Transition Towns – a discussion night

Creating sustainable communities beyond oil dependency
An information / discussion night with local community groups (South Hobart Sustainable Community, West Hobart Environment Network and Waterworks Valley Community).

7pm
Tuesday, 7 April
At 71 Murray Street (above EcoHaven)
All welcome

What’s it all about?
The Transition Towns initiative began in the UK and has spread rapidly around the world. The aim of the project is to equip communities for the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil.

Margaret and Lissa, from Sustainable Living Tasmania, recently attended a Transition Training Session in Victoria with about 40 other SE Australians eager to learn more and start implementing Transition in their towns.

We are planning to help with the launch of Transition Tasmania and would like to gauge interest within our local communities in the Transition Model.

Contact Lissa for more info on lissa@sustainablelivingtasmania.org.au or call 6234 5566. Below is some information pinched from the WIKI site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns) :

The main aim of the project generally, and echoed by the Towns locally, is to raise awareness of sustainable living and build local resilience in the near future. Communities are encouraged to seek out methods for reducing energy usage as well as increasing their own self reliance—a slogan of the movement is “Food feet, not food miles!” Initiatives so far have included creating community gardens to grow food; business waste exchange, which seeks to match the waste of one industry with another industry that uses this waste; and even simply repairing old items rather than throwing them away.

While the focus and aims remain the same, the methods used to achieve these vary. For example, the township of Totnes has introduced its own local currency, the Totnes pound, which is redeemable in local shops and businesses helping to reduce food miles while also supporting local firms. This idea is also planned to be introduced in three Welsh transition towns.

Central to the Transition Town movement is the idea that a life without oil could in fact be far more enjoyable and fulfulling than the present “by shifting our mind-set we can actually recognise the coming post-cheap oil era as an opportunity rather than a threat, and design the future low carbon age to be thriving, resilient and abundant – somewhere much better to live than our current alienated consumer culture based on greed, war and the myth of perpetual growth.”