Melton Sustainable Living Group

I received this email from our local council.  It is a great way to get a small Solar PV system at a bargain rate as low as $1600 for a 1kW system!  I wish this deal was around when I purchased my system. Melton Council is currently participating in a solar panel bulk purchasing scheme - The 'Solar Suburbs' scheme. This scheme has been led by Brimbank City Council and other participating western region councils include Hume, Moorabool, Wyndham and Moonee Valley. The scheme represents an opportunity for residents of Melton to take advantage of the $8000.00 Federal Government Solar Rebate (which finishes on June 30th), benefit from the reduced costs associated with bulk purchasing of products, save on future electricity bills and do something positive for the environment . Although the current solar rebate will be replaced with another subsidy scheme after June 30th, the new subsidy will likely be of lower value. A commercial provider, Clear Solar , has been...

People often ask me why I grow my own food.  I simply reply that it gives me freedom.  I can eat fresh, wholesome food straight from the garden, in the sound knowledge that it did not come from far away, or was raised using pesticides,herbicides or fossil fuels.  I am providing food for my family’s needs.  What could be more sustainable than that? Here is a good example.  The Dervaes family who live in Pasadena, CA in the USA that have achieved amazing things on the same sized suburban block that many Australians own.  Theirs is a 809 square metre block and just about every single scrap of land is used to grow food.  It is a very inspiring story. And a longer video about the family and their Path to Freedom; Did you notice they they didn’t have any rainwater tanks?  Somehow I think that if any of us went to this extreme, we would have to have a 50,000 litre tank squirreled away somewhere! Anyway, sorry about the mass of date changes ...

I have just discovered a wonderful source of information.  It is Greenlivingpedia , and is written in the style of Wikipedia. Have a look at this link, http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/Australian_climate_action_groups#Victoria .  I think you will all be pleasantly surprised! Don’t forget that the next meeting is at Gavin’s house at 1500 on Saturday the 18th of April.  I will write up the agenda over the weekend.  I expect the official part of the meeting to go for about 2 hours as we have a fair bit to get through. See you there.

I am assuming that most of the members are aware of Climate Change and the possible effects it will have upon us all if we don’t act soon to avert the crisis.  So if anyone wants me to cover it off in a post, let me know. I will dedicate this post to explaining Peak Oil and what it means to us on a local level.  Peak Oil is basically the end of cheap oil.  The worlds oil fields get to a point that it takes more than one barrel of oil to extract one barrel of oil, therefore the field goes into decline.  When all the oil fields in the world reach this point then we reach the plateau that is know as Peak Oil.  The graph below shows Australia’s oil production and demand predicted out to 2030.  As you can see, our oil fields in this country have now clearly peaked. After that event, which the International Energy Agency has determined happened in 2007, oil demand outstrips supply and oil gets expensive.  We have seen that happen already, and it wa...

Welcome to the web presence of the Melton Sustainable Living Group.  We are a newly formed group in the shire of Melton, Victoria, Australia, who care about our local community.  Here are our vision and mission statements. Vision The members of Melton Sustainable Living Group believe in changing the world by thinking globally, but by acting locally. MSLG will bring sustainable living to Melton ensuring a cleaner, greener and more resilient community for all. Mission MSLG will foster positive change by serving the community with communication and education of sustainable living methods in an urban and suburban environment. MSLG will provide practical knowledge about how to lower personal emissions, energy efficiency, growing your own food garden, renewable energy, frugal living, rainwater harvesting and the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle). In essence this is a process of relocalising all essential elements that our community needs to sustain itself and thri...