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Linking Students to Landcare

by | Jul 31, 2019 | Green Skills Inc. - Sustainability Non-Profit

Cranbrook School Tree Planting Outing to Tom South Lake – Tuesday 30th July 2019

Cranbrook Primary School Tree Planting Event Links Students to Landcare

The Cranbrook School Tree planting day held on Tuesday 30th July at Tom South Lake went well. Green Skills coordinated the provision of local native plants grown in the Katanning Landcare nursery, and guidance for the students on the day

The Gillamii Centre and the Shire of Cranbrook provided assistance in terms of planning and site preparation.

Forty or so students accompanied by several teachers and supporting adults from the Cranbrook Primary School participated in planting and watering around 1100 local shrubs and trees around the fenced off edge of the lake foreshore. Thanks also to the Jones and Williamson farming families for providing permission and support for the plantings. . This landcare project has been supported by the Koorabup Trust, Green Skills, Gillamii Centre, Shire of Cranbrook and the Cranbrook Primary School.

For a number of years bird enthusiasts including Steve Elson from Ongerup and others from BirdLife Australia have been surveying the birdlife of Tom South Lake, noting that it is an important haven for shorebirds including the threatened Hooded Plover, In 2018 Green Skills and the Gillamii Centre organised support for a 3.7km fence to be built protecting the foreshores of this lake from sheep grazing.

Last summer, it was noted that Hooded Plovers were breeding on the edge of the lake, the first time in years. The proximity of this lake adjacent to the main road between Cranbrook and Katanning makes it an ideal demonstration site to promote lake conservation to the broader Great Southern farming community.

 

Cranbrook School tree Planting Outing to Tom South Lake – Tuesday 30th July 201

 

  

Community Garden Workshop Focus on Fruit Trees

by | Jul 22, 2019 | Green Skills Inc. - Sustainability Non-Profit

Learning is Fun at the Denmark Community Garden

At the Denmark Community Garden workshop on Saturday 20th July,  local garden expert, Neal Collins, shared his knowledge on how to grow fruit bearing trees and bushes.

Twelve people attended the event, held at the newly established Denmark Community Garden, which is a collaborative project between Green Skills and the Denmark CRC.

People interested in joining workshops and other activities at the Garden can register with Green Skills Denmark  .. email at [email protected]

Neal Collins demonstrating helpful tips on how to plant a Mulberry at the Denmark Community Garden.

 

Preparing a range of bushes and herbs for planting at the Denmark Community Garden

The new Denmark Community Garden coordinated by Green Skills slowly taking shape

 

Trinity College joins in Cranbrook Planting

by | Jul 22, 2019 | Green Skills Inc. - Sustainability Non-Profit

Monday 22nd July 2019

Volunteer University Students help plant out landcare sites

A team from Trinity Residential College at the UWA joined in a two day program of tree planting for habitat restoration on a farm near Cranbrook on the 18th and 19th July 2019.

The team of eight, led by College head, Mike Shearer, planted 6500 native trees and shrubs on two sites on the Williamson farm, north of Cranbrook. Trinity College had grown 4000 of these trees as part of their landcare effort.Other trees came through Katanning Landcare, Habitat Nursery in Denmark, and through North Stirling Pallinup NRM.

The team worked with Green Skills’ Basil Schur, and the Gillamii Centre’s Freyer Spencer, on the project. They were able to stay three nights in a spare homestead on the Walsh family farm.

Volunteer team of Uni students from Trinity College planting a habitat restoration site on the Williamson Farm, Cranbrook with Green Skills and Gillamii

 

Volunteer team of Uni students from Trinity College help clean up planting equipment after a day with Green Skills and Gillamii

Ian Walsh, Cranbrook farmer, speaking to Freya Spencer of Gillamii and some of the team from Trinity College, This tree planting project helps provide a valuable experience for city based uni students, several of whom from overseas. The Walsh family kindly hosted the team in one of their homesteads during the event.

For further information, contact Basil Schur at Denmark Greens Skills on [email protected]

Slow Fashion Festival 2019

by | Jul 18, 2019 | Green Skills Inc. - Sustainability Non-Profit

Green Skills held a Slow Fashion Festival in June 2019 at Fossicker’s Tip Shed in Albany to showcase sustainable fashion around the Great Southern region.

