FOR IMMEDIATE RELESE
Contact: Andi Hazelwood, SustainaBundy Founder
(07) 4126 0226 sustainabundy (AT) gmail (dot) com
http://sustainabundy.org

Andi Hazelwood and her husband Dean aren't moving from Dallarnil to Bundaberg until September, but Hazelwood is already working on making her hometown-to-be more sustainable. Hazelwood is forming a new community group, called SustainaBundy, as a response to the twin challenges of resource depletion and climate change. According to Hazelwood, “SustainaBundy promotes relocalisation, which is the idea of reducing consumption and producing as much as possible - from food, to manufactured goods to energy - more locally. Cutting energy use is by far the most effective way for Bundaberg to deal with both peak oil and global warming, and doing business as locally as possible will also make the community stronger economically.”

SustainaBundy is one of nearly 160 like minded groups in 11 countries, all part of Post Carbon Institute's international Relocalization Network. Hazelwood also co-founded Relocalisation Works in the Burnett Inland (RWBI), another group in the Network. There are currently eight relocalisation groups in Australia.

SustainaBundy's initial project will be a guide on how to live a “greener” life in Bundaberg. Hazelwood hopes the guide will include a directory of eco-friendly businesses in Bundy, how-to articles on everything from recycling to keeping chickens, and interviews with local decision makers about environmental initiatives in the region. “As a new resident, creating this guide is a great way for me to find the places and people I want to do business with in town, it creates a useful resource for people who want to be more environmentally friendly but maybe don't know where or how,” Hazelwood said, “and it's also a good way to develop a membership for SustainaBundy so we can pursue other sustainability projects in in town,” she said.

Hazelwood will be keeping a web log of her new group's activities and progress at http://sustainabundy.org. “Even though I'm not in Bundy yet, the telephone and internet are a great way to do preliminary research on the guide and start making contacts,” she said, “and people can contact me through the website if they want to be in the guide or be a part of SustainaBundy. Especially if they're a local printer that uses recycled paper!”

(view the pdf version of this news release here.)