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.