What is Slow Fashion? Slow fashion, as opposed to fast fashion, is fashion that causes less harm to people and the environment. It could be expensive, handstitched, bespoke, organic garments; or a bargain unique op shop find. Our festival included market stalls from local businesses who are upcycling coffee pods to make jewellery, plaiting rag rugs, upcycling fabric into new garments, creating jewellery from wooden offcuts, reselling secondhand clothes, hand-felted hats, vintage wear, and information about our recently launched Repair Cafe Albany.

The global fashion industry has an impact on the environment through raw materials (cotton cultivation is one of the most pesticide and water intensive industries in the world), fibre processing chemicals and dyes polluting soil & water, landfill (the average Aussie throws out 23kg of textiles to landfill every year) and microfibres (most WA beaches are polluted with microscopic synthetic fibres). There is also a humanitarian impact as many clothing factories employ child or female workers in unsafe conditions for minimal pay in order to produce our cheap chainstore garments. You just can’t produce a new t-shirt for $3 (grow the fibres, process them into material, transport it, create the garment, and ship it around the world) without someone else paying the cost behind the scenes. Look for the hashtag #whomademyclothes to find out more.

What can you do about it? Jane Milburn, author of Slow Clothing, says ‘buy once, buy well’. Listen to her podcast here. If you can’t afford to buy ethical clothing, look for secondhand gear in op shops or online swap groups. Don’t buy new synthetic items. Keep the synthetic textiles you already have in circulation, but wash them as little as possible and consider buying a filter bag for your washing machine to decrease the microfibre shedding into the waste water (this usually ends up in oceans, hence microfibres washing up on our beaches).

You can also host a clothes swap to stop your unwanted clothes from going to landfill and get something new to you at the same time. Find out how here. Green Skills hosted a clothes swap as part of the Slow Fashion Festival and many garments exchanged hands. We did have a system with tokens, to try to make sure we didn’t end up with extra clothes at the end of the event, but there were a pile of left-overs. These will be used for future workshops.

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Two workshops ran at the event; darning knitted jumpers and socks, and easy hand-dying garments with natural materials. Check out the Permadoll or Green Skills Facebook pages for more workshops.

Albany folk might be surprised to see the volume of clothing rescued from our local op shops. This work is done by a local couple, Max and Marianne Chester, who attended our event in time to see some of the discarded clothing being worn on the catwalk. They have been collecting quality clothing and textiles that was on the op shop floor, but needed to be moved on in order to fit new stock. This doesn’t even include clothing that is too torn or dirty to offer for sale in the first place. The clothing is packed into wool bale bags and transported to Perth, where it is sent around Australia or the world to places of need. Max currently collects fifty wool bales worth of textiles per week, just from Albany. This was previously going into our landfill.

The most lively part of this event was the fashion parade. Catherine Kinsella from Style Genie coordinated our lovely volunteer models, and stallholders generously provided some garments, as well as discarded clothing pulled out of the wool bales (AKA ‘The Wool Bale Range’). The fashion parade ran twice during the event, and Bob Symons and the team from ACE Camera Club captured the moments for us. Thanks to our models and all the other event volunteers who made this day wonderful.

Next step: if you are want to learn more, check out these free online courses: Fashion & Sustainability with the London College of Fashion, Fashion’s Future with Fashion Revolution or Who Made My Clothes by the University of Exeter.

Green Skills Denmark has also run several projects keeping textiles out of landfill, including the recent Sew Cool! Making a Difference: Workshops and Markets.

The Slow Fashion Festival 2019 was supported by the Waste Authority of WA and the City of Albany.

Dreamcatchers and Driftwood Mobiles with an upcycled twist

Dreamcatchers and Driftwood Mobiles with an upcycled twist

by | Jun 24, 2019 | Green Skills Inc. - Sustainability Non-Profit

Sewing with Scraps workshop takes a seaside theme, with shells, driftwood and of course, fabric scraps.

Adding to Jude’s box of recycled supplies – part-balls of wool, op shop ribbons, wire hangers – participants choose to make either a dreamcatcher or a mobile.

This sustainability workshop teaches children, teens and adults how to breathe new life into unwanted clothes and craft supplies, and create something beautiful.

Pictured: a happy participant of Coogee Live – the City of Cockburn’s seaside festival.

To bring this workshop to your organisation or environmental education centre, contact the Green Skills Perth office on 9360 6667 or email [email protected]