Ring in the New Year at Peats Ridge

You've been a loyal Bower fan, you've followed us on facebook - now here's a chance to reap the rewards!

To thank us for providing pre loved bar furniture, The Peats Ridge Festival Folk have given us a pair of season passes to the Peats Ridge Sustainable Festival (New Years 2010)

And to thank YOU, we're putting them up for grabs.

You can go in the draw to win.

HOW TO WIN
like us on facebook
Spend $40 in store and tell us you saw it on facebook.
Leave your name and contact details with staff

ENTRIES CLOSE 4PM Sunday the 19th of December. 
Don't forget you must like us on facebook.

The winner will be notified on Monday December 20.

HOW TO STACK THE DRAW
Don't forget there are two season passes up for grabs - so tell all your friends and get them to enter as well - Once they've agreed to take you as their buddy, of course!


HOW TO SPEND $40 AT THE BOWER?

You should consider Bower Membership. It's just $5.50 for students and pensioners, and an earth shattering $11 for everyone else. There are loads of perks, including 10% off Bower goods once you're approved.

The remaining $30-35 will buy you a heap of sustainable festival gear at the Bower  - from cricket balls to crazy hats, picnic sets and outdoor umbrellas - not to mention picture frames for the memories later on!



See you in store very soon!!

Santa Claus Has Come Early!

Around these parts, Santa drives a ute, dresses in King G and delivers restored, refurbished and resurrected goods in bulk.

Of course we just call him Steve...

Steve Swan has been contributing to The Bowerhaus since before there was a name or policy to do so - you can read a little more about what drives him here. 

You can spot stuff by Steve - it's stencilled, branded (sometimes literally with a firebrand!), often brightly coloured and always interesting. Lately he's been playing with Arnott's biscuits logos - giving quality dining suites and dressers a new identity you won't want to part with.

Today he has very cleverly brought a ute load of smaller items just in time for christmas.

Someone's already bought the entire suitcase collection, but there's still some gorgeous vintage items and branded boxes - including the smoothest lego chest chock full of divider drawers to keep your collection in style.

You'll also find an array of occasional tables, stencilled, branded, painted, themed or made from wake boards - you'll find just the table you never knew you needed.

We even got our own very special Bower Coffee table - It's in the Eco-library with the rest of the Reuse Gallery.

The Bower Christmas Newsletter

Good Tidings and Joy, Bower folk,
for the internet is back in the house!

After 4 days of frustration, isolation and more frustration, we can finally;

• Respond to your emails
• Play with the Website
• Keep up to date with sustainability in the rest of the world

So thank you for your patience!

Community Partnership

On Wednesday the 25th of November, Target Sustainability @ Marrickville held their annual environmental awards on the banks of the Cooks River.

Target Sustainability is a fantastic program from Marrickville council that involves 108 local businesses. The program supports, encourages, educates these businesses in sustainable business practice, services, and systems, and then supports us all some more.

Participating businesses elect to focus on areas of waste, energy, community or carbon reduction. 

This is obviously something that should be applauded - particularly amongst commercial businesses, where doing the right thing is perceivably harder on the business initially.

What we loved about the awards night was hearing how any tough times initially are now bringing in great rewards financially, environmentally and emotionally. And of course we loved the food!

The event was largely catered by Long Black Cafe from Dulwich Hill, a favourite amongst all participants, and some of our members - Check out Long Black + Green, a great blog by a fan of both The Bower and Long Black, on all things sustainable, kitchen gardeny etc.

Serendipity Icecream made us all weak at the knees with their coconut macaroon 'cold cookies'. They won the Leadership in Sustainability Award for all their efforts. They run on 100% green power, and managed to increase their production dramatically while retaining the same (if not lower) energy and resource consumption. Truly inspiring and well deserved. We should all eat their icecream in celebration!

Other winners and notable mentions included Scrambled Cafe in Enmore, vegan and yoga restaurants, St Vincent DePaul and their 50 year sustainability plan, a uniform and dry cleaning business that reuse their chemicals to reduce harmful waste and so many more! Did you know that there's a SUPRE with a community garden for their employees among (one of several great initiatives they have).

(Richard, Maaike, Fiona Byrne (The Mayor), Oliver (Board Director), Greg)

The Bower were finalists in 3 categories, but mentioned in nearly all as many other businesses came to us to furnish their offices, shop displays etc.

Ultimately we won The Community Partnership Award, and we're absolutely thrilled. As a co-operative and a not for profit we work with a huge variety of people on a regular basis. A big thanks to the membership and volunteers, without you not only would we not win an award, but we couldn't achieve what we do. 

More recently we've been lucky to seek out other partnerships in the community, and we look forward to sharing more of our plans as they come to life.

Our thanks go to Marrickville Council, for the Target program, the awards night, and connecting so many local and inspiring businesses.