitors going into the house and putting preference dots on the chart***

***• Looking for the meaning of life aka what does a community prefer?***

Excited to learn, people asked questions and shared their issues with trying to live sustainably, or standing up for themselves in this environment, something Michael really encourages, to assure that you are able to live the way that you intend.

One participant who already has solar panels on her house but needed to replace them as they were 20 years old, expressed her issues with finding a company that will be able to reuse her old solar panels due to rebates as she doesn't want to simply dispose of them. This was a good question that as someone who has never dealt with solar panels would not have thought of to be an issue. Amongst our amazing participants, a helpful resource was crowdsourced. Inner West Community Energy, who are a group of locals who are committed to helping their neighbors with energy and solar panel questions are a resource. They hold panels for community members to join. I found this a really nice idea because the experts in solar panels are usually the companies that are selling them, which means that information is usually given only with purchases and may not be objective.

***• How the coloured dots - showing priorities, preferences - were placed on the interests chart***

There was another concern brought up about rebates for batteries for solar panels by another participant:

It is hard to receive help/ maintenance installing batteries after already having solar panels unless you have purchased from the same company because of rebates.

A few other questions and comments were sprinkled throughout the tours such as:

Do other councils also garden like Chippendale, with the answer being, yes, kind of, as some nearby councils have started more green initiatives but they are not as red tape free as in Chippendale.

***• A couple of vistors strongly recommended this local group, Inner West Community Energy***

A comment was made by a woman who came back to this tour after her first tour 20 years ago!

• ***Options to cool fridges by around or more than 20% using free cold air are described in Michael’s book,*** ***Sustainable House***

She loved what Michael had to say about fridge ventilation and fought for the vent to be installed in her project after pushback from the builders. This is a huge thing for Michael - he stressed that as the money belongs to the customer the customer can insist on proven solutions and list, say, 10 of them as priorities for a project in any agreement. He has fought many times before to get to where he is now and encourages others to do the same. In his book, Sustainable House, he talks about how to do so.

by

Carly Casanova-Moore, Intern with Sustainable House