Sustainability
As one of Addi Road’s core values we take sustainability to the next level. We aim to recycle and compost as much as possible, and to generate our own energy requirements for our buildings and vehicles. If we can’t recycle it or compost it on site, we send it to a waste recovery centre, so ultimately only very little ends up in landfill.
Our sustainability efforts include:
- Solar-panels power our kitchen and pantry including all the fridges and freezer
- EV charging station and EV for food rescue
- #ZeroWaste Strategy exploring new ways to prevent waste going off site including perished food and garden waste being processed in a range of low-tech, low-CO2 composting systems to provide nutrients and minerals that our grounds desperately need; and recycling of all carboard, paper and soft plastics.
Green spaces top priorities: controlling local invasive species, breathing new life into compacted soils and preparing the way for big plant-out and greening program.
Net Zero
Our rooftop solar powers our food rescue collection vehicle. 100% electric, our van, named Flynn after one of our volunteers, became our second collection food rescue vehicle in 2021. Flynn is plugged in and recharged each day.
Our new community kitchen in our Gumbramorra Hall is solar powered via rooftop solar and batteries installed in 2022. The kitchen allows us to prepare meals for our two Addi Road Food Pantries. For community members lacking skills because of disadvantage and poverty, we plan to run cooking workshops.
In 2022 we installed a solar-roofed carport to create a public duel EV charging station.
The fridges, freezers, lights, computers and air-conditioning in our Marrickville Addi Road Food Pantry and office (pictured above) are fully powered by our rooftop solar (since 2017). Every year this reduces our CO2 emissions by 16 tonnes.
Return & Earn
We initiated the introduction of a container deposit station here at our community centre back in 2017 to boost community recycling. It is the busiest Return & Earn in the southern hemisphere!
Our ‘reverse-vending machine’ increases community recycling, reduces litter and raises funds for dozens of charities with a 10c refund paid for each container.
Refund or Donate
Every bottle, can or glass recycled is eligible for a 10c refund or donation to a listed charity, including our food relief service here at Addi Road.
Mixed waste, that goes into garbage bins throughout our community centre, is sorted and recycled by the full waste-recovery service we commission.
On the edge of the pre-colonial swamp
Addi Road Community Centre is located on the site of a former temporary wetland which flowed to the former Gumbramorra Swamp – one of the reasons the land remained undeveloped while all around was subdivided in the early 1900s.
Rain garden filters stormwater
The site’s natural history means Addi Road continues to face flooding after heavy rain. Stormwater management is a big issue for us and contributes to the high number of pot holes in our carpark.
2022 saw the completion of a rain garden, three interconnected ponds on the northern side of our Gumbramorra Hall, planted with 3,500 plants native to the area. Stormwater uphill from Addi Road is diverted into the rain garden to slow the flow and to filter the water so it is clean before it goes into the Cooks River.
Addi Road established an Urban Habitat program in 2013 to foster wildlife habitat in our urban environment and enhance the benefits of green space at our Centre. The program is based around our Urban Habitat Tree which provides a safe haven and home to threatened bird species in the area.
We led the first wildlife monitoring program of its kind in NSW to evaluate the effectiveness of Urban Habitat Trees. We set up motion-activated cameras and microbat detectors. Citizen scientists recorded wildlife activity and fed data into the Hollows As Home study, run by the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney.
Community Garden & Composting
These 9 acres of publicly accessible space host so many services, and so much dialogue and education. It’s a space for the community to get together and take action on sustainability, cultural understanding and social interaction, and we want to responsibly activate the outdoors as an ecological working space. We have been promoting urban forest protection and battling the unfortunate trend of urban tree canopy loss that the Inner West suffers under, and we have managed to preserve an incredible number of large old trees. However, several areas are under pressure particularly due to exposed soil and compaction after all the years of use from farmers and brick-makers, to military and horses, to markets and performers. We want to plant more in this space to benefit visitors, neighbours and wildlife.
As a community-operated urban green space, generous volunteers have contributed thousands of hours in preparation, covering the soil and producing tonnes of organic compost to protect tree roots, loosen soil, improve water retention and prepare beds for planting. And from the feedback we receive, those volunteers get a lot out of participating in this light-touch, ecology-first style of green space design. Together we’ve suppressed weeds, turned compost, spread mulch, and prepared our budgets, site plans and concept designs.
The real beauty of Addi Road’s environmental program is the interconnection of the public green space with our food rescue operations. When the fruit and vegetables that we rescue from supermarkets can no longer be redistributed, we are thankfully able to compost the scraps alongside the organic leaves and garden waste from around the site, in our low-tech state-of-the-art community composting systems. There are three-bay systems capable of reaching over 55 degreees C, which kills off pathogens and weed seeds and allows microbial decomposition in a relatively short period. After one to two months, we have organic compost that we spread onto our gardens, which in turn nourished the depleted, compacted soils around the site, allowing us to plant areas out with much greater success rates.
Making our city more green, cool, clean, happy and healthy
The success of our Urban Habitat Tree started a conversation with our arborist that grew to Rethinking the Urban Forest, a conference we initiated and hosted at Addi Road.
To discuss and provide a road map for growing the role of the urban forest in metropolitan Sydney, researchers, practitioners, planners, activists, policy-makers and politicians came together to address the political, legal, bureaucratic and cultural barriers.
